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Anthony Burgess discussion

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  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote:
    Very much so! All Burgess work is.

    In that case I'll be tracking them down then! Also, your username derives from Burgess's work which is rather appropriate for this thread!
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Yes, my username derives from Burgess's work. Arrrgh! Very frustrating: the DVD I bough is a truncated version of J of N, there is a whole scene missing between Zerah and Judas and the Last Supper is also severely cut. I wonder if a full version is available in the UK. Unfortunately, I was not in Manchester yesterday: http://www.cornerhouse.org/film/film-events/christianity-controversy-cinema
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Today is the birthday of Anthony Burgess. He would have been 98.

    Something I noticed as well: A Clockwork Orange was published the same year as DN was released.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    I don't want to make a specific thread of it, but as it is today the 200th anniversary of Waterloo, I invite you to listen to the play Napoleon Rising, based on The Napoleon Symphony by Anthony Burgess (a masterpiece, by the way), on BBC Radio 3: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p2q2c
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Bumping this thread because it is the birthday of Anthony Burgess. And I found this video where he talks about Umberto Eco's most famous novel and about Ian Fleming, among other things:
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited February 2016 Posts: 18,281
    Thanks, @Ludovico. I look forward to listening to that when I have a minute.

    I'd also really love to hear your views on this article of mine:

    http://thebondologistblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/anthony-burgess-on-spy-who-loved-me.html
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    I still cannot comment on your blog sadly, for some reason. But I read the article, didn't I comment about it before?

    Some thoughts that come to my mind:

    -Anthony Burgess was alive when FYEO was released, so I don't think he approved of the movie, not enough to mention it subsequently anyway. If he watched it at all.
    -Given that he thought the movies had gone downhill since Goldfinger, my bet is that he wanted something far, far closer to the novels. If he had his way, I think Sean Connery would have remained Bond until circa NSNA, when all the Bond novels would have been adapted... as faithfully as possible. With less action, but probably far more violence, sadism and yes sex. Something that even his script for TSWLM is full of.
    -The above is not complete speculation. Burgess had respect for Sean Connery: he wanted him to play the main character of the movie adaption of Beard's Roman Women, which in the end was never made.
    -Also, reading Tremor of Intent, one cannot help but notice that the amount of sex and sadism (including a torture scene not unlike the one in CR) in the novel owes a lot to Ian Fleming.
    -He also mentioned in his Preface to the Coronet books that he thought recasting younger actors to play Bond and thus having the movie franchise continue indefinitely was absurd. Something else that makes me think he wanted Connery to continue... but until the Fleming material dries out.
    -He probably perceived his TSWLM script as mercy killing. I do think it wanted to murder the franchise, or what it had become in his eyes.
    -Given that Burgess wrote very strong female characters (positive or negative ones) and rather vulnerable men, I wonder how the Bond girls would have turned out... and their relationship with Bond.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    What I wrote recently in the RIP section:
    I learn this a bit late, but Adrienne Corri died last month: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2016/04/08/adrienne-corri-actress---obituary/

    In A Clockwork Orange, she was the writer's wife who gets raped by Alex and his droogs. A very short, yet memorable role in a very challenging scene.

    Anthony Burgess claimed that the scene in the novel was inspired by the rape of his own wife (his first), although this may have been a fabrication.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    More from Anthony Burgess on James Bond: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/mediablog/observerburgess-prize-burgess-on-james-bond-b
  • RevelatorRevelator
    edited October 2016 Posts: 2,918
    Ludovico wrote: »
    More from Anthony Burgess on James Bond: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/mediablog/observerburgess-prize-burgess-on-james-bond-b

    Excellent find Ludovico! This was completely new to me, and it answers several questions about Burgess's attitudes toward his script and the Bond films. I wonder if he enjoyed TLD, since Dalton reverted to the semi-realism he enjoyed more in Bond.

  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    His idea for the Bond villain for TSWLM was also fascinating: a gross Orson Welles in a wheelchair. Some of it remained in the film: Stromberg is a very static villain.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    More from Anthony Burgess on James Bond: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/mediablog/observerburgess-prize-burgess-on-james-bond-b

    Nice Burgess find there, @Ludovico. I'll look forward to reading that later on today.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Great news for Anthony Burgess fans: Christopher Eccleston will play his Oedipus in a BBC Radio 3 adaptation for the centenary of Burgess' birth next year. See here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-37953043
  • RevelatorRevelator
    Posts: 2,918
    Ludovico wrote: »
    More from Anthony Burgess on James Bond: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/mediablog/observerburgess-prize-burgess-on-james-bond-b

    In case anyone's looking for it, the article has now been moved to: https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/observerburgess-prize-burgess-james-bond/
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Thanks.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Bumping this thread as on the 25th it will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Burgess.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Bumping this thread as on the 25th it will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Burgess.

    Thanks. There's an interesting programme on BBC Radio 3 according to the Burgess Facebook group run by his biographer Andrew Biswell.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Bumping this thread as on the 25th it will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Burgess.

    Thanks. There's an interesting programme on BBC Radio 3 according to the Burgess Facebook group run by his biographer Andrew Biswell.

    Yes his own take on Oedipus, a rewriting of Sophocles' play: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g4cly

    I met Andrew Biswell on a number of occasions and the gang of the Foundation. I don't have much time to visit them since I have become a dad but I hope to do my pilgrimage to Manchester at some point.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited February 2017 Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Dragonpol wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Bumping this thread as on the 25th it will be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Burgess.

    Thanks. There's an interesting programme on BBC Radio 3 according to the Burgess Facebook group run by his biographer Andrew Biswell.

    Yes his own take on Oedipus, a rewriting of Sophocles' play: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08g4cly

    I met Andrew Biswell on a number of occasions and the gang of the Foundation. I don't have much time to visit them since I have become a dad but I hope to do my pilgrimage to Manchester at some point.

    I noticed that he'd linked my Bond article on Burgess in 2015 which was great to see. I only joined it late last year. Maybe I should do the second part of it for Burgess' centenary.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    I thought Nuria did.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    I thought Nuria did.

    Nuria?
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    The person who linked your Bond article.
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    The person who linked your Bond article.

    Oh, right. You're probably right. Been a while since I looked at the post. :)
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    I thought Nuria did.

    I just checked back there and it was Andrew Biswell who linked it on the Burgess FB group.
    Revelator wrote: »
    Ludovico wrote: »
    More from Anthony Burgess on James Bond: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/mediablog/observerburgess-prize-burgess-on-james-bond-b

    In case anyone's looking for it, the article has now been moved to: https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/observerburgess-prize-burgess-james-bond/

    Thank you very much for providing that link again, @Revelator!

    I've finally been able to download it and print it. Looking forward to reading that later on today.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    More on the upcoming Oedipus:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tpdjr

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04tmp95
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Today is #Nadsaturday, the anniversary of the publication of A Clockwork Orange. Have a real horrorshow everyone!
  • DragonpolDragonpol https://thebondologistblog.blogspot.com
    edited May 2017 Posts: 18,281
    Ludovico wrote: »
    Today is #Nadsaturday, the anniversary of the publication of A Clockwork Orange. Have a real horrorshow everyone!

    I'll smash your face for you, yarblockos!

    Translation: Thanks!
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    And Anthony Burgess would have been 101 today.
  • RevelatorRevelator
    Posts: 2,918
    A new Burgess book is on the way! The Ink Trade: Selected Journalism 1961-1993 includes several "lost" essays. The Guardian has more on the story:
    Lost Anthony Burgess essays reveal his hidden inspirations

    Previously unpublished essays by Anthony Burgess have been discovered almost 25 years after his death.

    The writings cover a range of subjects, including Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s classic 1927 film, and fellow writers Ernest Hemingway and JB Priestley. They also include an unpublished 1991 lecture on censorship.

    Some of the material was discovered in the archives of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, an educational charity in Manchester, the city in which the writer was born in 1917.

    Will Carr, the foundation’s deputy director, told the Observer: “Some of the approaches [within the unpublished writings] … may have been considered too personal and reflective, but in retrospect I believe offer fascinating new insights into Burgess’s work.”

    Carr has included the essays in a forthcoming book, titled Anthony Burgess, The Ink Trade: Selected Journalism 1961-1993, which will be published next month [on May 31].

    Burgess made his name as a satirical novelist with the 1962 publication of A Clockwork Orange, a savage social satire that inspired Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 screen adaptation, known for its violent and sexually explicit scenes. Burgess was a prolific journalist, writing in the Observer for more than 30 years. In the introduction to The Ink Trade, Carr writes that Burgess’s “greatest loyalty was perhaps to the Observer – ‘my paper’, as he called it”. As the book’s editor, Carr notes the “astonishing” breadth of subjects treated by Burgess – from anthropology to the evils of taxation – and observes that this “vast storehouse” of journalism is “as rewarding as the best of his novels”.

    In the undated essay on Metropolis, Lang’s vision of a futuristic society, Burgess wrote: “If any movie got near to changing my life, it was this.” Carr said: “Burgess’s love for the film and its ideas is well known as it appears in his autobiography, but this new piece offers a far more detailed engagement with it than elsewhere and says something new about the influence of cinema on his writing.”

    The Hemingway essay was written in 1979. Carr said: “Burgess wrote a lot on Hemingway – a whole book, and also a television film, but this piece is a highly personal and somewhat melancholy account of his attitude to his work. Burgess says things here that he doesn’t say anywhere else.”

    Burgess writes that Hemingway’s readers expected that the author should be at least as virile as his own creations: “Hemingway obliged them with the Hemingway myth. This myth helped to kill him.”

    He continued: “How can you explain to the great public that one of the most important things in the world is to invent a new way of saying things? But nobody cares about style, language, the power of the word. They prefer to hear about failure really being success, about a great writer killing himself at the early age (my age) of 62.”

    The essays span Burgess’s journalistic career, including the Yorkshire Post, from which he was sacked after reviewing one of his own books – Inside Mister Enderby, published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell. Apparently assuming that the paper had sent it to him as a joke, he gave it an unflattering review, writing: “It turns sex, religion, the state into a series of laughing stocks. The book itself is a laughing stock.” The review, dated 1963, is included in The Ink Trade. The Yorkshire Post’s humourless response prompted writer Gore Vidal to quip at the time: “At least, he is the first novelist in England to know that a reviewer has actually read the book under review.”

    The new book is an automatic-buy as far I'm concerned. I've read all three earlier collections of Burgess's criticism and journalism--Urgent Copy, Homage to Qwert Yuiop, and One Man’s Chorus--and found them sheer pleasure to read. I'm eagerly looking forward to reading the "lost" essays.
  • LudovicoLudovico
    Posts: 15,124
    Need to get my hand on that one. I read A Vision of Battlements last year and it was a delight.
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