Página InicialGruposDiscussãoMaisZeitgeist
Pesquisar O Sítio Web
Este sítio web usa «cookies» para fornecer os seus serviços, para melhorar o desempenho, para analítica e (se não estiver autenticado) para publicidade. Ao usar o LibraryThing está a reconhecer que leu e compreende os nossos Termos de Serviço e Política de Privacidade. A sua utilização deste sítio e serviços está sujeita a essas políticas e termos.

Resultados dos Livros Google

Carregue numa fotografia para ir para os Livros Google.

A carregar...

Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson (2004)

por Jonathan Coe

MembrosCríticasPopularidadeAvaliação médiaMenções
2432109,228 (3.86)11
The critically acclaimed biography of a man respected for his fierce commitment to truth and honesty, and his passionate belief in the avant-garde.In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known young novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde in both literature and film, he became famous -- not to say notorious -- both for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his idiosyncratic ways of putting them into practice. But in November 1973 Johnson's lifelong depression got the better of him, and he was found dead at his north London home. He had taken his own life at the age of forty. Jonathan Coe's biography is based upon unique access to the vast collection of papers Johnson left behind after his death, and upon dozens of interviews with those who knew him best. As unconventional in form as one of its subject's own novels, it paints a remarkable picture -- sometimes hilarious, often overwhelmingly sad -- of a tortured personality; a man whose writing tragically failed to keep at bay the demons that pursued him.… (mais)
A carregar...

Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro.

Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro.

» Ver também 11 menções

Mostrando 2 de 2
B S Johnson got a relatively late start as a writer, having come up the hard way through the education system, and he died very young, only ten years after his first book was published. Moreover, he was doctrinally opposed to the idea of fiction, all his novels and poems and most of his writing for film or stage being drawn in one way or another from his own life. So there couldn't be very much left for a biographer to do, surely?

Not so. Coe tells us he spent more than eight years, on and off, researching and writing this book, and he obviously had a hard time making his mind up about what conclusions — if any — could be drawn about Johnson's life. As a result, we get a book that, while it doesn't come in a box or have holes in the pages, is quite unusual in form by the standards of literary biography. Coe first takes us through Johnson's main works, the seven novels, and only then tackles the "life" part, following a roughly chronological sequence guided by 160 "fragments" from Johnson's writings (books, letters, rough notes, essays, application forms, etc.). He tries to make some kind of sense of how this combative, self-assured writer who always seemed to be quite certain that the peculiar theoretical path he was beating through the literary jungle was the only possible valid one, could end up messing up so many of the projects he worked on and antagonising so many of the people who could have been helping him.

Not straightforward, and Coe doesn't try to pretend that there are any sweeping generalisations to be made, but we do end up with some ideas that help us to understand Johnson a little bit better. Although it's not really clear by the end of the book whether Coe has really managed to convince himself that literary biography is a valid thing to do. He pats himself on the back a couple of times when he finds texts that Johnson has filed away noting that "this will go in me memoirs one day," but he has to step back and leave us with a bit of literary ambiguity when he comes to questions that only Johnson himself could have resolved for us, especially the big one of why he chose to end his life in November 1973.

A very interesting biography, and a book that raises quite a few questions about the way we evaluate literary success and standing, the ways writers are rewarded, and so on, that are obviously still worth thinking about now. A minor disappointment is that we don't get to learn much about Johnson's relationship with the person he regarded as his most important mentor, Samuel Beckett, presumably because Coe couldn't get permission to use their letters. But there is a lot about Johnson's other literary friendships, and a very entertaining selection of his angry letters — one of the best is addressed to a distinguished US publisher and opens with "You ignorant unliterary Americans make me puke." (Coe's Fragment 84, dated 28 June 1965). ( )
  thorold | Jul 12, 2020 |
This is—possibly in my whole life—the first book where I had to stop reading after 30 pages. A record. Definitely not the kind of biography I like, although the first paragraphs were full of promises. ( )
  Pepys | Sep 2, 2010 |
Mostrando 2 de 2
Coe writes enticingly, with the quiet fever of the bookish detective, but he treads softly. Not for him the hammy unveiling of a juicy revelation [...] not for him the putting together of two and two to make five. Instead, he uses all manner of means - tricks straight out of Johnson's top drawer - to ensure that we see his book for what it is: as merely one way of telling an impossible story.
adicionada por Nevov | editarThe Observer, Rachel Cooke (May 30, 2004)
 
Tem de autenticar-se para poder editar dados do Conhecimento Comum.
Para mais ajuda veja a página de ajuda do Conhecimento Comum.
Título canónico
Título original
Títulos alternativos
Data da publicação original
Pessoas/Personagens
Locais importantes
Acontecimentos importantes
Filmes relacionados
Epígrafe
Dedicatória
Primeiras palavras
Citações
Últimas palavras
Nota de desambiguação
Editores da Editora
Autores de citações elogiosas (normalmente na contracapa do livro)
Língua original
DDC/MDS canónico
LCC Canónico

Referências a esta obra em recursos externos.

Wikipédia em inglês (1)

The critically acclaimed biography of a man respected for his fierce commitment to truth and honesty, and his passionate belief in the avant-garde.In his heyday, during the 1960s and early 1970s, B. S. Johnson was one of the best-known young novelists in Britain. A passionate advocate for the avant-garde in both literature and film, he became famous -- not to say notorious -- both for his forthright views on the future of the novel and for his idiosyncratic ways of putting them into practice. But in November 1973 Johnson's lifelong depression got the better of him, and he was found dead at his north London home. He had taken his own life at the age of forty. Jonathan Coe's biography is based upon unique access to the vast collection of papers Johnson left behind after his death, and upon dozens of interviews with those who knew him best. As unconventional in form as one of its subject's own novels, it paints a remarkable picture -- sometimes hilarious, often overwhelmingly sad -- of a tortured personality; a man whose writing tragically failed to keep at bay the demons that pursued him.

Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas.

Descrição do livro
Resumo Haiku

Current Discussions

Nenhum(a)

Capas populares

Ligações Rápidas

Avaliação

Média: (3.86)
0.5 1
1 1
1.5
2
2.5
3 5
3.5 2
4 21
4.5 4
5 5

É você?

Torne-se num Autor LibraryThing.

 

Acerca | Contacto | LibraryThing.com | Privacidade/Termos | Ajuda/Perguntas Frequentes | Blogue | Loja | APIs | TinyCat | Bibliotecas Legadas | Primeiros Críticos | Conhecimento Comum | 202,660,897 livros! | Barra de topo: Sempre visível