Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry

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As Christie continues his accountancy studies and learns that debits must be cancelled out with credits he begins to ponder whether the same principles should apply to his actual life, wondering who will credit him for his mother’s cancer. He then starts a job at Tapper’s chocolate factory, where he meets Headlam, an eccentric co-worker whom he becomes friends with, and shortly afterwards hits upon the idea of using double-entry bookkeeping as a method of recording perceived wrongs made against him by society then cancelling them out by committing what he deems to be equivalent acts of revenge. Following the motto ‘for every debit there must be a credit’, he keeps detailed notes of such transactions in a ledger he carries with him, explaining his new system to his mother moments before she dies. B.S. Johnson turned out to be an exception to the rule that British and experimental literature don't mix. Instead of being the obtuse and near-impossible to find a hole in the text to get inside and figure out exactly what the author is even attempting to do, Johnson made it quite easy to at least get engaged in the book. His writing was more akin to early John Barth or DFW than to someone like Ann Quinn, and his sense of humor moved in what could now be classified as standard meta-fiction antics. DAVID LEE ASTLEY analyses B.S. Johnson’s portrayal of an obsessively economised society in his novel Christie Malry’s Own Double Entry Toward the end of the book there’s a brief chapter in which Johnson sits down with his main character, Christie, and they talk over the book’s progress. Johnson keeps varying the formula of self-awareness:

CHRISTIE: She died at very short notice. In fact with no notice at all, on the evening before last.

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To the extent that this is a caution against tolerating injustice in the hope of heavenly justice and redemption, it is the equivalent of the existentialist messages (for they are different) of Camus and Sartre, only it’s delivered in an almost offhand, wry, humorous way.

God gives this couple, known as Adam and Eve, something called free will, which means they can act as they like. If they act as God does not like, however, they will get thumped. It is not by any means clear what God does or does not like. It takes a simple person, an industrious pilgrim, Christie Malry, and it tells you the truth about him, his place in the world and his progress through it. Philip Tew (2001), B. S. Johnson: A Critical Reading. Manchester University Press, ISBN 978-0719056260 The eponymous Christie is a young bank clerk without qualifications who starts to tally his life with the double-entry bookkeeping principle that debits (hurts inflicted on him) need to be balanced out with credits (to himself, by avenging the hurt). It starts out with small chagrins that are recompensed with silly innocuous ‘subversive’ acts but the debits get massive rapidly and Christie’s retaliatory methods get more grandiose and serious spoiler: massively murderous. At times the balance scoring can get tedious but, after all, that’s in the nature of bookkeeping.

See also

French, Philip (18 August 2002). "Christie Malry's Own Double Entry". The Observer. Archived from the original on 24 July 2011 . Retrieved 28 April 2021.

The last novel of the avant-garde British writer BS Johnson, published shortly before his death by suicide aged just 40 in 1973. Johnson was a forceful advocate of innovation in literature, and against reversion to the conventional 19th century style novel, and while Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry is perhaps his most accessible novel, it is certainly far from conventional, as well as a lot of fun. Christie Malry becomes aggravated by the apparent injustices of life and decides to apply the principles of double-entry accounting to his life by keeping a record of the “debits” life throws at him and seeking to balance those with credits as he exacts his revenge. Initially, his reprisals are of a minor, petty nature but they gradually escalate. At several points in the book we are presented with a balance sheet which records the various debits and credits of the preceding section (and therefore serve as a helpful reminder of the plot points) and highlight Malry’s perception of the growing debt that life owes him - the balance carried forward grows rapidly! Christie Malry wants to be near money so he decides to work in a bank. This doesn’t work out so he then is hired as an accountant at a firm which makes chocolates and baked goods. There he discovers the Double-Entry booking system, where every transaction is recorded as a debit and a credit, the end sum has to balance itself. My father died when he was 55 and I was 30, 15 years after B.S. Johnson, so he didn’t get to laugh at all of my jokes. Only the early funny ones. Both of them. The second reason this book is hard to assess is that its theme is terrorism. Christie figures that society owes him, so he keeps double-entry books on what he is owed and gives himself credit when he causes mayhem or kills people. There is also an unusual act of cruelty in the book: Johnson gives Christie cancer, and kills him off, apparently with no ill-will from Christie.

Still, it's true that in a class dominated society, upward mobility is available to few & society's malcontents stew in frustration, chafing at real & imagined slights. So, do not push the little man— even a rat will give a fight when cornered. Superheroes, put on their costumes, hide behind the facade, channel their frustration, & dole out justice— what's an ordinary bloke to do?