with Dr Naomi Wynter-Vincent and Odile Jordan
Content Information: Terminal Illness, sexual content, swearing and suicide
Dr Naomi Wynter Vincent, Assistant Professor in Innovation and English, and Odile Jordan, a first year PhD student in History, join me to delve into health, memory, and Englishness in B. S. Johnson’s The Unfortunates. The Unfortunates is a ‘book in a box’, meaning that it’s a novel split into 27 short chapbooks designed to be read in any order, except for a designated First and Last section. The effect is that of a scattered and fragmented story which mirrors the author’s reflections, memories and mis-rememberings of his friend’s illness and his own bitter love life, and his attempt to put order to the tragic events. The plot, albeit randomly scattered in time and place, is still surprisingly effective. The narrator, a novelist and part-time football journalist, arrives in Nottingham to cover a game, and is confronted with memories of the place and his good friend Tony, who passed away from cancer. This sparks off a series of reflections on Tony’s life and death, and the personal and professional journeys the two friends had been on together. The writing style mimics a stream-of-consciousness style: long sentences punctuated by commas and exclamations. The book was first published in 1969 but has received little popular attention for much of its life, until a 2008 re-print by New Directions brought it back into the mainstream.
Radical Writing Podcast 