B. S. Johnson - Fat Man On A Beach Part 1

Author and genius (and subject of Jonathan Coe's excellent biography) BS Johnson stars in his own programme, from 1973. Brilliant and funny.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• BS
• JOHNSON
• WRITER
• POET
• WALES
• JONATHAN
• COE
• FIERY
• ELEPHANT

[vzd963]

David - this is true: about 1983 I got a job as a trainee film editor at HTV in Cardiff. At lunch time I went down to the canteen and sat with two editors, Dave Camps and Viv Grant. They asked me what sort of films I liked. I said, " 'Planet Of The Apes', 'Where Eagles Dare', '2001', and a really weird thing I saw in TV once called 'Fat Man On A Beach' ". Well, they stared at me as if I was crazy, then they started to laugh. Dave said, "Viv cut it!"

[DavidQuantick]

Brilliant! That's great.

[jamesrobertcalhoun]

Thank-you so much for posting this! Any chance of getting some other BSJ films/plays up on Youtube? I note there are semi-regular screenings in the UK, but this hardly helps those of us that love him in Canada!

[DavidQuantick]

I'm working on it!

[DavidQuantick]

It was screened the year he died, before his death.

[NomadsOfTheSound]

This is boring an stupid...-.-

[katana1943]

Previous comments referring to Johnson's lack of confidence, class-consciousness, pseudo experimentation, etc. fail to note that art relies heavily on neurosis and originality. Johnson was a tortured soul who provided naked observations on human existence in his own, unique manner. His upbringing and personality are positive essentials of his art, not negatives which fail to meet a critic's "standards".

[barrett5169]

Thanks so much for this and the other Johnson material you've posted. I only just found out about his filmed work and was afraid I would never be able to find it.

[shadowhalfcast]

@DavidQuantick thanks for this, can't wait to see more of BS Johnson's films. Just finished House Mother Normal. BS is fast becoming one of my favourite writers.

[shadowhalfcast]

part 2) I have never read The Unfortunates by BS Johnson, but it strikes me from what Ive read about it, that it reflects in its layout its subject matter. Memories, loss and remembrance are all continually organised and reorganised and so the reader of the Unfortunates like in Danielewskis House of Leaves must organise the novel. An unbound book is subject to fate in a more overt sense then a bound one just as the blowing of leaves.

[shadowhalfcast]

I thought you might have been referring in some odd way to Georg Lukacs who wrote History and Class Consciousness (popular with avant-guard groups like the Situationists) but who conversely condemned the wanderings of experimental modernism in favour of Social Realism.

[lexo30]

(part 2) Johnson's 'experiments' as a writer do not convince me in a way that, say, Joyce or Beckett's work convinces me as appropriate solutions for the tasks Joyce and Beckett set themselves. Donald Barthelme's fiction strikes me as the only way that Barthelme could write. Whereas Johnson always strikes me as a glumly realistic novelist trying to convince himself that he's a flashy avant-gardist. His experiments have nothing to do with his basic subject matter, but are (as it were) stapled on.

[lexo30]

I don't think it's comic only because I know it's supposed to be funny, but it never actually makes me laugh.

Having read Jonathan Coe's superb biography of Johnson, I think that Johnson had a profound lack of confidence about himself which was directly related to his working-class background. He dealt with this by striving to be the most 'experimental' guy on the literary scene, firing off manifestoes etc., but in fact his talent was for realistic fiction. (part 1)

[shadowhalfcast]

I think in some ways you are right but he seems to strech from the comic to many other places. Some of this reminds me of Spike Milligan or Ivor Cutler. Comedy seems to reside in certain misanthropic tendencies. If he was 'serious' he wouldn't be what he was. I'm interested in what you mean by class-consciousness.

[InfluenceDevice]

Tremendous - delighted to see this. Many thanks.