No novelist likes to spend years on the construction of a fictionalised life of Napoleon in the shape of a Beethoven symphony only to have this work dismissed in the Sunday papers as a 'resounding tinkle.' He likes even less disclosure of evidence that the journalistic reviewer has not read his work or has read it cursorily. A novel I wrote on the theme of free will and the nature of evil was dealt with very summarily and denounced as 'a nasty little shocker.' The academic thesis is a salve to deep wounds. Authors, especially novelists, are easily hurt and brood excessively about being misunderstood: the immaturity of response to bad reviews has to be deplored, but a certain emotional infantility seems to be one of the conditions for creating art.
No writer objects to the review which tells him what his work really means, though this run counter to his own conscious intention, or rebukes him for remediable faults (though few faults in writing are). But such reviews rarely occur, and what the writer is most strongly aware of in journalistic notices is a prepared position, a ready-made judgment unqualified by the act of reading, personal malice, the lack of humility appropriate to a self-publicist. Few reviews amount to genuine criticism, yet it is criticism that the writer needs. The academic critic is his ally in the desperate struggle to make words make sense.
'The Academic Critic and the Living Writer' [The Times Literary Supplement, 14 November 1986]
Use the link below to visit THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based non-profit organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess' in addition to operating an archive/performance space in his birthplace of Manchester.
https://www.anthonyburgess.org/
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