Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Unfortunates [Book Review]

[I spoil the main points of this book.]

"The Unfortunates" is a novel written by B. S. Johnson, and it was published originally in 1969. The reason, the ONLY reason, I bothered to read this book was because of the novelty of reading it. Why is it a novelty? The chapters are all unbound. Each chapter in this book comes in a box and can be pulled apart and placed in any order you want, with the exception of the clearly marked First and Last chapter. That's why I read it. Not even joking.

The story is about the author, going back to a city where a bunch of memories strike him in various places. It all has to do with the death of his best friend Tony, who dies of cancer earlier in his life. The event was so heartbreaking to the author that his arrival in this city just drudges up all of his past, and he experiences these flashbacks everywhere he goes.

One of the reason the chapters can be read out of order is that it doesn't really matter where he goes first or last, only that he is there and thinking about these things while he is there. The order is honestly unnecessary. At the end of the day, it's all about the author's heartbreak.

The book is written like a collection of surface thoughts. At first it sounds like beatnik poetry, but it isn't. I got used to it as well, which I didn't think would happen. About six chapters in, I was totally following what was going on. It's like listening to someone think. There's all these interruptions of thought which he shows by placing in tabs. Most of the sentences are run-ons with nothing but commas splitting them apart until you get to an eventual period.

The story here is very sad, but it's also something that is surprisingly relatable. Even if you haven't suffered through what this man did, you can imagine what it would be like if it did happen to you. And that's the goal of the book. It's just about coming to realize how difficult it is to live on Planet Earth. Some things seem so certain, but then situations change and we often don't understand why and how to deal with them.

One downside to the book is that the author is really, dreadfully against Christians. He even went so far as to abbreviate the faith as "Xtian" and then go off on how ridiculous was. I mean... no wonder it seems like he's wandering around with no direction. He's angry at anything that might provide him with some! But then, that's the story, isn't it? He's an Atheist, and life is meaningless.

The final chapter of the book did not have a period at the end, and that isn't surprising when you consider his situation. The man died back in 1973 believing that there was no truth in fiction, so all he was ever able to do was write about things he knew, and in the book about himself, he couldn't even properly end it. Life without God is ultimately meaningless.

As fascinating a read as this was, the novelty of the unbound chapters was really the point of reading it. As it stands, there is little to get out of the book but one man's pathetic story. I don't recommend it, but I also do not regret reading it at all. It gave me a lot to think about.

This blog was written on May 16, 2022.

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