Albert AngeloWhy don't you take a permanent job, Albert? You're twenty-eight now, you know," his mother remarks when he goes on his weekend duty visit home. Albert Angelo is by vocation an architect and only by economic necessity working as a substitute teacher. He had thought he was, if not dedicated, at least competent. But now, on temporary assignments in schools located in the tough neighborhoods of London, Albert feels ineffectual. He is failing as a teacher and failing to fulfill himself as an architect. And then, too, he is pained by the memory of a failed love affair. "I'm trying to say something not tell a story telling stories is telling lies and I want to tell the truth," Johnson insists in the penultimate section of the book when his authorial voice intervenes. Or, as Johan Thielman writes in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, "Johnson is trying to use fiction to reproduce life as closely as possible and, in his inevitable failure to succeed, he extends our notion of the possibilities of the novel...he made a body of work which remains fascinating, not in the least because he achieved one of his main ambitions: to be totally honest...His novels are the moving traces of a passionate devotion to and pursuit of his truth." |
Contents
Section 1 | 5 |
Section 2 | 11 |
Section 3 | 19 |
Section 4 | 54 |
Section 5 | 58 |
Section 6 | 63 |
Section 7 | 63 |
Section 8 | 147 |
Section 9 | 153 |
Section 10 | 163 |
Section 11 | 167 |
Section 12 | 179 |
Section 13 | 180 |
Section 14 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Albert Angelo anyway architecture B. S. Johnson Balgy bastard bloody Brenda Trussell buildings Cable Street Coulter Cypriots d'you dead dinner door Eray everything eyes face father feel fucking funny Georgiou girls give gneiss granite Greek Greek Cypriots hair hard head human igneous rocks Jenny John Nash Joseph kids kissed laughing lesson live London look Luke mate Miss Crossthwaite morning mother night Old Street Station parents Percy Circus perhaps play playground playtime rain Road round round the twist sarsen Selected Poems smile sort staffroom stand stone stop Stuffit sure talk teach teacher tell Terry there's things thought told walk wall Wellclose Square William Rollings woman women Worcester Park word Wormwood Street