Plot summary
The story opens on a note of pure fantasy, showing school children from the future taking a field trip through time to see the dyspeptic poet Francis Xavier Enderby while he is asleep. Enderby, a lapsed Catholic in his mid-40s, lives alone in Brighton as a "professional" poet - his income being interest from investments left to him by his stepmother.
Enderby composes his poems while he sits on the toilet. His bathtub, which serves as a filing cabinet, is almost full of the mingled paper and food scraps that represent his efforts. Although he is recognised as a minor poet with several published works (and is even awarded a small prize, the Goodby Gold Medal, which he refuses), he has yet to be anthologised.
He is persuaded to leave his lonely but poetically fruitful bachelor life by Vesta Bainbridge, the editor of a woman's magazine, after he accidentally sends her a love poem instead of a complaint about a recipe in her magazine. The marriage, which soon ends, costs Enderby dearly, alienating him from his muse and depriving him of his financial independence.
Months pass, and Enderby is able to write only one more poem. After spending what remains of his capital, he attempts suicide with an overdose of aspirin, experiencing visions of his stepmother as he nears death. His cries of horror bring help, and he regains consciousness in a mental institution, where the doctors persuade him to renounce his old, "immature" poetry-writing self. Rechristened "Piggy Hogg", he looks forward contentedly to a new career as a bartender.
A Clockwork Orange is a dystopian satirical black comedy novella by English writer Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. It is set in a near-future society that has a youth subculture of extreme violence. The teenage protagonist, Alex, narrates his violent exploits and his experiences with state authorities intent on reforming him. The book is partially written in a Russian-influenced argot called "Nadsat", which takes its name from the Russian suffix that is equivalent to '-teen' in English. According to Burgess, the novel was a jeu d'esprit written in just three weeks.
John Anthony Burgess Wilson, who published under the name Anthony Burgess, was a British writer and composer.
Ford Madox Ford was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals The English Review and The Transatlantic Review were important in the development of early 20th-century English and American literature.
The Human Stain is a novel by Philip Roth, published May 5, 2000. The book is set in Western Massachusetts in the late 1990s. Its narrator is 65-year-old author Nathan Zuckerman, who appears in several earlier Roth novels, including two books that form a loose trilogy with The Human Stain,American Pastoral (1997) and I Married a Communist (1998). Zuckerman acts largely as an observer as the complex story of the protagonist, Coleman Silk, a retired professor of classics, is slowly revealed.
Harry Martinson was a Swedish writer, poet and former sailor. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow Swede Eyvind Johnson "for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos". The choice was controversial, as both Martinson and Johnson were members of the academy.
Anatole Paul Broyard was an American writer, literary critic, and editor who wrote for The New York Times. In addition to his many reviews and columns, he published short stories, essays, and two books during his lifetime. His autobiographical works, Intoxicated by My Illness (1992) and Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir (1993), were published after his death.
Icebreaker, first published in 1983, was the third novel by John Gardner featuring Ian Fleming's secret agent, James Bond. Carrying the Glidrose Publications copyright, it was first published in the United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape and is the first Bond novel to be published in the United States by Putnam, beginning a long-standing association. Part of the book takes place in Northern Europe, including Finland; to make his book as authentic as possible, Gardner even visited Finland.
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 dystopian crime film adapted, produced, and directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel of the same name. It employs disturbing, violent images to comment on psychiatry, juvenile delinquency, youth gangs, and other social, political, and economic subjects in a dystopian near-future Britain.
Lauri Arvi Viita was a poet hailing from the Pispala district of Tampere, Finland.
The Haj is a novel published in 1984 by American author Leon Uris that tells the story of the birth of Israel from the viewpoint of a Palestinian Arab.
Enderby Outside, first published in 1968 in London by William Heinemann, is the second volume in the Enderby series of comic novels by Anthony Burgess.
The Clockwork Testament is a novella by the British author Anthony Burgess. It is the third of Burgess' four Enderby novels and was first published in 1974 by Hart-Davis, MacGibbon Publishers. It is usually subtitled Enderby's End, as it was originally intended to be the last book in the Enderby series. However, a further sequel, Enderby's Dark Lady, followed in 1984.
Baron Bo Gustaf Bertelsson Carpelan was a Finland-Swedish poet and author. He published his first book of poems in 1946, and received his PhD in 1960. Carpelan, who wrote in Swedish, composed numerous books of verse, as well as several novels and short stories.
If Beale Street Could Talk is a 1974 novel by American writer James Baldwin. His fifth novel, it is a love story set in Harlem in the early 1970s. The title is a reference to the 1916 W.C. Handy blues song "Beale Street Blues", named after Beale Street in Downtown Memphis, Tennessee.
Enderby's Dark Lady, or, No End to Enderby is a 1984 novel by Anthony Burgess, the final volume in the Enderby series. It was first published in the United Kingdom by Hutchinson.
Man of Nazareth is a 1979 historical novel by Anthony Burgess based on his screenplay for Franco Zeffirelli's television miniseries Jesus of Nazareth (1977). It is the second in a trilogy of Burgess books with biblical themes, the others being Moses (1976) and The Kingdom of the Wicked (1985).
This is a list of works by the English writer Anthony Burgess.
The Wreck of the Deutschland is a 35-stanza ode by Gerard Manley Hopkins with Christian themes, composed in 1875 and 1876, though not published until 1918. The poem depicts the shipwreck of the SS Deutschland. Among those killed in the shipwreck were five Franciscan nuns forced to leave Germany by the Falk Laws; the poem is dedicated to their memory.
Liana Burgess was an Italian translator and literary agent who was the second wife of English writer Anthony Burgess. Burgess and Macellari had embarked on an affair while Burgess was married to his first wife, and Macellari gave birth to a son nine months after their meeting. The couple became tax exiles in the late 1960s, living in Malta and Italy, and spent several years in the United States. They finally settled in Monaco. Macellari played an important role in Burgess's later literary career, negotiating film rights and acting as his European literary agent, and translating his novels.
Revolutionary Sonnets and Other Poems is a posthumous collection of the short poetry written by Anthony Burgess. Compiled and edited by Kevin Jackson, who also provided a short introduction to the text, the book purports to collect most if not all of the poems published under the names F. X. Enderby, John Burgess Wilson, or Anthony Burgess, as well as selections from longer verse works by Burgess.
