Drift

JOHNSON, BYRON SHELLEY

Personal: Born January 16, 1933, London, England; disappeared, presumed drowned.
November 13, 1993; married Ainslie Ann Cracklewood, Marchioness; no children.
Education: BA (Hons) (Lond.).
Home: Shepherd's Bush Rd., Hammersmith.
Career: Writer, film director and producer
Writings: Thirteen novels; Somerset Maugham Award for Ironmask and Ultima Thule.
Sidelights: Attracted high praise, too often in the damned context of one who was
'experimental". Stubborn and unregenerate about the possibilities of fiction.

B.S. Johnson is receiving disturbing letters from Tasmania.

They echo the past, howling
with ocean gales, salted and stinging with horrendous tales of aboriginal life in the
early nineteenth century. He responds by going there to find out for himself, entering
the world of sealers and whalers, of history and dreaming.

On a mission for justice, yet at the same time trying to escape his own personal situation,
Johnson finds that in Tasmania, mystery and coincidence are part of daily life. He discovers all too soon that while writing strives towards bending the truth, it is only within his own skull that the truth can be explored satisfactorily.