Recovering the Truth? B .S. Johnson and the 1960s/1970s World
A One-Day Conference
Venue: London Metropolitan University, North Campus, 166 ? 220 Holloway
Road, N7 8DB
Date: Saturday November 22nd, 2003.
Joint Organizers:
Dr. Philip Tew, Reader in English and Aesthetics, Centre for Critical
Practice, School of English, University of Central England in Birmingham
Dr. Wendy Wheeler, Reader in English, Research Centre in Creativity in the
Department of Cultural and Language Studies, London Metropolitan University
The subject of intense renewed critical interest in the past few years, the
formerly lost or effaced literary and critical voice of North London
novelist B. S. Johnson provokes a range of intriguing questions concerning
his contemporary status and the merit of his work:
A Forgotten Voice of English Letters?
An Early Islington, North London, Trendy?
A Major Lost Intellectual Influence?
A 1960s Renaissance man?
A Class Warrior?
A Proto-Postmodernist?
A Literary and Ideological Martyr?
A Generic Link Between Modernism and the Present?
A British Cult Figure?
Bryan Stanley William Johnson (1933 ? 1973) was one of the most renowned
and yet contentious novelists emerging in the 1960s, winning the Gregory
Award in1962 and the Somerset Maugham Award in 1967. His experimental
novels were closely influenced by his notion that literary fiction was not
simply 'lies' in the sense long ago affirmed in Sir Philip Sidney's Defence
of Poesie, but actually constituted ideological lies. His writing was,
therefore, based upon a dialectical, critical and autobiographical version
of his own life experience. Born a working class Londoner, he studied at
Birkbeck and King's College as a mature student. His writing life was
directly related to his upbringing in London and an adult life spent in
Islington. Here he was variously a novelist, dramatist, trades union
journalist, poetry editor, poet, film and television programme maker
almost a 'new renaissance' man. Troubled by British snobbery, class
oppression and his own depressive tendency, he charted his work in
multi-cultural Islington as a supply teacher in Albert Angelo (1964), and
his childhood evacuation and adolescent rites de passage in Trawl (1966).
Generally lost to the canon since his death in 1973, Johnson has recently
been the subject of recovery and increasing interest. Christie Malry's Own
Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2002 as a feature film starring Nick
Moran. One of the conference coordinators, Dr. Philip Tew, is the world's
leading Johnson scholar. His B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading was
published by Manchester UP in 2001, and an overview essay on Johnson in The
Review of Contemporary Fiction was published in Spring 2002. Jonathan
Coe?who (provisionally) will contribute to the event?is currently
completing a biography of Johnson to be published by Picador in Autumn
2003, alongside the republication of three of Johnson's novels. Also in
Autumn 2003, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London is featuring a
series of events in conjunction with Picador, which includes a
retrospective of Johnson's writing, and film and televisual work. The
proposed conference is intended to draw together these recent indications
of renewed interest in order to interrogate them, and also to celebrate the
prolonged loan of Johnson's personal papers to a major institution (under
negotiation).
The conference will consider all features and genres of Johnson's work.
These will include: the London, and particularly Islington, environments
and experiences which he described; the writers of his period especially
those in his circle such as Rayner Heppenstall, Ann Quin, Robert Nye, and
Margaret Drabble; the theory influencing his period (Johnson, living in
Upper Street, Islington during the 1960s, part of the vibrant North London
counter-cultural milieu which also saw Herbert Marcuse's visit to the
'Dialectics of Liberation' conference at the Roundhouse in Camden Town in
1968); considerations of the ideological struggles of this period; and
possible, historical and cultural, reasons for the critical effacement of
Johnson in the first twenty years after his last posthumous novel, See the
Old Lady Decently (1975). Johnson knew many of the poets, dramatists and
novelists of his period, so papers and panels addressing and
contextualising this setting will also be welcome.
It is likely that people from Johnson's circle may will visit the
conference, as well as many of the leading scholars in the relevant
literary-critical fields. Islington was Johnson's milieu for most of his
adult life, and the conference venue at Islington's own London Metropolitan
University in Holloway Road will provide an ideal locus for this
reconsideration of his work.
The conference will be a collaborative venture between a number of
organizations including: the London Metropolitan University in conjunction
with the British Library, the London Network for Modern Fiction Studies,
the Centre for Critical Practice, School of English, University of Central
England in Birmingham, and the Research Centre in Creativity in the
Department of Cultural and Language Studies at London Metropolitan
University. The latter is generously hosting the event.
Keynote/plenary speakers: t.b.a.
Queries, contact and submissions by e-mail only to:
Dr. Philip Tew
Reader in English and Aesthetics
University of Central England in Birmingham
philip.tew@uce.ac.uk
tewp@ukf.net
Submission deadline: July 6th 2003 (prior acceptance can be indicated for
those scholars arranging their own travel/accommodation funding support on
request). All submissions: please add "Recovering the Truth: B .S. Johnson"
to your message subject line. Conference fee payable to: 'London Network
for Modern Fiction Studies' £35; postgraduates (retired and benefits)
£15:00 until October 1st 2003 after which a £10 surcharge will apply.
Sterling cheques/money orders only to Dr. Philip Tew. London Network for
Modern Fiction Studies, 22a Fairmead Road, Tufnell Park, London, N19 4DF,
United Kingdom.
The venue at the London Metropolitan University North Campus is 100 metres
from the exit of Holloway Road underground station (Piccadilly Line) and a
ten-minute tube journey from King's Cross/St. Pancras (adjacent to the New
British Library).
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