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whattoreadnext · 2 years

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BURGESS, Anthony

British novelist and non-fiction writer (1917-1993)

Originally a composer, Burgess began writing books in his mid-30s, and poured out literary works of every kind, from introductions to Joyce (Here Comes Everybody/Re Joyce) to filmscripts, from opera libretti to book reviews. Above all he wrote several dozen novels, of a diversity few other 20th-century writers have ever equalled. They range from fictionalised biographies of Shakespeare (Nothing Like the Sun) and the early Christian missionaries (The Kingdom of the Wicked) to farce (the four Enderby stories, of which Inside Mr Enderby is the first and Enderby's Dark Lady is the funniest), from experimental novels (The Napoleon Symphony, about Napoleon, borrows its form from Beethoven's Eroica Symphony) to semi-autobiographical stories about expatriate Britons in the Far East (The Malaysian Trilogy). The literary demands of Burgess's books vary as widely as their contents: the way he finds a form and style to suit each new inspiration is one of the most brilliant features of his work.

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1962) In a grim future Britain, society is divided into the haves, who live in security-screened mansions in leafy countryside, and the have nots, who swagger in gangs through the decaying cities, gorging themselves on violence. The book is narrated by the leader of one such gang, and is written in a private language, a mixture of standard English, cockney slang and Russian. (Burgess provides a glossary, but after a few pages the language is easy enough to follow, and its strangeness adds to the feeling of alienation which pervades the book.) The young man has committed a horrific crime, breaking into a house, beating up its owner and raping his wife, and the police are `rehabilitating' him. His true `crime', however, was not action but thought -- he aspired to a way of life, of culture, from which his class and lack of money should have barred him -- and Burgess leaves us wondering whether his `cure' will work, since he is not a brute beast (as the authorities claim) but rather the individuality in human beings which society has chosen to repress.

Burgess' other novels include a reflection on what he sees as the death-throes of modern Western civilisation, 1985, a gentler, Priestley-ish book about provincial English life earlier this century, The Pianoplayers, and A Dead Man in Deptford (an atmospheric novel about Christopher Marlowe - and Elizabethan theatre and espionage). Little Wilson and Big God and You've Had Your Time are autobiography, Mozart and the Wolf Gang is a 'celebration' for Mozart's bicentenary year, Urgent Copy and Homage to Qwert Yuiop are collections of reviews and literary articles and The Devil's Mode is a collection of short stories.

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Earthly Powers (a blockbuster embracing every kind of twentieth-century ‘evil’, from homosexual betrayal to genocide, and the Church’s reluctance or inability to stand aside from it)

To A Clockwork Orange : Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

To Burgess' historical novels : John Hersey, The Wall x Michelle Roberts, The Wild Girl Patricia Finney , Firedrake’s Eye

To The Malaysian Trilogy : Paul Theroux, Jungle Lovers

To the Enderby comedies : David Lodge, Small World Peter De Vries, Reuben, Reuben

more :Tags Pathways Themes & Places

#AUTHORS #BURGESS_Anthony #ATWOOD_Margaret #DE_VRIES_Peter #FINNEY_Patricia #HERSEY_John #HOBAN_Russell #HUXLEY_Aldous #LODGE_David #ROBERTS_Michelle #THEROUX_Paul

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whattoreadnext · 2 years

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The House of Mirth

Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth

(1880s New York heiress rejects ways of society to 'be herself')

Against the Odds

Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights (1800s Yorkshire: a woman loves brutal, "child-of-nature" foster-brother)

Hermann Hesse, Gertrud (1890s German university: two students, friends, love the same woman)

Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (14th-century Paris: hunchback tries to protect beautiful gipsy from mne who would debauch her)

Helen Waddell, Peter Abelard (12-th century Paris: a monk falls in love with beautiful pupil)

"Playthings of Destiny"

Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd (tragic life and love in 19th-century rural England)

William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair (two girls" ambitions to conquer 1810s English high society)

Theodore Dreiser, An American Tragedy (ambition, crime and punishment in lower class 1920s New York)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables (New England family cursed for generations because of religious intolerance)

Pressure to Conform

John Updike, Rabbit, Run (ex-high-school sports star tries to adjust to adult mediocrity)

Anthony Trollope, Doctor Thorne (snobbery, illegitimacy and inheritance among 19th-century English landed gentry)

Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt (wealthy, morally empty merchant tries to break free of sterile small-town conformity)

Angus Wilson, Late Call (widow lives with uncongenial son in soulless 1960s British "new town")

Stifling Communities

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (mid-19th-century small-town France)

Olivia Manning, The Rain Forest (retreat for psychological misfits on island "paradise")

Alison Lurie, The War Between the Tates ("progressive" US university)

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid"s Tale (21st-century fundamentalist Republic of Gilead)

#PATHWAYS #WHARTON_Edith #THE HOUSE OF MIRTH #ATWOOD_Margaret #BRONTE_Emily #DREISER_Theodore #FLAUBERT_Gustave #HARDY_Thomas #HAWTHORNE_Nathaniel #HESSE_Hermann #HUGO_Victor #LEWIS_Sinclair #LURIE_Alison #MANNING_Olivia #THACKERAY_William #TROLLOPE_Anthony #UPDIKE_John #WADDELL_Helen #WILSON_Angus

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whattoreadnext · 2 years

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1984

George Orwell, 1984

(repression and oppression in grim totalitarian future)

Bleak Prospects (nightmare scenarios for the future of human society)

Patrick White, A Fringe of Leaves ("civilised" woman in distress, rehabilitated by contact with aboriginal "primitive" people)

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Russell Hoban, Riddley Walker

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid"s Tale (grim future: totalitarian, religious oppression, anti-women)

George Turner, The Sea and Summer

Paul Theroux, O-Zone (efforts to make a viable post-nuclear society in US wilderness)

Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange (crime and class-war in future Britain)

Inner Hell (the nightmare is inside us)

Will Self, My Idea of Fun

William Golding, Lord of the Flies (choirboys lost on desert island revert to satanic evil, humanity"s dark side)

Georges Simenon, The Murderer (criminal psychologically destroyed by guilt)

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (wilderness as a satanic, engulfing force, human evil symbolised)

Fay Weldon, Life and Loves of a She-Devil (betrayed wife takes macabre, comic revenge)

The Ghastly Past (totalitarian, fundamentalist nightmares from "real" history)

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (religious bigotry in Pilgrim Fathers America)

Willa Cather, Death Comes for the Archbishop (Catholic missionaries test their faith in 1870s Mexican wilderness)

Graham Greene, Brighton Rock (crime and redemption in 1930s England)

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (repression of dissidents in Stalinist labour-camp)

Maxim Gorky, Foma Gordeev (underbelly of Tsarist Russia in decline)

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whattoreadnext · 2 years

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The Trial

Franz Kafka, The Trial

(Josef K. is arrested and forced to fight - for his life - against charges which he is never told)

A Mad, Mad World (just because life is Kafkaesque, it doesn"t have to be serious)

André Gide, The Vaticans Cellars

John Irving, The Hotel New Hampshire

Richard Condon, The Final Addiction

Tom Sharpe, Riotous Assembly

Inside the Skull (making nightmares for ourselves)

John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Bein

Italo Svevo, The Confessions of Zeno

Paul Bailey, Peter Smart"s Confessions

Jersey Kosinski, The Devil Tree

Society as Hell (humans invent a society, which then goes mad)

Alasdair Gray, Lanark

Wyndham Lewis, Childermass (first part of the Human Age)

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity"s Rainbow

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid"s Tale

George Turner, The Sea and Summer

Trapped by the system (individuals caught like flies in the spiders" webs of circumstances they can"t control)

Saul Bellow, Mr Sammler"s Planet

Alejo Carpentier, The Chase

Max Frisch, I"m Not Stiller

Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Svejk

Joseph Heller, Something Happened

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