Word: burgesses
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...HAROLD BURGESS, 47 Storeowner, Sunland...
...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...
...INDIVIDUAL WEIGHT of these images and arguments are magnified through Burgess's skillful weaving of the religious and the blasphemous into the tapestry of Toomey's narrative. It proceeds almost as a stream-of-consciousness, rambling through the described decades and countries, but always preserving and highlighting the important contrast between the narrator's prurience and the sanctimonious nature of orthodox religion. Burgess seems to have no purpose other than to offend with the orgies of ejaculation and sodomy that mark parts of Toomey's life; and indeed, fornication emerges throughout the novel as a sort of leitmotif underlying both...
...moral of Burgess's novel is complex, arising as much out of its ponderous style as its weighty discussions. He presents an allegory for the twentieth century human being torn between the earthly powers liberated in the modern world and the spiritual claims to morality that have comprised much of his heritage