Word: burgesses
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...Burgess describes this fiction as an "entertainment" rather than a novel. In a dust-jacket blurb he announces that the discovery of the unconscious, the possibility of universal socialism and man's ability to live in outer space are the century's "three greatest events." The End of the World News (the BBC news readers' sign-off phrase) amplifies those themes with a twist, and it is a twist of the dial. Reading, says the author, must reflect the new way of viewing television in the "three-screen family." Therefore his postliterary trilogy is broken into prime...
...Burgess's eyes, Freud is a Victorian Job, plagued by the doctrinal defections of Carl Jung, Otto Rank and his own daughter Anna. The therapist's love of cigars, which contribute to the carcinoma that kills him, is analyzed by Jung. The Swiss tells Freud's mother that Sigmund's smoking is "sheer devotion ... to you, gnadige Frau...
...another channel, Leon Trotsky visits New York City in 1917 to rouse the American proletariat. Burgess tells this story in the form of a libretto for a Broadway musical, complete with lyrics. Trotsky falls for Olga, a hardheaded party worker, while his wife cavorts with a wealthy socialist. Four hearts beat as one until the revolutionary's son is reported missing. Trotsky's life is changed forever when he is reunited with the boy, and the songs turn as sentimental as the story. At the finale, the hero chants, "Family's first,/ Love is completeness,/ Power...
...different kind of burnout looms Over the Commonwealth of the Democratic Americas in A.D. 2000, as Burgess plays with a well-known science fiction theme. An iron-heavy planet, code-named Lynx, threatens to vaporize the earth in this third and most complete tale. Valentine Brodie, a jittery, lustful, heavy-drinking young "future fiction" writer, is to accompany a space ark populated by an elite, computer-selected group of scientists and thinkers. They have been chosen to carry civilization to the next world. Brodie, like Freud, is fond of cigars, panatellas called Solzhenitsyns. He is also fond...
True, the author has abused his poetic license; he is often perverse for perversity's sake, and he can be more outrageous than illuminating. Even so, he has produced a highly original volume-his 41st book in 27 years. Carry on, Burgess...