The Real Life of Anthony Burgess (ISBN 0330481711)

Unearthly Powers:
One feels a certain amount of sympathy for the biographer that sets out in search of Anthony Burgess. Of all the great 2oth Century writers, Burgess is perhaps the most complex, and at times perplexing, of the lot. Never one to squirrel away in a room and remain elusive, Burgess was only too ready for bit of literary-fisticuffs. If your idea of a Great Writer is an ivy league-educated dandy, espousing 'The Word' from on high in a predictibly overly academic fashion, then Andrew Biswell's admirable new look at the master is sure to raise a few eyebrows. For here comes the 'real' Anthony Burgess, in all his shambling and prolific glory. From a bleak and lonely childhood straight out of a Charles Dickens novel, on to his doggedly persistant pursuit of a University education, the non-comformist service in World War II, an explosive first marriage (which has to be read about to be believed), the wonderfully realized teaching in south-east Asia at the beginning of the end of the British Empire, after which point arrives the infamous medical 'death sentence' and the beginning of one of the most fascinating and continually interesting careers in modern literarture. Andrew Biswell has done his homework, and it can't have been an altogether easy task. For this rumpled, home-coiffed, hard-drinking and chain-smoking paradox of a man that was Anthony Burgess seems to have taken no small amount of pleasure in setting up something of a historical mine-field for any potential biographers. As at least one other author's recent attempt to chart Burgess's life has proved, it doesn't take much to get off course and find your whole thesis go 'boom'. But, Mr. Biswell keeps his head and manages to piece together as much of the first half of Burgess's life as it may be possible to do. And what a life it was: stalking around London in the early 1960's with William S. Burroughs, clashing publicly and repeatedly with Literature's golden-boy Grahame Geene, heroically upholding the teaching profession, alongside Joseph Heller, in the chaos that was the New York City public university scene in the early 1970's. And that's just part of it. Biswell turns up one aquaintenace after another, and they all have a Burgess tale to tell. At times, it's hard to believe that any one person could have gotten so much life under one belt. And then there is the writing itself. The research that Mr. Biswell has done on the construction of certain literary works is both exhaustive and revealing. The autobiographical elements in THE LONG DAY WANES; the inner-lingistic challenge that becomes A CLOCKWORK ORANGE; the fretting and re-writing of NOTHING LIKE THE SUN. Best of all perhaps is the semi-long piece on the development of what may be Burgess's masterpiece, the astounding work that came to be known as EARTHLY POWERS. And that's just to name a few of the novels that make up the whole of Burgess's art. So, in the end, just what do we make of the paradox that was Anthony Burgess? The answer may well be that perhaps no one will ever know the whole story. Andrew Biswell has admirably combed through the many varying versions of events, the books such as ENDERBY, M/F and ABBA ABBA, and come up with a throroughly engaging version of events. And yet Anthony Burgess himself remains just outside of our grasp, perhaps having penned LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD as an intellectual challenge to all who would ask, slying holding forth through a haze of tobbacco smoke, another round of booze at hand, and asking us to have a go at it ourselves. And we should.

Essential Burgess Reading:
This biography was rivetting for me from start to finish. After suffering Roger Lewis's pathetic book written in a state of rage at Burgess's mere existence, this new Bio was very much welcomed. If you want a good balanced & detailed account of AB's life & work look no further.

BURGESSIAN RHAPSODY:
Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Returned from holiday, where this book proved to be good company for a good few days, a dismissive and ill-informed review in today's Guardian (London, 3 December, 2005) prompts me to spring to its defence. Because, though this new biography undoubtedly has its faults, there is no way in the world it is `a dull book', as Guardian critic, Anthony Thwaite, would have us believe. Personally, I found this book to be a distinct improvement on Roger Lewis' recent biography, which to my mind was overloaded with far too many chunks of Burgess's own extant prose, seemingly as space fillers. (Roger Lewis's only saving grace, it seems to me, was in suggesting that the Burgess persona is itself the author's most convincing fictional creation.) On the plus side, this most recent biography is written by a Burgess aficionado (which Roger Lewis most certainly was not), so it is to the author's credit that he chooses to reiterate this truism about Burgess that was first postulated by his biographical predecessor. (See page 306, where Deborah Regan, Burgess's literary agent since 1987 says: 'The distinction between life and fantasy was completely blurred.') In addition to this the author goes on to provide us with a multitude of fresh insights into Burgess's life story via contributions from former colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and writers - Robert Graves' footnoted reminiscence of a remembered Burgessian critique being an absolute gem. And last but not least, the author is generous enough to accord to L. W. Dever, Xaverian's long-serving history master of hallowed memory, the distinction of having introduced Burgess to the work of James Joyce, as opposed to his serving ignominiously and untruthfully (see LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD) as a boozing partner pure and simple. On the minus side, the author is occasionally remiss with regard to Mancunian geography. For example, it is the right bank of the River Irk, not Manchester General Cemetery that is `the western border of (Burgess's birthplace) Harpurhey'. And he is mistaken too in referring to THE (i.e. colloquially there should be no definite article preceding) Lower Park Road, the location of Burgess's secondary school, Xaverian College. In fairness, though, this is not so severe a fault as Anthony Thwaite's imagining Xaverian to be a `Jesuit' school. (Has Anthony Thwaite perhaps not actually read this book - or, indeed, Roger Lewis's book, to say nothing of Burgess's two volumes of autobiography?) Even so (p.224), it is surely demonstrably unsound for Dr Biswell to say that, amongst the things that so appalled Burgess upon his return to the UK from Malaysia were `sexual permissiveness' and `a falling away of religious belief'. (Burgess can't have it both ways - or can he?) Imprecision is occasionally irritating too in THE REAL LIFE. On the one hand, the actual plot number of Burgess's mother's grave in Manchester General Cemetery is gratuitously volunteered, whereas the exact location of Burgess's own resting-place in Monaco is not pinpointed in any way. Was imprecision such as this perhaps the price of access to Burgess's widow, Liana? Is this the reason too why the untimely death of Burgess's son, Paolo Andrea, is nowhere described as a suicide in this book? This last omission is particularly interesting in view of Burgess's own speculation (page 7) that: `One becomes less able to give affection or take affection - because one never had this early filial experience'. So, did Burgess perhaps blame himself for insensitivity in his relationship with Paolo Andrea? And, if so, is a further volume of Burgessian biography perhaps needed on this account? But all things considered with regard to THE REAL LIFE OF ANTHONY BURGESS, I would say unhesitatingly, by way of conclusion - paraphrasing Burgess's dedication of THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT (to Burt Lancaster, incidentally): `. . . deserves to be read, deserves to be read.'

Unravelling fact from fiction:
Anthony Burgess was a major English novelist of C20 and, after Graham Greene, the leading Catholic novelist of the time writing in English. Lapsed though he was, Burgess's Catholic worldview - his obsession with Good vs. Evil, Original Sin (the only Catholic doctrine for which there is irrefutable empirical evidence) and Free Will - is the dominant theme of his best novels: the 'Enderby' Quartet,'Earthly Powers' and the controversial, 'A Clockwork Orange' - the book by which he is now best known and remembered even by those who don't read, thanks to Stanley Kubrick's movie version. He wrote over 30 novels, hundreds of essays and reviews, and two volumes of (less than entirely truthful) autobiography - one commentator has described the latter two books ('Little Wilson and Big God' and 'You've Had Your Time') as among the best fiction Burgess wrote. Andrew Biswell does a good job distentangling the fact from fiction - Burgess was a compulsive self-publicist and in the many interviews he gave created a fascinating character, who bore a passing resemblance to the real John Burgess Wilson. Biswell casts doubt on the miraculous recovery from a brain tumour, and points out the improbability of Burgess travelling to France as a teenager to get a copy of 'Ulysses' (a story which Wikipedia adopts, unquestioningly, as part of the Burgess myth). He also produces a comprehensive survey of Burgess's literary output and demonstrates how little he invented and how much of his own life he poured into his characters. So much so, that a early novel ('The Worm and Ring') had to be withdrawn by the publisher following a libel action. However, although this book is a vast improvement on Lewis's nasty biography, and provides much useful imformation it is not the definitive life. Two topics are poorly covered. Firstly, Burgess's music. His first wife condemned his "amateurish" efforts as a composer. Is his music (rarely performed) any good? Biswell does not discuss Burgess's own account of how he wrote a symphony, 'This Man and Music'. Secondly, while Burgess's first marriage to the alcoholic Lynne is dissected in painful detail (down to listing the various public houses from which she was banned and the men she slept with), we are told very little about his second marriage, to the saintly(?) Liana (now herslf recently deceased) and, as a previous reviewer has noted, nothing is said about the suicide of his son Paolo. Liana is described in one account quoted by Biswell as "vague" and, perhaps, as noted below, vagueness was the price the author had to pay for her cooperation. There is a vast Burgess archive to be mined (scattered, it appears, between Manchester, Angers and Austin,TX), unpublished love letters and poetry to be extracted from private sources, to say nothing of the neglected musical scores. Until the day when a first class literary biographer teams up with a musicologist to give us a five star life and works of Anthony Burgess, this will have to do.