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Title: Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0-7867-0026-2 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: January, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.77 (22 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Burgess at his most epic
Comment: Earthly Powers is the sort of novel that could have been released as a series of shorter novels quite easily, with a sense of great allies and villains recurring and departing. The novel is told from the viewpoint of Kenneth Toomey, gay writer of songs and books, as he lurches through the 20th Century on uncertain legs. On his way he recounts in vivid detail his spectatorship of the First and Second World Wars, his run-ins with people both fictional and real (Pope Carlo Campanati, Il Duce, the Fuhrer, and Jakob Strehler, to name but a few), and the remarkable recurring effects of religion upon his life and those of others. Funny and thought-provoking throughout, Earthly Powers spans a tale some seventy years in length, and by the end of the novel the reader has acquired a sense of fate's heavy hand and cosmic justice (or abuse thereof).
If I were to venture any criticism of the book whatsoever, it would be that the author is almost too brilliant for his audience. With his fictional masterpiece "A Clockwork Orange", Burgess has a definite message to proclaim, but here the enjoyment of the book would appear to rest more in the sublime comic references to other literary sources - something which can alienate and try the patience of lesser mortals.
I felt an overwhelming sense of sorrow and desperation at the storyteller's old age and ill treatment by the world, I joined in his wonder at the curative powers of the Pope, I was awed in the presence of Heinrich Himmler and Benito Mussolini, but I felt that there was much more going on in Toomey's narration than mere facts: I felt that there was some underlying message which was vaguely hinted at, referred to, tantalizingly glimpsed but never fully revealed. And perhaps because of the relative inaccessibility of the novel, and because of its potentially unplumbable depths, I reached the end of the book (whereupon Ken Toomey, 80+ years of age, finally lies down to rest with his beautiful sister) with a sense of matters unconcluded.
The ! novel is certainly very well written and enjoyable if the reader is a deep thinker, polyglot, or well-read, but being none of the above I must confess that Earthly Powers was a step down from good old Alex and his 'droogs' in Clockwork Orange.
Rating: 5
Summary: AN ENORMOUS ACHIEVEMENT
Comment: It seems presumptuous to be definitive in the area of literature. But every now and then there is a book, such as Earthly Powers, that compells one to reach for superlatives. This is a masterful example of the literary novel, one that frequently makes its appearance on the 'top-ten' lists of 'all time greats' as compiled by those who have made it their business to read as much as possible.Burgess lavished effort on this, setting out to create a masterpiece, and he succeeded without ever forgetting the novelist's duty to perform, above all, as a storyteller for his audience.And what a story he tells!This is in essence a trip through the Twentieth Century that encompasses as many aspects as possible of what defined the era. All is seen through the eyes of an intelligent, sensitive, and sometimes bitterly confused man, Kenneth Twomey. As such, the story is his, and spans some eighty odd years.Burgess is careful to weave his tale as engagingly as he can. Despite verdant vocabulary - always contextually perfect - the pages flick past at great speed. We are not subjected to many of the more conventional literary devices utilised to pull readers in. Instead we are involved through the sheer pathos and variety of the world and age that Kenneth, Oddysean-like, must navigate.We are introduced to dozens of countries and a veritable mob of characters, none of whom ever blur or become confused in our mind, because they are drawn with such easy clarity - I have encountered very few personalities in contemporary fiction as well-realised as these.The themes that run through the book are many; love, God, war, identity, suffering, the creative impulse, guilt, peversion, philosophy, nobility and evil. Only a few of these are made obvious - the book, after all, is meant to reflect life. The rest are perched delicately for us to discern between the lines. We do not find ourselves subjected to the author shoving his own particular brand of morality down our throats; a trait rarely avoided even by luminaries within the fiction field. Burgess is far too modest to think that he should discern for our benefit the differences between right and wrong on the grand scale - that is left entirely to us. With this in mind, he is at pains to create a mood of ubiquitous evil hanging over large portions of the novel, an evil which is hard to define specifically, and it is the reader who must try to make sense of it, as themes and plots grow and elaborate over decades and continents. He does this with consummate skill.If I have been vague it is because it is impossibly difficult to get into the fabric of Earthly Powers in such a short space. It takes on far too much to lend itself to summarisation. One can only keep repeating, 'This is a masterpiece; truly a masterpiece.' Why it never received the critical acclaim it so assuredly deserved will forever remain a dreadful inditement of a literary establishment jealous of possibly its most talented virtuoso. So many critics have such petty and venal motivations. By the way, the opening line is considered by many to be one of the greatest ever written. "It was the morning of my eighty first birthday and I was in bed with my . . ." Buy it and read for yourself. This one will stay with you for years. Unless of a most violently parochial and small-minded disposition, I cannot envisage anyone failing to be thrilled and awed by a book so gigantic in theme and substance.
Rating: 3
Summary: One of the best first lines ever
Comment: It has been almost twenty years since I first read this novel. Two things stand out. One, the story emblazoned in my mind the power of the principle of unintended outcomes, especially the evil results of good deeds. And second, it has an opening sentence that I have remembered to this day: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me." Still makes me laugh after all this time.
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Title: Tremor of Intent: A Novel by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0393004163 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: July, 2004 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: One Hand Clapping: A Novel by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0786706317 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 01 July, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The End of the World News: An Entertainment by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0070089655 Publisher: McGraw-Hill Pub. Date: February, 1983 List Price(USD): $1.98 |
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Title: Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0786709723 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: 09 February, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Byrne by Anthony Burgess ISBN: 0786705752 Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: October, 1998 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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