Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry

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Most of the novel, however, follows Christie's life and (mis)adventures, a rollicking, clever, dark tale, well-told in a cascade of short chapters (with some long headings). After he graduated Johnson wrote a series of increasingly experimental and often acutely personal novels. Indeed, much of the humour of the novel is dependent on Johnson’s ability to seamlessly intersperse the text with clauses, sentences and sections that break down the text’s artifice.

The revenges become more and more elaborate and detailed, and then Johnson ends the book in the only possible way. The soundtrack, released on 11 June 2001 on Hut Records, was written and performed by Luke Haines, who also co-produced it with Pete Hofman.The authorial interruptions and shattering of the suspension of disbelief had me snorting out loud in the café where I read ‘ Christie Malry…’ in a single, greedy seating. In our world, however, this omission is impossible, as everything we hold dear is happily accounted for. 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.

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. This means that the film was made at the exact time during which it is set, as Christie's gravestone at the end of the film shows that he died on 13 December 1999. Christie compares himself to " Guy Fawkes, with the difference that he was caught" and strictly follows a code of twelve principles. It did not take him long to realise that he had not been born into money; that he would therefore have to acquire it as best he could; that there were unpleasant (and to him unacceptable) penalties for acquiring it by those methods considered to be criminal by society; that there were other methods not (somewhat arbitrarily) considered criminal by society; and that the course most likely to benefit him would be to place himself next to the money, or at least to those who were making it.With double-entry on his mind, he begins to envisage a new system: ‘I could express it in Double-Entry terms, Debit receiver, Credit giver, the Second Golden Rule, Debit Christie Malry for offence received, Credit Office Block for the offence given. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.