Word: burgess
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This dilemma seems to be a preoccupation for Anthony Burgess. A Clockwork Orange, his most famous novel written nearly 20 years ago, involves a furious debate on free will that rages behind the grim plot of a state-financed venture to save the soul of an ultra-violent gangleader. In his latest work, Earthly Powers, Burgess continues this debate through the fictional portrayal of a homosexual author obsessed with the question of human will and its relation to religion. Whereas the earlier book depended on its tersely futuristic narrative and frighteningly gruesome story-line for its remarkable success, the moral...
...Burgess's pert narrator, 81-year-old Kenneth Toomey, is a bestselling novelist and celebrated homosexual, who relates the semen-drenched odyssey of his life--an odyssey which spans more than 60 years, four continents, two World Wars, numerous gay relationships, friendships with the likes of James Joyce and John Maynard Keynes, and the writing of countless novels, plays and screenplays. He had a Pope for an intimate friend and brother-in-law, a beautiful younger sister turned into a cyclops and a lesbian by a stint in a Manhattan art studio, and a grand-niece...
...thread of Burgess's moral dilemma runs through all episodes and discussions in the book. He sometimes treats the issue overtly as when the intellectuals and churchmen who wander through Toomey's narrative subject the doctrine of free will and the homosexual's place in the kingdom of God to ponderous scrutiny. How can homosexuals and a conception of God coexist in harmony? This is the question the many homosexuals Toomey encounters--antagonists and lovers alike--are continually fretting over. And yet, Burgess's most absorbing and ponderous moral statements do not come from such often-babbling and never conclusive...
Earthly Powers, Anthony Burgess Italian Folktales, selected and retold by Italo Calvino -Prize Stories of the Seventies: From the O. Henry Awards, selected by William Abrahams...
...Ingrid Bergman: My Story, Bergman & Burgess...