Word: burgess
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...necessary to accept "the dire hypotheses and methods underlying some of the more extreme predictions." A decidedly dire method of population control was advanced last week by the California social welfare board. The board's proposal for reducing illegitimacy in the state smacks ominously of Anthony Burgess's satiric novel The Wanting Seed, in which phony wars, homosexuality and cannibalism were officially encouraged as antidotes to overpopulation...
That kind of remark is going out of fashion, but the mark of Adam is still quite visible. Anthony Burgess, a first-rate commentator on fiction, still "gains no pleasure from serious reading that lacks a strong male thrust and a brutal intellectual content." Louis Auchincloss once paused in the course of a critical essay on Jean Stafford to express awe that she was resourceful enough to hail...
...leer to encompass the entire terribly-clever Korova Milk bar set, we are begged to participate in a mere thrill show. A proud Kubrick tells his interviewers how people may come to identify with McDowell as they do with Crookback in Richard III. But both Shakespeare and the original Burgess novel obviously present greater challenges: complex worlds beyond the single demented viewpoint of alternatives lost to antisocial action...
...White Mountain State five weeks before the gala appearance in the Sheraton Carpenter ballroom. Not only were New Hampshirites confronted daily by smiling red, white, and blue placards on every street corner, but they were offered the opportunity to see a specially prepared documentary narrated by none other than Burgess Meredith, the "Penguin" of Batman fame...
What Kubrick has made from Burgess's fantasy is a plush animated cartoon, with extraordinary color consistency (credit John Alcott's lights), one acceptable action setpiece (a gang battle, not the "Singin' in the Rain" sequence), and a cast of characters in no way as interesting and varied as that of Fritz the Cat. The Ludovico Treatment, not as indispensable to the book's development as Burgess's language and characters, not only dominates the film's outlook, but the way in which it works...