Enderby

Enderby #1-3

by Anthony Burgess

A London-hotel barman and poet flees to Tangier after murdering a singer and meets a man who knows about his criminal act

Genres: Fiction, Humor, Literary Fiction, Literature

372 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Seriocomic novels of noted British writer and critic Anthony Burgess, pen name of John Burgess Wilson, include the futuristic classic A Clockwork Orange (1962).

He composed also a librettos, poems, plays, screens, and essays and traveled, broadcast, translated, linguist and educationalist. He lived for long periods in southeastern Asia, the United States of America, and Europe along Mediterranean Sea as well as England. His fiction embraces the Malayan trilogy ( The Long Day Wanes ) on the dying days of empire in the east. The Enderby quartet concerns a poet and his muse. Nothing like the Sun re-creates love life of William Shakespeare. He explores the nature of evil with Earthly Powers , a panoramic saga of the 20th century. He published studies of James Joyce, Ernest Miller Hemingway, Shakespeare, and David Herbert Lawrence. He produced the treatises Language Made Plain and A Mouthful of Air . His journalism proliferated in several languages. He translated and adapted Cyrano de Bergerac , Oedipus the King , and Carmen for the stage. He scripted Jesus of Nazareth and Moses the Lawgiver for the screen. He invented the prehistoric language, spoken in Quest for Fire . He composed the Sinfoni Melayu , the Symphony (No. 3) in C , and the opera Blooms of Dublin .

Reviews

[Jim Schmaltz]

This portrait of the artist as a gaseous poet begins with a series of hilarious vignettes of Enderby, who writes serious verse in his bathroom. Unable to relate to others by any measure of companionable social convention, Enderby involves himself in a strange transaction with a local cook (love poems delivered in a Cyrano-style agreement in exchange for the loan of a suit), finds himself the victim of minor street violence for his tart tongue and inability to present himself without antagonizing others. Though well-intentioned, the poet fumbles around, gets himself in deeper, marries a editrix/ice princess who tries to drag him back into the Roman church that he had rejected long ago, and finds himself in the hands of a therapist in a mental institution who “rehabilitates” the poetry out of the poet, leaving Enderby just another working stiff, albeit with a fecund vocabulary. After another mistaken foray into a troubled situation, he’s wrongly accused of murdering a pop star (who has plagiarized Enderby) and hides out in Tangiers, until he’s cleared by a nemesis and fellow writer (who has also plagiarized Enderby), and the poet is left alone to become reacquainted with his muse, who takes human and hottie form. This comedy on the transient nature of writerly gifts, the ease in which a man can lose his identity when he loses his muse, the larceny of minor artists, and the cold comforts of religious convention and what counts as acceptable behavior, is run through Burgess’s rich language and infinite wit. So many wonderful lines and moments. It gets bogged down a bit after Enderby goes on the run following the shooting, but it’s still great fun from beginning to end.

[John Waterworth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-reading the original Enderby trilogy, after an interval of about 20 years, I still find it very very funny. In fact it's probably the funniest book I have ever read, measuring amusement by the number of laughings out loud. And it's much more than funny. It's fantastically clever, endlessly surprising, and the use of language is a continuous treat. Burgess makes the point well that what matters in literature is not so much meaning as means - how it is done, not what it is literally saying.

[Brent Legault · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that Burgess was reaching for Joycean splendor when he wrote this novel and although he didn't achieve it, he did make up a world of wonderment all his own.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unpleasant

[Fabio Fraccaroli · Rating 4 out of 5]

ATTENZIONE possibile spoiler:
Fino a quasi alla fine delle libro, fino alle ultime pagine nell' ultima parte ho creduto che stessi leggendo una divertente e divertita presa in giro del nostro vivere quotidiano (bassezze di presunte sane abitudini civili e meschinità da ben educati fasulli) così come un sempre più caustico quanto strampalato poeta, il signor Enderby, poteva con malcelato disprezzo motteggiare quel mondo a cui per scelta si rifiutava d'appartenerre. Se fino quasi alla fine del libro potevo credere di leggere qualcosa di comico (bizzari personaggi narrati da uno strambo e inocuo buonanulla) con l'ultimo capitolo finale ho scoperto (spariva Enderby apparendo Hogg, Piggy Hogg) che non c'era -poveri noi- propio più niente da ridere e l'acida commedia era invece una alienate tragedia d'ordinaria psicopatologia suppostamente curabile.
Comico fino al patologico ma nulla di comico per sopravivivere al clinico.
Attonito chiudo un buon bel libro.

[Classvar · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is "of its time" racism and there is "for all time" racism. This book is racist by any measure you choose to use. And I say this as a fan of Joseph Conrad.

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mr Enderby, the lapsed and flatulent poet, is Anthony Burgess’s greatest comic creation. The early chapters of ‘Inside Mr Enderby’, in which he is introduced, are wonderful. But he is so great a creation that, once he leaves his less-than-splendid isolation and goes forth into the real world, the real world comes off rather badly. This makes perfect sense, of course. It’s Burgess’s point. But it means that the actual plots of the books in the series often seem a little thin and contrived – as the ‘real’ world appears to Enderby, compared to what is inside his head. It's the comedy of disappointment. Enderby himself is all that really matters. For all that, the books are delightful literary satires, full of good things.

[Jake Fuchs · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enderby is very funny. It's not all fun and games, however, as there's quite a lot here about just what enables poets to write and what can deprive them of their gifts. Burgess brings this theme in dramatically by presenting several female characters as different versions of the Muse. There are four such characters, and only the last, who simply is the Muse w/o any mortal disguise,is a little difficult to accept. The others are fine, especially the sloppy, stupid one (based, I'd say, on Burgess's stepmother). It was fun seeing William Burroughs as a character in this novel.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anthony Burgess created a legendary character in this novel. I enjoyed it and was relieved it turned out better than expected.

[Ruthenator · Rating 4 out of 5]

I emancipated this book from the jury doody waiting room because I thought it belonged with me rather than with 'my peers'. I don't feel guilty either. Get it? Guilty? bahaha!

[Steve Gutin]

very funny.