Fiction is a lying craft and it has no pretensions to exact knowledge. Plausibility is very nearly all. A novelist may check in a cheap encyclopedia such objective data –– details of the sinking of the Titanic, the formula for sodium glutamate –– as he needs for his narrative, but his art is a very tentative one and depends largely on guesswork as to how the human mind operates. As structure is important –– meaning the imposition of a beginning, a middle and an end on the flux of experience –– there has to be a large element of falsification. Nothing could be less scholarly than the average novel, even when its basis is historical fact… The novelist is a confidence trickster, while it is the task of the scholar to abhor trickery and teach scepticism.
'Writer Among Professors' [from Homage To Qwert Yuiop: Selected Journalism 1978-1985]
Use the link below to visit the website of THE INTERNATIONAL ANTHONY BURGESS FOUNDATION, an English-based organisation which 'encourages and supports public and scholarly interest in all aspects of the life and work of Anthony Burgess.' It also operates a museum/performance space in his home town of Manchester.
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