The Real Life of Anthony Burgess

by Andrew Biswell

The first comprehensive biography on the life of English novelist, critic, and composer Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange . Admired worldwide for his literary novels, including the masterpiece Earthly Powers , Anthony Burgess also achieved notoriety for the ultra-violent shocker, A Clockwork Orange . In this new biography, Andrew Bisswell charts Burgess' life from his solitary and motherless childhood to his triumphant emergence as a writer, critic, and composer. He also casts new light on Burgess' complicated relationship with director Stanley Kubrick, looks with sensitivity at his tempestuous first marriage, and explores his erotic entanglements with Graham Greene and William Burroughs. Drawing on extensive interviews, unpublished writings, letters, and diaries, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess reveals both the writer and the man as never before.

Genres: Biography

434 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ned Thacker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The word "misremember" figures quite often in these pages. After the phenomenon of Clockwork Orange made Burgess a media celebrity, he developed a finely polished series of anecdotes that he would unveil for interviwers and chat show hosts. All highly entertaining but not necessarily in touch with historical accuracy.
Perhaps his favourite reminiscence was his tale of how he knocked out half a dozen novels in a year after being diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. Burgess would relish all the clinical details of treatment that included having his skull trepanned by four-minute miler Dr Roger Bannister. Sadly Sir Roger has pointed out that, as he was not a surgeon, he has never bored into anyone's brain. And there now appears to be doubt over whether the writer ever had a tumour at all.
Unlike the mean-spirited biograhy by Roger Lewis, Mr Biswell is happy to treat Burgess's self-mythologising as part of the irascible charm of "an author...engaged in creatively reimagining the history of his own work."
Given the difficulties such a personality provides a biographer, he very charitably concludes that Burgess was participating in "a reconisably Irish form of story-telling in which the shape of the narrative takes precedence over factuality and reliability: Do you want the truth or do you want the big music?"
Well researched, well written, a great reminder of the many neglected joys of Burgess's vast output.

[Emmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compulsive reading - probably the highest compliment anyone can pay to what is essentially a personal history book - sublimely orchestral. Burgess is as sensational as his literary persona makes him out to be, as eventful as his works, and not always palatable nor enviable. This book quotes extensively from letters, articles and interviews whenever appropriate and confirms the notion that Burgess is at his most appealing when he speaks for himself. And to read him in his own words is always a chance to raid his unbelievably extensive word-hoard.

Biswell calls Burgess out on his self-mythologising and factual inaccuracies repeatedly, cross-referencing remarks across interviews and written work. It is a rather insistently historian manner of calling his subject to account that is only especially appropriate here for the latter's loquaciousness and almost inveterate tendency towards self-fashioning. This is an attempt to establish a foothold upon Burgess' protean personae as composer, writer, husband, journalist, lyricist, school teacher, lecturer, essayist and cultural critic, maverick, wordsmith, raconteur and logophile. Illuminatingly, he calls using people as characters from real life 'renaming'; life and art are but seemingly two fictions running simultaneously. The less amused called him a 'liar'.

It is part biography, part publication history, part literary criticism - the latter-most may seem heavy on the side for readers who expect more straightforward narration. While it is not strictly necessary, a biography of a writer would be remarkably impoverished without an attempt to address the ideas that preoccupied him, especially if these perpetual themes that dominate his life are inextricable from his work. The second half of the book resembles a history of Burgess's literary and stage productions, at times it feels as if he was so industrious he had no life apart from writing and composing. (Not true.) His output of work after work is incredibly interesting and tells you far more about the man than other paltry quotidian details would have. Given that this is the first adequately-written biography, it is significant to have that all laid out at length and in detail. Some appreciation should be acknowledged for this book's engagement of contemporary reception, interacting with articles by critics such as Christopher Ricks, dissecting and disputing their interpretations as well as Burgess's responses to their reviews.

A section of personal interest was his time in Malaya; I thought A Clockwork Orange brilliant, but it wasn't until I had devoured The Malayan Trilogy that I started to appreciate his talents, and the chapter on his time there detailed his experiences of the British empire's twilight moments. He was a rebellious expatriate, preferring personal encounters with real people, which undoubtedly shaped his rather astute views on the colonial outpost's unique chaos. He remarked in 1956 that 'It is believed that the real trouble when Malayan independence comes will be between the Malays and the Chinese, who don't like each other, and people are talking of the monsoon-ditches running with blood!'. Given the events in the Malayan Peninsula in the following decade, he wasn't far from the truth.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a welcome rejoinder to the hideous Roger Lewis volume, although not without its faults. Biswell skips over the last twenty years of Burgess's life with a celerity that seems to impute that Burgess was finished after EARTHLY POWERS. And he spends more time (helpfully) unpacking A CLOCKWORK ORANGE's careful editing than giving us any rigorous indication of why Burgess was driven to write his answer to both the 19th century triple-decker novel and Arthur Hailey blockbusters. There's also a needless foray to one of Burgess's alleged lovers that feels less scholarly and more gossipy. But the book, on the whole, is well-researched and contains a lot of insights about Burgess's emulation of Joyce (in his life and work) and how it led him to become an uneven but enjoyable idiosyncratic writer of weird range who clearly deserves a lot more credit than ACO.

[Heidi de Goede · Rating 4 out of 5]

Could not put this one down.

[James Sparling · Rating 5 out of 5]

The finest, most comprehensive book about Burgess that exists. Biswell really gets Mr Wilson.

[Kyle Wendy Skultety (gimmethatbook.com) · Rating 5 out of 5]

lots of new info, very refreshing

[Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Best biog I've read in a while. With a bit more about the later novels like A Dead Man In Deptford it might have been five stars

[Sorcha · Rating 4 out of 5]

I mostly read this because I was interested in Burgess' time as an expat in Malaysia and Brunei, where I currently spend a lot of time. Was not disappointed.

But I ended up reading further than that, into his early life and his time writing A Clockwork Orange. I appreciated the way the author synthesised what Burgess claimed to be true about his life with sources from documents or people who knew him. Crucially, the author was willing to admit when the facts were ambiguous rather than stake a claim one way or another.

I gave it four stars because this would be dry reading for anyone who didn't have an interest in Anthony Burgess. But if you have a keen interest in the late author's backstory, this one's well worth a read.

[David Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a long-time Anthony Burgess fan, and Andrew Biswell is as well. Burgess was a dedicated writer who wrote wonderful sentences and worked very hard (though I had no idea how hard until I read this biography). I'd had no idea what an alcoholic he was, or what a serious alcoholic his first wife was. She more or less drank herself to death. I also had no idea how autobiographical much of his work was; his life found its way into many many of his books. Biswell is good on the early life but got rushed toward the end, I'm not sure why (his advance was running out?). I look forward to getting back to Burgess work; this bio was inspiring in that regard.

[Kim Loughran · Rating 3 out of 5]

No one writes as well about Burgess as Burgess. And it took Biswell's analysis of Clockwork Orange to see Burgess's philosophical flamboyance as partly chained by simple nostalgia for religion. And whatever the distortions Burgess used in his Confessions, no one was more convincing about his faults than the man himself. Burgess's life was so much admixed in his fiction I feel no strong desire to plough through hundreds of pages of erudite jokes in his novels.

[Les Dangerfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read a lot by Anthony Burgess in the 70s and early 80s so it was good to read about the man who wrote novels like The Malayan Trilogy and the Enderby books. The biography is generally well written and researched, though it scampers through the last ten to fiftenn years of his life as if the author was in a hurry to meet a publisher's deadline - I'd like to have known more about these years when Burgess was a well established writer.

[Drew Raley · Rating 3 out of 5]

To the point, chronological conveyance of events and anecdotes. No art to be seen here. Less brimstone and sulphur than the other Burgess bio, but none of the freewheeling embroidery of the truth of Burgess' own autobios. Biswell probably comes closest to the truth, but truth without jam is just dry toast.