B.S. Albert Angelo.

by JOHNSON

£250 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

Telling stories is telling lies JOHNSON, B.S. Albert Angelo. London: Constable Co Ltd. 1964. 8vo. Black cloth bound boards with gilt lettering to spine; black, blue and orange illustrated dust wrapper with review blurb; pp. [10], 11-180, [4]; very minimal scuffing to head of spine; minor offsetting from free end paper to half title and preliminaries slightly separating from the hinge; otherwise near fine. First edition of the iconic second novel from the experimental novelist B.S. Johnson. English writer B.S Johnson once said, "telling stories is telling lies". Albert Angelo is a masterpiece in experimental literature, tracing the life of a substitute teacher who longs to become an architect. Both pages 149 and 151 have holes cut into them, what Johnson calls, ‘future-seeing holes’, so as to lend the reader an opportunity to grasp the future of what lies on page 153, a preview to a resolution of the present-past. Similarly, in the last section of the book, "Disintegration", conventional punctuation is erratic and often eradicated in the place of a Beckett-like stream of consciousness. A fragment from Beckett's The Unnamable is appropriate ly included before the prologue in which there is the exclamation; "Open up, open up, you'll be all right, you'll see", and throughout his career, B.S Johnson remained committed to pioneering an avant-garde method of talking; works which are frequently auto-biographical. Infact, the book culminates with an interruption by Johnson himself, th

• Binding: Hardcover

Found via Rare Books Intel, a search across rare-book dealers, auction houses and marketplaces worldwide.