Burgess, Anthony

views updated Jun 27 2018

Anthony Burgess

BORN: 1917, Manchester, England

DIED: 1993, London, England

NATIONALITY: English

GENRE: Fiction, nonfiction, drama

MAJOR WORKS:
The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy(1956–1959)
A Clockwork Orange (1962)
The Wanting Seed (1962)
Inside Mr. Enderby (1963)
Earthly Powers (1980)

Overview

Anthony Burgess was a prolific literary figure of the twentieth century, producing a large number of novels, plays, biographies, screenplays, critical essays, and articles on an extensive array of topics. Trained in music and interested in linguistics, Burgess frequently applied this knowledge to his writing; his fascination with language is apparent in his best-known novel, A Clockwork Orange. Burgess often examined the conflict between free will and determinism through fictional worlds that are in disarray. Although Burgess remained pessimistic about the state of modern society, critics generally agree that his inventive humor and wordplay tempered his cynicism.

Works in Biographical and Historical Context

Catholic Upbringing John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born in Manchester, England, on February 25, 1917. His father, Joseph Wilson, played piano in movie houses and pubs, and his mother, Elizabeth (née Burgess), was a music hall singer who died in the influenza epidemic following World War I when Burgess was a toddler. He was raised Roman Catholic, attending Bishop Bilsborough

Memorial School and Xavierian College, Manchester, but identified himself as a “lapsed Catholic.” One unquestionable legacy from his Catholic upbringing was a fervent belief in Original Sin, or the idea that all humankind is marked by the sins committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

From Music to Literature Although Burgess wrote poetry from an early age, he aspired to a career in music. Unable to earn a scholarship at the University of Manchester, he had to work to save enough money to continue his education, and then, having failed to pass an entrance examination in physics, Burgess had to resign himself to a degree in English literature and linguistics. Burgess was called into service by the British army in the fall of 1940. World War II had begun in Europe in 1939, after Nazi troops from Germany invaded Poland. England, as a key member of the Allied powers opposed to Germany's actions, called upon all its able men to help repel the German forces. Burgess, after serving with a group of professional entertainers, was sent to Gibraltar, where he remained from 1943 to 1946 doing intelligence work.

At Manchester University, he met Llewela Jones, whom he married on January 23, 1942. While Burgess was in Gibraltar, his wife, pregnant with their first child, did volunteer work in England. At the time, many cities in England undertook nighttime blackouts in order to prevent German bombers from finding targets during night raids. Returning home in the dark of the blackouts one night, Llewela was attacked by four American soldiers intent on robbing her. This event planted the seed for A Clockwork Orange. Burgess's wife was so badly shaken by the effort to keep her wedding ring that she miscarried. The miscarriage caused the chronic hemorrhaging that, as Burgess told C. Robert Jennings in Playboy, contributed to his wife's alcoholism and her 1968 death from cirrhosis.

A Meager Living Following his return to England in 1946, Burgess eked out a living by playing the piano and by teaching. In 1949, he drew upon his wartime experience to write A Vision of Battlements. Burgess sent his manuscript to Heinemann because of that publishing house's affiliation with Graham Greene, a contemporary of Burgess's. He was told, however, that A Vision of Battlements was a “second novel” and that he needed to write a first. Heinemann also turned down the manuscript of what Burgess submitted as the “first” novel, eventually published as The Worm and the Ring (1961).

Discouraged by his lack of money, Burgess accepted a teaching position in Malaya (which at the time was a protectorate of the United Kingdom). In Malaya he began to concentrate on fiction rather than music, although he never abandoned music completely. Burgess's first three published novels comprise the Malayan Trilogy (published in the United States as The Long Day Wanes: A Malayan Trilogy in 1964). These novels often prove difficult for the Western reader, because, Burgess said, he had a Malayan audience in mind. Though his talent was acknowledged in the reviews of these first three books, he still considered himself a teacher.

“Death Sentence” In 1959, while giving a lecture in a Malaya classroom, Burgess collapsed and was flown to a hospital in London for examination and treatment. He was informed by British doctors that he had a brain tumor and would probably be dead within a year. Concerned about his wife's financial security, Burgess began writing as fast as he could, hoping that his work would make enough profit to support her after his death. One year and five manuscripts later, Burgess was alive in Sussex and continuing to write. Burgess later regarded his collapse as a “willed collapse out of sheer boredom and frustration” and claims to have found the year of his “death sentence” one of exhilaration rather than depression. Certainly it was a year of creative productivity.

In 1960 Burgess published The Doctor Is Sick, in which his movement toward fantasy is evident, and The Right to an Answer. In 1961 he published two more novels—Devil of a State and One Hand Clapping, a black comedy about the debilitating effects of television, published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell because his publisher was concerned that the novels would be under-valued if he were to acquire the reputation of being too prolific. The “Joseph Kell” books got few reviews and sold poorly, however, until they were republished under Burgess's name.

Also in the early 1960s he fell in love with translator Liliana Marcellari, and in August 1964 their son, Andreas, was born (though Burgess was still married to Llewela Jones at the time). In October 1968, after the death of Llewela, Burgess and Marcellari were married. After he changed publishers from Heinemann to Jonathan Cape, Burgess and his family left England for Malta, then Italy and Monaco.

Notoriety The book that brought him the greatest fame—and, according to its author, the greatest irritation— was the 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. Burgess indicated several events that led to his writing the now classic work. First was a report he had read about American prisons using “behaviorist methods of reforming criminals … with the avowed purpose of limiting the subjects' freedom of choice to what society called ‘goodness,”’ according to Aggeler. Second was a trip he and his wife had taken to the Soviet Union, during which they had encountered a group of marauding thugs who maintained a kind of honor code. Last was the 1943 attack on his wife when she was pregnant.

Besides the shocking portrayal of violence, A Clockwork Orange garnered immediate attention for its use of the language Nadsat, a construction in which he combined Cockney slang and Russian. Notoriety of the work increased when celebrated filmmaker Stanley Kubrick directed the motion picture A Clockwork Orange from a

screenplay he adapted in 1971. The film was a stylish and deeply disturbing depiction of gang violence and moral depravity that quickly brought the novel millions of new readers but also brought Burgess the reputation of seeming to “celebrate” violence. This impression is exacerbated by the truncated ending of both the film and the American printing of the book, in which the final chapter— which shows the main character Alex growing weary of violence as he begins to mature—was left out completely. When actual acts of violence were traced back to the movie—for instance, Arthur Bremer's attempt on presidential candidate George Wallace's life in 1972—Burgess tried to disown the novel, in part because it had become associated with the adaptation but also because he had become known only as the author of A Clockwork Orange.

New Literary Directions Burgess's frustration with being accused of triggering acts of violence resulted in his writing the novel The Clockwork Testament, or, Enderby's End (1974). In addition to attacking such targets as American academics and their students, television talk-show hosts, and feminists, the novel rebukes the critics who blamed his art for precipitating violence.

In his last years, Burgess continued writing prolifically, his output including two volumes of his autobiography, Little Wilson and Big God (1986) and You've Had Your Time (1990). The first volume covers his life until his “death sentence.” The second volume covers his life until 1982. After publishing three more novels and a short-story collection, he died of cancer on November 22, 1993.

Works in Literary Context

A New Take on Science Fiction Burgess's fiction does not fit comfortably in the fantasy and science fiction genre. With the possible exception of The End of the World News, his science fiction is not the science fiction of Arthur C. Clarke or Isaac Asimov, who had designs for a futuristic world brought into being by science and technology. Unlike Asimov, Burgess had little background in science, and like Doris Lessing, he had little inclination to read about it.

Burgess himself consistently rejected such a designation and played down the science fiction aspects of his novels. He argued that A Clockwork Orange, for example, is set in an England of a quite near future, not the distant one of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932), or perhaps even George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Furthermore, in a work such as The End of the World News, part of which is unarguably science fiction, Burgess offers a highly ambivalent characterization of Valentine Brodie, who teaches and writes in the genre. Nevertheless, Burgess has been considered a writer of science fiction for A Clockwork Orange, a contemporary classic, and for The Wanting Seed (1962), 1985, and The End of the World News.

TheArtist'sRole in Society Geoffrey Aggeler, writing in the Dictionary of Literary Biography, considered the novels Burgess wrote during his “terminal year” representative of the “themes which he was to develop again and again in the course of the next twenty years—the role and situation of the artist vis-a-vis an impinging world, love and decay in the West, the quest for a darker culture ….”

In a series of humorous novels featuring F. X. Enderby, a moderately successful poet whom some critics view as Burgess's alter ego, Burgess seriously examines the role of the artist in contemporary society. While the middle-aged Enderby is portrayed as an immature individual who can write only in the privacy of his bathroom, the poetry he produces is regarded highly by those few people who still read poetry. Burgess intended for Inside Mr. Enderby to be “a kind of trumpet blast on behalf of the besieged poet of today—the man who tries to be independent, tries to write his poetry not on the campus, but in the smallest room in the house where he can have some privacy,” wrote Aggeler. When two Enderby books were released in America as a single volume, Burgess considered it “the book in which I say most, mean most to myself about the situation of the artist.”

LITERARY AND HISTORICAL CONTEMPORARIES

Burgess's famous contemporaries include:

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997): This American avant-garde writer was one of the central members of the Beat Generation.

Graham Greene (1904–1991): A widely popular English novelist, essayist, short-story writer, and playwright, Greene was instrumental in the support of many fellow writers.

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999): Kubrick was an esteemed American filmmaker and director who is perhaps best known for his science fiction classics A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Doris Lessing (1919–): English author of The Grass Is Singing and The Golden Notebook who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007.

Joseph Stalin (1878–1953): Communist leader and dictator of the Soviet Union from 1922–1953.

The Nature of Good, Evil, and Free Will In Earthly Powers, a novel dense with themes relating to philosophy and theology, Burgess examines the nature of good and evil and the concept of free will. This novel follows the destinies of a homosexual British novelist and a charismatic Italian cleric through world events spanning fifty years of the twentieth century. As participants and

observers of human cruelty and degradation, both characters conclude that God has created evil to preserve humanity's freedom of choice. This same theme lies at the core of A Clockwork Orange. Alex, the hoodlum who joyously partakes in violent criminal outbursts, has his free will taken away by the Ludovico treatment he undergoes. The question the author poses is this: Can someone be considered “good” simply because he is no longer physically able to do bad things?

Works in Critical Context

A London Times obituarist commented on Burgess's literary impact:

When some future Burgess a century from now comes to write the cultural history of the second half of the 20th century, Burgess will be recognised as a giant in his tattered humanity and his intolerable wrestle with words and meanings …. He enriched his generation more than most, and left a body of work to keep readers arguing and delighted as long as reading survives, and civilisation does not fall into one of his own nightmare visions.

Critical assessment of Burgess ranges from the ecstatic to the offended, for Burgess pulled few punches as a writer. The American writer Gore Vidal observed in the New York Review of Books that Burgess was “easily the most interesting English writer of the last half century.” In a review of a later collection of essays, critic Michael Dirda observed in Washington Post Book World that Burgess's “knowledge of literary, linguistic and musical arcana rivals that of any Oxford don; he writes with a lyrical verve; and he seems willing to turn his hand to anything whatever.”

Earthly Powers Despite the commercial success of other novels, it is Earthly Powers that is considered Burgess's masterpiece. The novel is an autobiography of the octogenarian playwright Kenneth M. Toomey, an amalgam of the writers Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, W. Somerset Maugham, and Burgess himself. Though it is a long book, many critics found its message undiluted by its length. “The book is ruthlessly well organized—there is no point at which the reader feels [Burgess] is not getting on with it and no incident or character not in place by design,” lauded London Times reviewer Michael Ratcliffe. “[It] is a hellfire tract thrown down by a novelist at the peak of his powers who cannot forbear to invent, divert, embellish and dazzle us the entire length of the way.” Geoffrey Aggeler, too, found Earthly Powers unhindered by its length. “Enormous in scope, encompassing much of twentieth-century social, literary, and political history, it inevitably has some flaws…. [They] are, however, minor and unavoidable in a work so large and ambitious. Overall it is a magnificent performance.”

Responses to Literature

  1. Burgess entered a period of incredible productivity after he was given what he considered a “death sentence” by doctors following a collapse while teaching. What would you do if you had one year to live? Write a to-do list for your one remaining year of life.
  2. The setting for A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian society. Look up “dystopia” in the dictionary. What are some of its elements of dystopia present in A Clockwork Orange? Does the United States of today share any of these elements? Are there ways in which the United States can be described as a dystopia? Provide examples.
  3. Using your library and the Internet, find out more about behavior-modification techniques in eliminating unwanted behavior. Do you think these techniques are practical solutions for violent criminals like Alex in A Clockwork Orange?

COMMON HUMAN EXPERIENCE

Here are a few works by writers who, like Burgess, have presented a dark view of the future:

Brave New World (1932), a novel by Aldous Huxley. In this novel of futuristic medical and other technologies, several developments—sleep-learning, test-tube cloning— drive the storyline.

The Birthday of the World (2003), a short-story collection by Ursula K. Le Guin. A collection of short stories by a master of futuristic fiction, this book explores themes such as gender segregation, marriage between four people, and the disruption of a society whose rulers are “God.”

The Handmaid's Tale (1985), a novel by MargaretAtwood. In this dystopian novel, Canadian author Atwood speculates on a horrifying future of gender division, reproductive control, and Communist takeover by the elite.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Books

Aggeler, Geoffrey. “Anthony Burgess,” vol. 14 of Dictionary of Literary Biography: British Novelists Since 1960. Detroit: Gale, 1983.

Biswell, Andrew. The Real Anthony Burgess. London:MacMillan UK, 2007.

Bloom, Harold, ed. Anthony Burgess. New York: ChelseaHouse, 1987.

Burgess, Anthony. Little Wilson and Big God. London:Heinemann, 1987.

Periodicals

Burgess, Anthony. Paris Review (Spring 1973).

Dirda, Michael. Washington Post Book World (June 13, 1982): 4.

Jennings, C. Robert. Playboy (September 1974): 69–86.

Ratcliffe, Michael. London Times (November 26, 1993): 23.

Vidal, Gore. New York Review of Books (May 7, 1987): 3, 6, 8; (October 5, 1995): 47.

Web sites

Books and Writers. Anthony Burgess (1917–1993). Retrieved February 14, 2008, from http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/burgess.htm.

International Anthony Burgess Foundation (IABF). IABF Website. Retrieved February 14, 2008, from http://www.anthonyburgess.org/. Last updated in December 2007.

Levity.com. Anthony Burgess (1917–1993). Retrieved February 14, 2008, from http://www.levity.com/corduroy/burgess.htm.

Anthony Burgess

views updated Jun 27 2018

Anthony Burgess

Anthony Burgess (1917-1993) was one of the most prolific literary figures of the 20th century, producing a large number of novels, plays, biographies, screenplays, criticism, and articles.

John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born on February 25, 1917, in Manchester, England. As a child he demonstrated talent as a writer, artist, and musician. He studied the violin and taught himself piano as well as musical notation. Though he regarded himself as a "failed composer," his efforts were not altogether unsuccessful. He created classical pieces and scores for television, film, and theater. His third symphony was performed in lowa City in 1975. In his lifetime, Burgess composed choral works, concertos, and even operas. Writing was initially a "hobby," then, after he recognized his gift and found it remunerative, a "full time job."

The experiences of Burgess' first 32 years provided inspiration for his novels. He was raised in an Irish Catholic family and attended Bishop Bilsborrow School and Xaverian College. Ironically, he lost his faith at Xaverian but considered himself "a lapsed Catholic," never completely free of his background. In 1940, after graduating from Manchester University with a degree in literature, he entered the Army Educational Corps. From 1943 to 1946 he was a training college lecturer in speech and drama on Gibraltar. Afterwards he held a variety of teaching positions including member of the Central Advisory Council for Adult Education in the Armed Forces, Birmingham, 1946-1948, teacher of phonetics, drama, and literature for the Ministry of Education, Preston, Lancashire, 1948-1950, and teacher of literature, phonetics, Spanish, and music, Banbury Grammar School, Oxfordshire, 1950-1954.

In 1954 he joined the Colonial Service as a lecturer in English in Malaya. In 1957 he became an educational officer and English language specialist in Borneo. It was as an observer of these politically and socially complex cultures that Burgess began his writing career. His first published novels, Time for a Tiger (1956), Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959) are set in Malaya. Devil of a State (1961) is set in Borneo. He took the name Anthony Burgess because he thought his superiors would disapprove of his writing fiction.

In 1959 Burgess was ill and returned to England. He was told he probably had a brain tumor and would survive only a year. Luckily, this was a misdiagnosis. But the prospect of death prompted him to turn fulltime to writing, and during this "terminal year" he completed The Doctor Is Sick, Inside Mr. Enderby, The Wanting Seed and One Hand Clapping. Later, Burgess stated in The Economist that his objective during that year had been to provide an inheritance for his wife by writing ten novels. But, he said, "I couldn't do it. I did produce five and a half though … And some of them are still around. But it was too much. I don't think anybody should do quite as much as that." The five novels that Burgess completed during his "terminal year" proved a fitting overview of themes he would return to frequently throughout his career. Once recovered from his misdiagnosed illness, Burgess continued writing novels. Among the most acclaimed were three that followed F.X. Enderby, a poet misplaced in society who was introduced in 1963's Inside Mr. Enderby. Those three books were Enderby Outside (1968), The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End (1974), and Enderby's Dark Lady (1984). When Enderby died in The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby'sEnd, readers were so dismayed that the author "resurrected" him in Enderby's Dark Lady.

Other of Burgess' well-regarded works include Nothing Like the Sun (1964), a story about William Shakespeare, and Napoleon Symphony (1974), a fictional biography of Napoleon structured to follow the form of Beethoven's Eroica. Burgess' most famous, though not his favorite, novel was A Clockwork Orange (1962), which was made into a movie. Its violent anti-hero, Alex, is subdued when he undergoes behavior modification treatment administered by the state. The novel haunted Burgess throughout his life because his publisher, W.W. Norton, dropped a final chapter in which Alex remained reformed. Instead, the book was published with Alex returning to a life of crime, and when Stanley Kubrick made the film version of the novel in 1971, he adhered to the publisher's ending. Burgess said in The Economist that he felt, " … when the film was made the theological element almost completely disappeared." The film was so violent that it was permanently banned in Britain.

Burgess also published other books during this time, including The Novel Now (1967), Shakespeare (1970), and two studies of James Joyce: ReJoyce (1965) and Joysprick (1973).

Burgess married twice. In 1968 his first wife died of pscerosis of the liver as a result of severe alcoholism, and he married Liliana Macelli, a linguist. Discontent with life in England, and particularly with excessive taxation, they moved with their son to Malta and then lived in Italy and Monaco. Burgess visited the United States and taught at the University of North Carolina, Princeton, and City College, New York.

Burgess was acutely sensitive to evil in modern life. He called himself a "Manichee," a believer in the duality, the inter-connection of good and evil, of reality. Typically, his protagonists represent relatively decent people caught in the conflicts and absurdities of their environments. They confront chaos, as in the Malayan trilogy, espionage, as in Tremor of Intent (1966), and authoritarian institutions, as in The Wanting Seed, A Clockwork Orange, and Honey for the Bears (1963). Burgess distrusted government. The socialized state which "cures" Alex destroys his free will. Other novels, such as the Enderby books, The Right to an Answer (1960), One Hand Clapping (1961), and Beard's Roman Women (1976)—about Hollywood—satirized materialism, corruption, and vacuousness in contemporary culture.

People, too, are seen as evil. One of Burgess' interests was the conflict between Pelagias, who believed man is ultimately perfectible, and Augustine, who believed man is irredeemably sinful. In novels such as Earthly Powers (1980), Augustine generally prevails. There are characters, however, who learn and grow and artistic ones who create order from chaos and suggest hope.

Burgess' comic style softened his pessimism. Characters lurch from outlandish adventure to adventure. Farcical figures, surreal coincidences, and inventive allusions to history and fiction supplement his novels. Language—puns, poetic images, distorted syntax—distance one from the gloom. Nothing Like the Sun was written in Elizabethan style. For A Clockwork Orange Burgess invented a dialect. Some books are considered more intellectually than emotionally stimulating, rendering illustrations of theses and complicated reading puzzles. Consequently, Burgess' vitality and originality were widely admired.

Burgess published two volumes of memoirs, Little Wilson and Big God (1987) and You've Had Your Time (1990). While both volumes were generally well-received by critics, some complained that they spent too much time on abstract thought, and not enough on the author's life. In his review of You've Had Your Time, William F. Buckley, Jr. remarked in The New York Times Book Review, " … is there a human narrative under this truckload of cultural petit point? Not a whole lot, to tell the truth, but some."

Although Burgess did not begin writing until age 32, publishing his first novel at 39, he became one of the busiest authors of his time. In addition to over 25 novels, he produced biographies, plays, screenplays, criticism, and articles. His translation of Cyrano de Bergerac had a successful run at the Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis, in 1971 and on Broadway in 1984. For television he wrote Jesus of Nazareth, based on his novel Man of Nazareth (1979), and AD. Even in 1993, when he was suffering from a long illness, Burgess published two works: Dead Man in Deptford and A Mouthful of Air: Languages, Languages—Especially English. He was also a regular contributor to periodicals, such as Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Book Review. Burgess died on November 25, 1993 after a long battle with cancer.

Further Reading

Geoffrey Aggeler, Anthony Burgess: The Artist as Novelist (1979) and Samuel Coale, Anthony Burgess (1981) contain biographies and criticism. Coale included a bibliography. His selected checklist of Anthony Burgess criticism also appeared in Modern Fiction Studies (Autumn 1981). Burgess' autobiography, This Man and His Music (1982), examined music in his life and writing. Richard Mathews, The Clockwork Universe of Anthony Burgess (1978) and Robert Morris, The Consolations of Ambiguity (1971) discussed themes in the novels. □

Burgess, Anthony

views updated May 14 2018

Burgess, Anthony (1917–93) English novelist. Burgess' early works are set in Malaya, where he served (1954–60) as part of the colonial service. In his subsequent novels, Burgess demonstrated an interest in social trends, linguistic effects, and religious symbolism. His best-known work, A Clockwork Orange (1962), is a nightmare vision of a modern dystopia in which he deploys a macabre, invented language. Later novels include Earthly Powers (1980) and The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985).

Burgess, Anthony

views updated May 29 2018

Burgess, Anthony [ Wilson, John Burgess] (b Manchester, 1917; d London, 1993). Eng. novelist, essayist, and composer. Wrote 3 syms. (1937, 1956, 1975); Sinfonietta for jazz band (1941); vc. sonata (1944); 2 pf. sonatas (1945, 1951); gui. qt. (1961); pf. conc. (1976), etc. Novels incl. A Clockwork Orange (1962).