Recovering the Truth: B .S. Johnson and British Literature from the
Late 1950s to the Early 1970s=20
=20
A One-Day International Conference
=20
Keynote Speakers will include:
Novelist and B. S. Johnson biographer: Jonathan Coe
Author of B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading (Manchester UP, 2001): Dr.
Philip Tew
=20
Proposal deadline: July 21st, 2004.
Venue: London Metropolitan University, North Campus,
166 - 220 Holloway Road, N7 8DB=20
Conference date: Saturday, November 22nd, 2004.
=20
The event is organized jointly by:
=20
The UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies.
=20
Dr. Rod Mengham, Reader in English, Jesus College, Cambridge.
=20
Dr. Philip Tew, Reader in English and Aesthetics, Director of the Centre
for Critical Practice, School of English, University of Central England
in Birmingham.=20
=20
Dr. Peter Wilson, Principal Lecturer and Programme Director for English
and Creative Writing, London Metropolitan University.
=20
The subject of intense renewed critical interest in the past few years
London novelist=20
Bryan Stanley William Johnson (1933 - 1973) was one of the most renowned
and yet contentious of published novelists emerging in the 1960s. His
literary fiction was based upon a dialectical, critical and
autobiographical version of his own life experience as a working class
Londoner, who studied at Birkbeck and King's College as a mature
student. He was variously a novelist, dramatist, trades union
journalist, poetry editor, poet, film and television programme maker and
60s renaissance man.=20
=20
Generally lost to the canon since his death in 1973, Johnson has
recently been the subject of recovery and increasing interest. Jonathan
Coe, a major contemporary British novelist who holds a PhD ion
literature from Warwick University, has completed a biography of Johnson
which is published by Picador in 2004, alongside the republication of
three of Johnson's novels in an omnibus edition. 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 his film and televisual work. Christie Malry's Own
Double-Entry (1973) was released in 2002 as a feature film starring Nick
Moran. Conference coordinator, Dr. Philip Tew, is the leading Johnson
scholar with his B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading published by
Manchester UP in 2001, and a detailed overview essay on Johnson in The
Review of Contemporary Fiction published in Spring 2002. The UK Network
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).=20
=20
=20
The conference is designed to accommodate all features of Johnson's
life, work and milieu. These include: the London, and particularly
Islington, environments and experiences which he described; the writers
of his period especially those who were associated with him such as
Rayner Heppenstall, Ann Quin, Robert Nye, and Margaret Drabble; the
theory influencing his period (Johnson, living in Upper Street,
Islington during the late 1950s and throughout 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).=20
=20
It is likely that people from Johnson's circle may 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 the Islington campus of the
London Metropolitan University in Holloway Road will provide an ideal
locus for this reconsideration of his work. It lies at the centre of the
setting of Albert Angelo (1964).=20
=20
The conference will be a collaborative venture between a number of
organizations including: the London Metropolitan University in
conjunction with the UK Network for Modern Fiction Studies, and the
Centre for Critical Practice, School of English, University of Central
England in Birmingham. The London Metropolitan University is generously
hosting the event.=20
=20
This event replaces the conference that was intended originally for
November 2003, which was cancelled due to a tragic bereavement in the
family of a member of the previous organizing committee. We offer our
condolences to Dr. Wendy Wheeler, London Metropolitan University.=20
=20
All submissions: please add "Recovering the Truth: B .S. Johnson" to
your message subject line as they will be stored and recovered
automatically. [submission deadline: July 21st, 2004].
=20
Conference fee (in pounds sterling only) payable to 'London Network for
Modern Fiction Studies': academics and public =A335; postgraduates
(retired and benefits) =A315:00; London Metropolitan staff and students
free; rates apply until September 30th 2004 after which a =A315 =
surcharge
(=A310 for postgraduates) will apply. Sterling cheques\money orders only
to Dr. Philip Tew. UK 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) with direct
access from Heathrow by tube and a ten-minute tube journey from King's
Cross/St. Pancras mainline station (adjacent to the New British
Library). Details of cheap local hotels can be supplied on request. =20
=20
Queries, contact and submissions by e-mail only to:=20
=20
Dr. Philip Tew
Reader in English and Aesthetics=20
University of Central England in Birmingham=20
philip.tew@uce.ac.uk <mailto:%20philip.tew@uce.ac.uk> =20
tewp@ukf.net <mailto:%20tewp@ukf.net> =20
===============================================
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===============================================
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