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Anthony Burgess (2002)

por Roger Lewis

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763349,082 (3.05)19
"He was the last great modernist. Novelist, poet, composer, librettist, essayist, semanticist, translator, critic, Anthony Burgess's versatility and erudition found expression in more than fifty books and dozens of musical compositions, from operas, choral works, and song cycles to symphonies and concertos." "Here now is a kaleidoscope of a book - the culmination of twenty years of writing and research - about a man who remains best known for A Clockwork Orange, the source of Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking, mind-bending, and prescient film." "Tracking Burgess from Manchester to Malaya to Malta to Monte Carlo, the author assesses Burgess's struggles and uncovers the web of truth and illusion about the writer's famous antic disposition. Burgess, the author argues, was just as much a literary confidence man and prankster as a consummate wordsmith."--BOOK JACKET.… (mais)
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Consider:

'Burgess hated not to be grasped: "I like understanding from those who read my books", he once bellowed. "I don't get much from the people in England". Well, he's had plenty of understanding from me, fair play.'

and:

'He dared to become a genius, and this book has shown you how and why;'

2002 is a long time ago in literary terms and it's perhaps difficult now to recreate the mini controversy that Lewis's book created at the time*. I think Lewis himself ('fair play') would say he took Burgess, man and work, as he saw him and would not be the first biographer to find that his subject turned out to be so complicated as to be a different entity altogether than the one whose books first attracted him. Does he give Burgess 'plenty of understanding'? 'No' seemed to be the prevailing answer in 2002. I would say mostly 'Yes' now. He is absolutely spot on in my view in terms of his analysis of the invention of the person who went from 'John Wilson' to 'Anthony Burgess' (the 'English Borges'). He is probably right about the talent and the yawning gaps which remained, the lack of empathy and humour. He is fair too about what I suppose we must call the Burgess work ethic. He is not blind to the many flaws - e.g the repeated 'lectures', the absolute 'centrifugal incompetence' (Hans Keller's typically simultaneously withering and thrilling words quoted by Lewis) of the entire compositional oeuvre, the often borrowed unoriginality but yet there is affection and yes, respect here too.

Burgess is arguably not of course the main character of a book not short of characters (it starts breathlessly with Lewis waiting with Richard Ellmann for Burgess to arrive at Oxford railway station where they have time to bump into John Wain before Burgess arrives and doesn't let up for a minute in terms of the luxury casting that populates its 400 plus pages). Lewis himself has that honour. You are aware of him in every sentence and in the truly glorious footnotes, which are at least as compelling as the principal subject matter its appended to. (Yes, I avoided using 'narrative' for so many reasons but not least because it exists only very loosely, which works brilliantly. There is a highly informative and entertaining chronology at the start of the book and once that is done Lewis apparently and refreshingly takes the view that conventional biographical obligations have been discharged). He is a welcome presence, a very gifted writer, cultured, knowledgeable, highly intelligent, extremely funny and with whom one would no doubt get into a heated argument, if not fight, with, every time one accompanied him to the pub. The best analogy I can suggest to give you a feel for the book is to imagine Lewis as a nicer and more able Charles Kinbote (and yes, 'Pale Fire' dopes come up in the book)

I can't make up my mind if this book represents the apotheosis of the Lewis approach or if that description is better suited to 'Erotic Vagrancy' but Lewis is a genius I think. ( )
  djh_1962 | Jan 7, 2024 |
Wikipedia calls this book a hatchet job. The author simply has a personal dislike for Burgess and fails to provide any serious criticisms of his work or character. Do not read. ( )
  JoeHamilton | Jul 21, 2020 |
"I was cured all right ~ Alex"
— Anthony Burgess (A Clockwork Orange)

Biographers are sometimes said to fall in love with their subjects. Lewis did this with Burgess and then fell out of love with him. To compensate he tried to transform himself into a shallow copy of Burgess, minus the genius. Lewis can only do one thing - disparage everyone with caustic spittle including himself: (see - his autobiography - Seasonal Suicide Notes).

Readers expecting a straightforward Life of Anthony Burgess may find this book crapulous. (that's a word Burgess used and Lewis mimicked and the best I can say about Lewis is he's a good mimic of words.)

In Truth to Life: the Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century, A. O. J. Cockshut says that the biographer has to:

"… submit his interpretations to the pressure of facts. The difficulty of biography as an art lies mainly in this tension between interpretation and evidence …"

Historians and biographers place great emphasis on distinguishing between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary’ sources. In essence, a primary source is a document written at the time to which it refers – a census return, a diary, a letter, a tax-form; while a secondary source is an interpretation of history – a newspaper, a history book, another biography.

A secondary source may be contemporary with the event it describes or it may be much later, and there are clearly gradations of value in secondary sources.

Lewis relies pretty much on Burgess's own novels for the sources, and hearsay. For Lewis all of Burgess's work is autobiographical and he takes the ideas and dialogue of the main characters as those of Burgess. His research is questionable, relying on his own rhetorical questions,
(is he impotent?- I think he was impotent), and when Lewis doesn't know the facts he makes them up out of his own prejudices & paranoia.

Unfortunately there are no clear rules for biographies. They can be moral or immoral. If biography can teach us how to live our lives or to open our minds to lives very unlike our own, then it has educational purpose. If biography is a form of scandal-mongering, then it is a low branch of the media and entertainment industry and has no moral or educational value. These two ideas on biography are not mutually exclusive, and the genre can veer between the two almost simultaneously. Between curiosity and inspiration blurring the distinction between high and low art forms. Lewis does it ad infinitum so much you want to strangle him. This is not a standard biography, it's a rant of the highest order. Vindictive, hateful. Elsewhere, having crapped all over Burgess's powers of invention, he tries to impress us with his own. Granted it's true, early on in the book some of Lewis's observations about Burgess are spot on, but reading the same petulant moan over and over gets tiresome and you have to wonder what particular axe Lewis has to grind. There is no development, no resolution.

Richard Ellmann, Lewis's literary tutor, counseled the would-be
biographer to show some kindness and humility: "I worry a little about your tone - outsmarting its subject... I'd like to feel that you were not above him patting him on the back." Sage advice, but it falls on deaf ears: Lewis has no more time for Ellmann (his kitchen sink "clogged with tea leaves and his daughters' draining knickers") than he has for Burgess. If Ellmann taught Lewis to revise, Lewis didn't listen.
There is unnecessary repetition throughout the book and I don't know why the publishers let him get away with it.

Lewis's main fault is that he regularly failed to validate his primary sources.He relied in many instances on secondary sources ie. hearsay and gossip and only those which validated his own personal opinions and grievances, not those necessarily the truth.

The 2nd major complaint I have of his work is that there is no real structure. He includes a basic timetime of Burgess's life at the beginning ina few pages, but immediately thereafter throws it to the
wind in reckless abandon. While I have no actual objection to flashbacks and time dislocations in narratives I do find it hard to take within the same paragraph or the same sentence.

Lewis mixes truth, wildly apocryphal rumors and comparative analysis - the result is a septic dogs breakfast. You learn more about James Joyce and the things that Lewis hates than of Burgess. Lewis may have intended this book as some kind of savage hommage, but it's just downright mean and badly executed at that.

If you hate footnotes you'll hate this book. Lewis included literally acres of footnotes, so the book is full of all these mock-scholarly footnotes because he said " Anthony Burgess was a great charlatan" - this was Lewis's attempt at humour. Many people dislike footnotes but I am not one of them but it takes the cake when there are 4 lines of text on a page and the rest is footnotes. Lewis studied literature at St Andrews and a little at Oxford. I'm just now learning to grapple with Harvard citations and I know what Lewis did with footnotes isn't kosher practically anywhere.

A good poet must be a good hater, said Goethe; in Lewis's case Goethe was only partly right. Lewis can hate but to me he lacks something essential - depth of moral character, though his hate is deep enough to take you to hell. He hates nearly everything and everyone :Paul Theroux, Lady Antonia Fraser , Anthony Hopkins, Rosie Boycott, Clive James, Francis Bacon, Simon Cowell, Harold Pinter, Julie Myerson, V.S Naipaul, Stanley Kubrick, Mark Lawson, Alexander Walker, Andrew Roberts, Martin Amis and many many more including modern life. Lewis would make an awesome subject for the series "Grumpy Old Men". However it wouldn't be funny.

I think Lewis " doth protest too much" and I believe Shakespeare would say the same. There is no real substance to this biography, it's not a fair appraisal of Burgess's life or works. It's a spurious character assassination one cannot have faith in, as Lewis did not once visit any of the archives or museums holding Burgess's diaries and letters.
ie. ( Manchester, Angers, Austin, Ontario). Which is why I have said little about Burgess himself, because at this point in time, I really don't know what is true and what is a pack of lies. I've only read "A Clockwork Orange" and nothing else by Burgess. I'd really like to go to
the Manchester Museum and go through Burgess's things to find out the truth myself.

I could re-iterate Lewis's account, to make you guys happy, but meh! maybe I should urge you all read Lewis to make up your own minds. I know from checking out Burgess's bibliography he was outrageously prolific as a writer, and a thoughful critic and had an obsession with etymology, he was driven to write and after his death there were many works found in progress (still in possession of his 2nd wife). He was also a composer although it seems many didn't "get" his music many others did. Lynne his first wife had a problem with alcohol and died of it. She was his muse despite their unhappy marriage and she appears in various forms in all his works.I think what put me off Lewis so much was how brutal he was about Lynne's addiction and death. It made me realise that Lewis had no insight or compassion.

Basically I've read the dirt now on Burgess but am still clueless on his real grit. He wrote a book about Joyce that is supposedly outstanding. Perhaps I should read that before committing myself further.

In 2009 Lewis's book only sold 9 copies. That's a testament to how "crapulous" a biography it is.

The book infuriated me, disturbed my sleep, I wanted to phone a psychologist friend to get the low-down on Lewis's personality disorder.
My friend was away. I read on, while procrastination set in, I became lax with other work I had to do. I cannot give this book more than two stars although it obsessed me so. It is a travesty.




------------------------------------------------------------------------
$5 at Borders today....my surgeon took my stitches out today, thought I would celebrate. ;D I think this book is a major cue-jumper on my to-read pile. ( )
2 vote velvetink | Mar 31, 2013 |
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I remember thinking that James Atlas’s life of Saul Bellow was an embarrassing Oedipal farce, but Lewis at work here is like nothing so much as an adolescent publicly masturbating on the exhumed corpse of his father, and thinking this performance the acme of wit.
adicionada por DuncanHill | editarThe Modern Word, Tim Conley (Jan 8, 2003)
 
"Burgess is like a definition of hell," he writes. Perhaps he thought to douse the flames by pissing on his subject. But surely the simpler thing would have been to save himself the torture. This is an idle, fatuous, self-regarding book.
adicionada por DuncanHill | editarThe Guardian, Blake Morrison (Nov 9, 2002)
 
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"He was the last great modernist. Novelist, poet, composer, librettist, essayist, semanticist, translator, critic, Anthony Burgess's versatility and erudition found expression in more than fifty books and dozens of musical compositions, from operas, choral works, and song cycles to symphonies and concertos." "Here now is a kaleidoscope of a book - the culmination of twenty years of writing and research - about a man who remains best known for A Clockwork Orange, the source of Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking, mind-bending, and prescient film." "Tracking Burgess from Manchester to Malaya to Malta to Monte Carlo, the author assesses Burgess's struggles and uncovers the web of truth and illusion about the writer's famous antic disposition. Burgess, the author argues, was just as much a literary confidence man and prankster as a consummate wordsmith."--BOOK JACKET.

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