Scope and Contents

This is Johnson's second novel. It recounts the life of Albert Angelo, a school teacher in several styles of writing and varied page layouts. The novel comprises five chapters, viz., prologue, exposition, development, disintegration, and coda. The prologue is mainly laid out like a drama. The first section of the chapter 2, exposition, is written in first person singular. The second section, that is written in second person singular, also includes some unusual punctuation marks. The third section is written in the third person singular, the fourth in first person plural, the fifth in second person plural, and the sixth in third person plural. Chapter 2, development, is mainly printed in two columns, the left sided tells the main story, the right sided has comments that are printed in Italics. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents In the prelude to his first novel, Johnson states that he wanted to write a novel that would expose its mechanism. He realized that it would be desirable to have interludes between chapters in which "I could stand back, so to speak, from my novel, and talk about it with the reader, or with those parts of myself which might hold different opinions, if necessary; and in which technical questions could be considered, and quotations from other writers included, where relevant, without any question of destroying the reader's suspension of disbelief, since such suspension was not to be attempted." He adds, "I should be determined not to lead my reader into believing that he was doing anything but reading a novel..."Such interludes are placed between chapters in this book and are marked by poetically designed layouts (the book was designed by Johnson) and liberal use of Italic typeface. The eight interludes comprise the descriptions mentioned in the prelude including among others...