‘Christie Malry's own double entry’, by B.S. Johnson: An interpretation as Foucauldian discourse

B.S. Johnson's controversial novel of 1973, ‘Christie Malry's own double entry’, is studied in detail in the article which follows. The book outlines the frustrations of Christie Malry, a bank clerk and subsequently, accounts clerk, in facing up to the irritations and unfairnesses of everyday life at work and at home, including the organisation of business and political life and personal tragedies such as illness and death. The hero, Malry, uses accounting to help him address the problems.The article places Johnson's darkly humorous and satirical work in the context of the 1960s and 1970s. It also analyses it in terms of Foucauldian discourse, in order to show how effective literary protest was attempted against the tide of accepted knowledges and the system of power-constrained publications and utterances about accounting and business then in circulation.