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B.S. Johnson
The Unfortunates
Unbound folio’d pages in a box
Introduction by Jonathan Coe
Online Ordering
ISBN: 978-0-8112-1743-9

Now back in print in a limited quantity, B.S. Johnson’s lost classic has been showered with praise: New York Magazine named The Unfortunates one of their Ten Best Books of 2008, listed in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2008, and The L.A. Times declared it to be “his most daring work.”

A legendary 1960s experiment in form, The Unfortunates is B. S. Johnson’s famous “book in a box,” in which the chapters are presented unbound, to be read in any order the reader chooses. A sportswriter, sent to a Midlands town on a weekly assignment, finds himself confronted by ghosts from the past when he disembarks at the train station. Memories of one of his best, most trusted friends, a tragically young victim of cancer, begin to flood through his mind as he attempts to go about the routine business of reporting a soccer match.

“Far from some modernist stunt, the form of the book dovetails beautifully with Johnson’s subject–the accidental yet persistent nature of memory….This book, with no belief in God, no hope of heaven, makes you feel the stuff of life as sacred, and our inability to hold on to it as damnation enough for anyone to be made to bear.”
—Charles Taylor, The N.Y. Times Book Review

“You’ll fall in love.”
—Sam Anderson, “Top Ten Books of 2008”, New York Magazine

“A most gifted author.”
—Samuel Beckett