Word: burgesses
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During the past three decades, Author Anthony Burgess has produced a truly stupendous volume of writing. The number of his novels now approaches 30. There have also been more than 20 other books, including nonfiction, literary criticism, biography, children's stories, poems, plays and translations, not to mention screenplays and a relentless stream of uncollected reviews and journalistic pieces. This frenzy of production has made the author famous and, paradoxically, a tad unwelcome. Readers and reviewers, confronted regularly with someone who makes himself impossible to ignore, are likely to decide to do just that. A new Burgess? Never mind...
Probably so. But skipping The Pianoplayers is not a good idea. Burgess, 69, has recaptured the same linguistic verve and inventiveness that marked his earlier fiction, especially The Doctor Is Sick (1960) and A Clockwork Orange (1962). He has also created a heroine to rival, in nearly every respect, the comically seedy poet Enderby, hero of four Burgess novels. Ellen Henshaw is an old woman living in the south of France when she decides to set down her memoirs, with the stenographic assistance of one Rolf Marcus, an itinerant and blocked American journalist who needs the lodgings that...
...18th century stronghold on Lake Ontario. The conflict usually re-enacted is the siege of Fort Niagara, won by the British in 1759. But, one Saturday not long ago, the Siege of Oswego (1756) was refought, and the French and their Indian allies forced a British surrender. Afterward, Harry Burgess, 38, a Port Huron, Mich., history teacher, ranted to an onlooker in French-accented English about "thees monster," the British army. Reverting to normal English, Burgess said that partaking in such battles "gives us a private time machine...
...ordinary life that gives it trouble. In writing Burgess for himself, Alda has imbued the character with his own well-known and entirely admirable traits. He is intelligent and well spoken. He is kind and decent. He is a man of reason. He is also something of a bore. Alda lacks the air of dangerousness that movie stardom requires. That is why his great success as a performer has been on television, where week in, week out, agreeableness makes a star. In his last feature, The Four Seasons, however, he was successful because he integrated himself into an ensemble...
...generously as he has for others. His romance with a teacher played by Lise Hilboldt, an actress whose plainness of manner amounts to a kind of self-cancellation, is dully conventional. And a subplot that involves them in an endlessly unfunny attempt to soothe the troubled spirit of Burgess's mad old mom is irrelevant and near to tasteless. She is played by Lillian Gish, and the movies' oldest pro clearly understands that she is trapped in Sweet Liberty's dreariest neighborhood. She does her brash best to break loose, but her efforts are more brave than successful. Doubtless...