Exemplary B. S.: B. S. Johnson and the Toronto Research Group

Abstract

In Rational Geomancy (1992), their manifesto-like study of experimental postmodern approaches to narrative, the Canadian writers bpNichol and Steve McCaffery (known collectively as ‘The Toronto Research Group’, TRG) discuss B. S. Johnson’s work at length. In fact, for the TRG’s purposes, Johnson was the pre-eminent experimental novelist of his age; they were fascinated by his disruption of conventional narrative sequence, his self-referentiality as a writer and his unorthodox use of textual space. In this paper I will trace what I see as Johnson’s influence on the TRG’s project and suggest that we can learn something about Johnson by applying some of the TRG’s insights to his texts, primarily House Mother Normal and Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry. KeywordsWord OrderComic StripBlank SpaceParallel TextTextual SpaceThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.