But I Know This City!

But I Know This City!

Saturday 23^rd November.

A free performance. 100 people celebrating the 50th anniversary of B S Johnson’s book in a box ‘The Unfortunates’.


‘The difficulty is to understand without generalization, to see each piece of received truth, or generalization, as true only if it is true for me, solipsism again, I come back to it again, and for no other reason. In general, generalization is to lie, to tell lies.’


As part of the Being Human Festival 2019, 100 readers are becoming B S Johnson, spreading out across the city of Nottingham in bookshops, pubs, churches, homes and a host of atmospheric nooks and crannies. Come and explore  the city centre, visiting up to 25 different (and often highly unusual) locations, to piece together this deeply moving and evocative work.


‘I did not contribute anything but my laughter, as I remember, and it was obvious from the other eight or ten there listening that they expected him to dominate like this, that he could be relied on to perform brilliantly, and strangers were not expected to contribute, far less interrupt him.’


The book’s 27 chapters can be read in any order, apart from the first and last, so plan your own route using the maps provided. You can begin the event at any time from 10am through to 3pm in the Lounge, at Broadway Cinema, with readings of the First chapter happening every half an hour. The Final chapter will be read from 3.30pm through to 10pm, also on the half hour.


‘To Tony, the criticism of literature was a study, a pursuit, a discipline of the highest kind in itself: to me, I told him, the only use of criticism was if it helped people to write better books.’

B S Johnson tragically took his own life at the age of forty. ‘The Unfortunates’ is an experimental work by an author who always wrote as if it mattered. The novel was never just a vehicle for linear storytelling, which Johnson saw as irrelevant, it was a form in which truth could be written, and to do this he wrote from the margins, uncomfortable in the mainstream. Johnson's book in a box is more a memoir than a novel, an exploration of memory, an enquiring melancholy. It’s Saturday afternoon in Nottingham as we hear the internal monologue of a football reporter about to churn out his report. This week’s match is being played in the city where his friend Tony had worked before his death from cancer. The reporter remembers Nottingham and his late friend. These memories have no structure and are randomly sieved through for meaning.


'I fail to remember, the mind has fuses.'


Andy Barrett, the man behind the event, has been meeting all 100 readers in preparation for the 23^rd. He says, “The readers are a real cross-section of the Nottingham community, although what unites them all is a genuine interest in literature and the city that they live in. The venues have all been chosen to connect as much as possible to the chapters either thematically or geographically. One chapter is read in a car, another in a darkened porch of St. Mary’s Church, and the tenderest chapter will be heard in a living room next to a roaring fire.”


‘…hanged men, I could not determine whether they were murderers, deserters, traitors, or unlucky, just unlucky, unfortunates.’


Professor James Moran, from the University of Nottingham’s School of English, says, “Using site-specific performance is a tremendous way of encouraging a new generation of readers to engage with this relatively unsung writer”.


‘When everything was moving for him, just when he had achieved what he had always wanted to do, so I believe, the rotting, the whole of a man’s rotting telescoped into two years, was it, from then, less than two years, to what end, ah, with what point?’


Sandeep Mahal, Director of Nottingham UNESCO City of Literature, adds, “A delightful celebration of the avant-garde novel, But I Know This City, will not only bring to life a book with a strong connection to Nottingham, but also introduce people to experience one of the most powerful explorations of human memory and grief I’ve come across.”


‘And Tony talked calmly about all the fear the word caused, how everyone dreaded it, but only because of its mystery, he insisted, this was, that once you faced it and understood it and knew that eighty percent of the cases would be cured, were cured, either by surgery or by radiotherapy, then it was quite acceptable, was that the word he used?’

The map and timetable for the readings is available online at excavate.org.uk and leaflets are available at Broadway and other venues in Nottingham. I’ll see you there.