Word: burgesses
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...HAND CLAPPING by ANTHONY BURGESS 215 pages. Knopf...
What a nice coincidence. Anthony Burgess's One Hand Clapping, first published in England eleven years ago, now comes to the lapsed colonies in time to benefit from the publicity for the film version of his subsequent novel A Clockwork Orange...
Both books belong to the same period in the author's richly pleated life, though it is practically useless to divide Burgess's relatively short and unusually prolific writing career into creative periods. Although light years away in style and impact, One Hand, like Clockwork, is an example of Burgess's concern that modern man has all but shut himself away from spiritual...
...story, enhanced by the flat voice of Howard's attractive but simple wife Janet, is something of an inverted play on the now familiar account of the author's life: Burgess, impecunious and convinced he was dying, sat down to write novels as a way of providing a legacy for his wife. Instead of dying, he lingered on to become a chronic writer. Rich, healthy Howard, by contrast, can think of nothing better to do than squander his easy money on a banal overseas tour and then commit suicide. It is not that Howard is outraged...
...which brings us to Mick Jagger. In one of the abortive attempts to get the Anthony Burgess novel on film, Jagger was to have played the role of Alex. The project fell through, but the possibility is too intriguing to ignore. As it is, Malcolm McDowell, who ultimately got the part and is superb, looks like Jagger, teases and taunts like Jagger, and is arrogant and sexy like Jagger...