Buster

by Alan Burns

Buster was the first, and arguably the most traditional, work of fiction by Alan Burns - dating from before his aleatoric style developed into "cutting up", but displaying early examples of the trademark disjointed, brisk and biting style which earned him a cult following. Imbued with autobiographical sentiment, the novel shows a young man's upbringing during World War II and his disillusioned vision of the post-war world. Never before published in standalone volume form since its original publication in the inaugural New Writers anthology in 1961, Buster is characteristically succinct and of huge literary merit, but in its autobiographical and pre-aleatoric style it provides, perhaps more importantly, a key to understanding the rest of Burns's works.

300 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 15, 2020

About the author

Alan Burns published eight novels, two essay collections, a play, and a short story collection. Major works include Europe After the Rain, Celebrations, Babel, and Dreamerika! A Surrealist Fantasy. From the 1960s on, he was associated with the loosely-constituted circle of experimental British writers influenced by Rayner Heppenstall that included Stefan Themerson, Eva Figes, Ann Quin and its informal leader, B. S. Johnson.

In 1982 he co-edited (with Charles Sugnet) The Imagination on Trial: British and American Writers Discuss Their Working Methods, which the Washington Post "Book World" called "diverting, iconoclastic, and compulsively readable". The book included interviews with 11 authors (as well as Burns himself): J. G. Ballard, Eva Figes, John Gardner, Wilson Harris, John Hawkes, B. S. Johnson, Tom Mallin, Michael Moorcock, Grace Paley, Ishmael Reed, and Alan Sillitoe.

Angus Wilson called Burns "one of the two or three most interesting new novelists working in England."

Reviews

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burns does away with the bore of moving people from A to B, creating a narrative that functions more vividly as a result. Besides, who wants to read about how x walked to y and then—. Enough with the needless fucking moving!

If it loses the thread a bit at the end, chalk it up to them ole First Novel Boy Blues.

[Jonathan Norton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Burns's first work from 1961, and plenty of the ideas and style that filled "Celebrations" are already here. There's a great deal of narrative compression: developments that a conventional writer would spin over 100 pages are dealt with in 25. The story is a great post-War social novel about unsettled expectations, class mobility, and rebellion (in the 50s, not the long-haired later manifestations). Dan Graveson is the younger son of a wealthy businessman (self-made fortune, it seems), mother and brother die, and then he tries to be a left-wing rebel whilst an officer in the British Army at the time of the Korean War. The very little description we get catches the panorama of Blitzed London and the slow advance of all the promised new housing. Like the (unpublished at the time) "The Boy Hairdresser" this is one of those outlying examples of "angry young men" that didn't fit the official version and had to wait more years to find a place to be heard in. The final sentence may have multiple meanings.

A while ago I saw the 1970 film version of "The Breaking Of Bumbo" by Andrew Sinclair, originally published 1959. "Buster" has many thematic similarities. Posh boys going rogue, but not with the cartoon bravado of Robin Cook's "The Crust On Its Uppers".