One Man's Chorus: The Uncollected Writings

By Anthony Burgess

Book Overview

In these previously uncollected essays written over the past two decades by Anthony Burgess, the masterful English novelist and elegant stylist contemplates topics as various as oranges, Marilyn Monroe, Yiddish humor, dirty pictures, and the nature of God. His highlights include reflections upon literature and litterateurs, from such twentieth-century literary giants as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf to the eccentric Sitwells to fellow novelists Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Whether the subject is Charlie Chaplin or Margaret Thatcher, or Prince Hamlet, Burgess's one-man chorus is guaranteed to win your enthusiastic applause.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786706996
• ISBN13: 9780786706990
• Release Date: January 2000
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Length: 380 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Burgess should've concentrated on journalism

This is top-drawer Tone-boy. Right up there with A MOUTHFUL OF AIR, his book about languages. His travel writing is on a par with Tim Moore's meisterwerks. From WINTERREISE: "That wind still blows me towards Germany, but what I have to avoid is a strange siren voice borne on it, a quality of the German temperament that I find in myself and have always tried to subdue. This may be termed the sentimentality of the death-wish, which the end of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE succeeds in ennobling, but, in less transcendental forms, has always subtly qualified the German delight in making, building, constructing--whether a RING or a CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON." And here's what Julian Barnes never got around to saying: "The French seem determined to destroy their Roman inheritance by chopping up words until they become as short as possible, and as capable of being confused with other chopped-up words as only a genuinely morbid condition of language can allow. Even when a French word or name bears some visual resemblance to its classical original, the spoken form submits to the axe. I can never grow used to pronouncing 'Jesus Christ' as 'Jezu Cri', and I feel that if the French could cut the holy name down to something like 'Je Cr', they would."

Great Book for musicians

Some great, informative writing, especially for musicians - Burgess was a composer as well as a writer. I am a music reviewer and I found his essays on Shaw and music most informative, ditto on Ravel. I do not think too much of the editorial comments, however.

Writing as Music

Whenever I retrospect Anthony Burgess, I am reminded of one comment: 'While the estimation of Burgess as a novelist is controversial, that as a critic is appreciated almost unanimously.' Probably its truth becomes more and more apparent as time passes. Among his well-known critical writings are "The Novel Now" and its development "99 Novels: the Best in English since 1939", and what is more, the collections of journalistic pieces: "Urgent Copy", and "Hommage to QWERT YUIOP". This one, collected poshumously, was published in paperback form this year.According to the preface, the editor saw Burgess when he came to his university when he was wrestling with a doctorial dissertation and feeling bored. He was fascinated by Burgess'freewheeling character, wide reading and total recall. He says that Burgess could speak on almost all the themes of literature and recite endlessly 'The Wreck of the Deutchland' by G. M. Hopkins.The construction is: (1)Genius Loci--invocation to a land (2)In Our Time--current pieces (3)Ars Poetica--on general culture (4)Anniversaries & Celebration--a lament for the deadAs is usual, the topics vary widely from Orson Wells, Marylin Monroe to Thatcher. I am a little surprised that I read it through easily as if I were carried by the stream of music of a 4-part Motet. The word 'infinitely readable' also appears on the back cover. His writing seems like a later Mozart.