Ендърби отвън

Enderby #2

by Anthony Burgess, Антъни Бърджес, Кристин Димитрова (Translator)

Антъни Бърджес продължава разказа си за Ендърби, „поет, отшелник, мизантроп и неразобличен романтик“, както вече е станало ясно от първата книга от поредицата – „Ендърби отвътре“.

По волята на лекарите Ендърби е мимикрирал до обикновен средностатистически гражданин. Околните са убедени, че същността му е променена, обаче се заблуждават: промяната е само привидна.

Отхвърлил съблазните на удобното съществуване под чехъла на съпругата си – светска лъвица, Ендърби следва вътрешния си глас. Дали в Мароко, където си въобразява, че ще отмъсти на своите плагиатори, или в Лондон, където наистина си отмъщава на опиталия се да го обезличи доктор, Ендърби изплува тържествуващ, за да извоюва най-голямата си победа: Музата му се връща и той отново започва да твори.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Classics, Humor, Novels

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1968

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

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 4 out of 5]

It makes zero sense to read this if you haven't first read the first volume of this four-book series, Inside Mr. Enderby, but anyhow these days if you do read it it is likely to be in the omnibus Complete Enderby: Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, and Enderby's......and if, like me, you find the first book puzzlingly idiosyncratic, buzzing with big words and little in the way of a coherent plot (as well as absolutely teeming with brainiac-but-rhythmically challenged poetry, for our self-confessed asexual minor poet-hero has written large, and lived very little), do push on. Life gets better (his life, your reading life).

He is even deeper into middle-age now, our Enderby, more than half-way to his titular End, and the 1960s are a young person's world—or so the press keeps telling him:

...it is in the error of the traditional equating of age with wisdom that one may find the cause of their blindness or, to be kind, presbyopia. The answer to all problems, aesthetic as much as social, religious, and economic, resides, in a word, in Youth.

Well, when this book opens our old boy is a psychiatric outpatient with a new name and a blank stare, and is being retrained as a barman and kept away from his muse after the failed marriage (and failed attempt of his young wife to re-integrate him into society) in the first book. But the poetic vein runs deep in this one, and an absurdly over-the-top-but-nevertheless-extremely-diverting honest-to-goodness plot has our Enderby running away from Johnny Law (and back towards his muse), to Morocco of all places—to Tangiers, actually, home of beatnik pseudo-writers and drug takers. It also happens to be the home of another failed poet, who had plagiarized one of Enderby's poems and had it turned into a smash hit of a terrible Italian film.

Enderby wants revenge, he thinks—against this particular plagiarist, as well as against another one: the whip-smart, businesswoman wife who had annulled him and who had then gone into the music biz had also appropriated some of Enderby's other verse and had it published under the name of her mop-topped pop stars (who wins major prizes with it, of course). But is he really a man of action?

All shall be revealed in this volume, which feels much more tightly structured than its predecessor, and which barrels along with the usual Burgessian brio, high spirits, and (delightful) logorrhea. Even the poetry seems better than before, if unevenly so. A real gem, though, comes from Enderby's lengthy deconstruction (if you will) of the octet of an unfinished sonnet of his, which attempts to capture the essence of the Age of Enlightenment and its collapse into Romanticism:

All was set for writing and yet he could not write. Draft after unfinished draft. Gloomily he read through his sonnet octave again. Augustus on a guinea sat in state. This is the eighteenth century, the Augustan age, and that guinea is a reduction of the sun. The sun no proper study. Exactly, the real sun being God and that urban life essentially a product of reason, which the sun melts. And no more sun-kings, only Hanoverians. But each shaft of filtered light a column. Meaning that you can’t really do without the sun, which gives life, so filter it through smoked glass, using its energy to erect neo-classic structures in architecture or literature (well, The Rambler, say or The Spectator, and there’s a nuance in ‘shaft’ suggesting wit). Classic craft abhorred the arc or arch. Yes, and those ships sailed a known world, unfloodable by a rational God, and the arc-en-ciel covenant is rejected. Something like that. To circulate (blood or ideas) meant pipes, and pipes were straight. Clear enough. You need the roundness of the guinea only so that it can roll along the straight streets or something of commercial enterprise. The round bores of the pipes are not seen on the surface, the pipes in essence being means of linking points by the shortest or most syllogistical way. And, to return to that pipe business, remember that pipes were smoked in coffee-houses and that news and ideas circulated there. And that craft business ties up with Lloyd’s coffee-house. As loaves were gifts from Ceres when she laughed, Thyrsis was Jack. A bit fill-in for rhyme’s sake, but, rejecting the sun, you reject life and can only accept it in stylized mythological or eclogue forms. But Jack leads us to Jean-Jacques. Crousseau on a raft sought Johnjack’s rational island – the pivot coming with the volta. Defoe started it off: overcome Nature with reason. But the hearer will just hear Crusoe. Jack is dignified to John, glorification of common, or natural, man. Then make Nature reason and you start to topple into reason’s antithesis, you become romantic. Why? A very awkward job, the continuation.

A very awkward job indeed, like the novel itself. But this one really grew on me, though, accruing that much-needed gravitas that I felt was lacking in the otherwise equally madcap first novel—or I missed out on it somehow, perhaps, hearing only that damned name Crusoe when he'd written Crousseau all along, missing at least half of the story.

Enderby's story is now but half-started for me, though, and the other two volumes are on order!

[Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Undoubtedly Burgess is a brilliant writer. Enderby is AB's answer to Nabokov's Pnin. Tragicomic adventures of a socially inept, gastro-intestinally challenged poet. I see this series as an outlet for the author to flaunt linguistic acrobatics. Unfortunately, where Pnin is a bumbling, lovable, absent-minded professor, Enderby has no endearing qualities, or any other dimensions that evoked any memorable reaction. Upon finishing, my main reaction was to think the whole point of this book was for Burgess to find an outlet for his deliberately odd poetic experiments. For me, I am so ignorant of poetry, i cant tell whether Enderby's poetry is deliberately bad, or just quirky. I enjoyed the language in this book but found the whole thing annoyingly self indulgent.

My favorite sentence: "She breathed on him (though a young lady should not eat, because of the known redolence of onions, onions) onions."

[Ian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine yourself to be a poet. Imagine that you are under psychological treatment to rid you of such a juvenile habit and forced to work as a bartender under an assumed name. Imagine that you then find yourself serving drinks at a Rockstar's promotional party and realise that said Rockstar has pillaged your poetry to make a pop hit without so much as an acknowledgement. Said Rockstar is managed by your manipulative ex-wife. Imagine then that the aforementioned Rockstar is shot and you are left innocently but implausibly holding the smoking gun. Wouldn't you do a runner to North Africa to save yourself? Wouldn't you succumb to an enthusiastic Selenologist only to interruptus your coitus with said Selenologist when the muse inspires you to write one more poem? Of course you wouldn't, but you are not the sublime irascible Enderby.

[James Earnshaw · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best book I’ve ever read. Certainly not as good as Inside Mr Enderby

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Glumly witty picaresque nonsense about the minor poet Enderby and his escape to Morocco after a shooting incident involving a yobbish popstar plagiarist.
Audiobook read by the excellent John Sessions, who, although he does the voices well, sometimes seems unsure of where Burgess's sentences are headed.

[Al Maki · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favourite of the Enderby novels. A book about the process of writing that I thought worked.

[Cat Noe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although I can't say there was really much plot to the story, I had a blast reading it. This is the most addictive author I've encountered in ages; I couldn't wait to start the next volume.

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

2nd Enderby in series (and for me). Did not like it as much as the 1st. This one finds E. as a bartender of sorts (under the name Hogg) going about his business, but then called upon to serve at an event with a prime minister and a pop band (managed by his memorable ex (Vesta, who sadly- does not make an appearance in this one - except as a name). Again, his work has been ripped off by this pop band (like Rawcliffe in the 1st one). Somehow (????) the lead singer is shot and E. is holding the gun! O no. Of course, E. hightails to the airport and winds up on a tour situation in Spain and then Morocco. He is trying to fly low and has hopes to catch up with Rawcliffe and kill him. He scrounges around in Morocco in an entertaining few episodes before finding Rawcliffe, who owns a profitable bar and is dying. The reminiscence (of a sort) about poetry, etc. He dies and E. inherits all and then... a strange dream woman who knows all about poetry and sex wonders in and provides camaraderie and more for E. Of course, E. doesn't know what to make of this and she takes off promising to return again someday. And that's it. I did think that ending a bit weak - is it a dream? seems like it, otherwise.... ?

[Chris Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining but not-quite-gripping-enough installment in the Enderby saga.

I was quite pleased with myself for picking out the reference to William S Burroughs, but much like Naked Lunch (though not at all like Junkie), long stretches of this passed me by a bit.

Good enough, however, to ensure that I'll be picking up The Clockwork Testament (Enderby#3) in due course.

[Mauro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as funny as the first volume, but funny enough, especially the first part.
It is a bit more cryptographed, and sometimes meaning is lost in an ignoramus as myself - but, alas, meaning is overrated.

[Andy Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit of a curate’s egg. Some of it was excellent, whereas I found other parts very hard to read. Burgess delights in his use of the English language, sometimes to the expense of this reader, for one.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun follow-up, though a little depleted as far as laughs and invention. Burgess's social complaints come across a bit more old-mannish, his wordplay more linguistically abstruse. Still solid nonetheless.

[Chris Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Diminishing returns already setting in? I’ve got two more of these to read so hopefully not

[Derek Bridge · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enderby on the run, the comedy having a nightmarish quality, but he is ultimately revisited by his muse.

[Dan Lange · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t understand this book.

[Gaz]

Burgess the singular talent of British postwar fiction continues his arsey stations of the cross progress across the sixties, sniping about thinly veiled pop culture targets such as The Beatles and The Beats. Mucho entertaining venting of spleen. Enderby is a cussed fool, and Burgess knew that was so, self lacerations inflicted with self loathing.

[Vel Veeter]

Enderby is back! And he’s travelling the world! Which is definitely a problem. Nothing really happens in the first book, but at the end of things, Enderby has been ousted from his house by his step-mother. Now he’s on a kind of literary tour of the world, mainly through the Middle East and India (and other former British territories). He’s being confused for a man named Hogg and possibly implicated in the murder of a pop star (which he didn’t do) and so leaving the country is good for all. Like the first book, nothing much happens here, but the book is weird and funny. Namely though what Anthony Burgess has a achieved here is great. While we got snippets in the first book of what kind of poet Enderby is, we get a lot to work with here. Here’s the challenge: how do you write poetry that is not good or bad? Writing purposely bad poetry is very easy. And if you can, writing good poetry is also relatively within the skillset of a good writer. Nabokov hammered out the poem in “Pale Fire” and plenty of other writers have done the same. How do you write mediocre poetry, but on purpose?

Enderby is beginning to reckon with his own legacy here as well. He picks up a volume of “Minor English Poets” and begins to wonder where he fits in within the definition of minor. Is minor a status of fame or notoriety? Is it about quality? Is it about the achievement of a singular piece? Who knows. He’s not harboring ideas of greatness at least.

[Neale · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Enderby Outside’ is a bit like one of those films adapted from popular television comedies, where the characters are lifted out of their usual sitcom world and sent on a foreign holiday – much ‘hilarity’ ensues. The belief is that for a film adaptation to work the television comedy must be ‘opened up’, while the true joy of sitcoms is precisely their confined and familiar worlds.

‘Enderby Outside’ lifts Mr Enderby of his seedy seaside world of lavatorial poetry and dumps him ignominiously in London and North Africa. Enderby is moving up in the world, perhaps even joining it.

As a result, ‘Enderby Outside’ is somewhat less agreeable than its predecessor, more colourful, but still very funny, and it prepares its hero for the final books in the series, where he effectively ceases to be Enderby and becomes an avatar of Burgess himself.

[Shervin Ghiami · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.6

Inside Mr. Enderby was a strong book because it was well written, and it was intellectually written, using clever wordplay and advanced synonyms to describe simple objects in a clear, but refined way. Enderby Outside has this to a lesser extent, but makes up for it with more enticing supporting characters and a much more engaging plot. Where Inside was more, well, about Enderby's ego and mannerisms, Outside is quite appropriately the application of the habits we learned about Enderby's work and social skills. Exceptional structure and consistently engaging - yet another masterpiece by Anthony Burgess.

[David Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I decided to reread the Enderby novels when I recently read a biography of Burgess and the author referred to them as veiled, wildly exaggerated autobiography. I'd never thought of the books that way, since Enderby is such a klutz. But I thought I'd go back and have a look.

If anything, this second novel has the most in verbal pyrotechnics, almost to the point where you don't know what's happening half the time. Still, Burgess is his usual intelligent self, and Enderby is always good company.

[Gregory Frye · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting second book of the Enderby tetrology. Here Burgess experiments with the language more, and there are a number of passage I'll need to re-read later to really understand and enjoy. Fun plot twists, not a lot of laughs but amusing in the most grim of ways. If you liked the first book, this one is worth a look.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slightly confusing at the beginning, this novel picks up as the action moves to North Africa. Some lovely description, and experimental use of language are the high points. Not as funny as the first book in the series, but there are plenty of moments of humour.

[Austin Sheehan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic follow up to Inside Mr Enderby. Burgess' character has more adventures and awkwardness, travels overseas, and meets some thoroughly interesting characters.
I would have to say more entertaining than Inside Mr Enderby.

[S Klotz]

enderby by anthony burgess

[Akeshia Singleton · Rating 3 out of 5]

i never realized this was a series. need to go back and read all four.

[Rikker]

Enderby by Anthony Burgess (1969)

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Enderby.