Albert Angelo

a novel by B. S. Johnson

New Directions (May 1, 1987)

A failed love affair, the failure to find work as an architect, and the difficulties of substitute teaching cause Albert Angelo to reexamine his life ...

B.S. Johnson is known for his boundary pushing novels and "Albert Angelo" is one of them. Telling the story of an aspiring architect (or is he?) who substitute teaches for a living, "Albert Angelo" breaks the "fourth wall", presents internal monologues side by side with narrative action, switches narrative perspective, and even works in other non-traditional modes of storytelling. The end result is an engaging, always compelling, at times quite funny portrait of a man who is, in many ways, not to be liked.

While Johnson's unconventional forms can be accused of being gimmicky, "Albert Angelo" works because of the way the story and character is presented. Albert Angelo is not a likable man, yet because the specifics of his character faults are revealed in the uniquely parsed way that they are, the reader is not turned off.

Albert Angelo tells the story of an aspiring London architect in the 1960s who is forced to earn a living by teaching in rough inner-City schools. This was Johnson's second novel and he displays some of the experiments and techniques for which he is famous - splitting the page between the inner thoughts and spoken words of a character, for example. Towards the end of the book the author violently interrupts the narrative to explain the true facts behind the writing of the novel. B S Johnson was a working class Londoner who was a disciple of Joyce and Beckett. His novels are hard to obtain but there is a growing recognition of his work and a realisation that he was, in many ways, ahead of his time.

1987 hb in dj is almost like new with just light shelf wear, very light edge wear to jacket,, corners lightly bumped, nice clean cloths, clean pages, tight and square, good solid binding, in all an excellent copy of this very scarce experimental novel!

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