The Write Advice 220: ANTHONY BURGESS

 

I am by trade a novelist.  It is, I think, a harmless trade, though it is not everywhere considered a respectable one.  Novelists put dirty language into the mouths of their characters, and they show these characters fornicating or going to the toilet.  Moreover, it is not a useful trade, as is that of the carpenter or pastrycook.  The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another, he helps to fill the gaps that come in the serious fabric of living.  He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown.  He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like coloured balls.

      His use of words is not to be taken too seriously.  The President of the United States uses words, the physician or garage mechanic or army general or philosopher uses words, and these words seem to relate the real world, a world in which taxes have to be levied and then avoided, cars have to run, sicknesses to be made well, great thoughts thought and decisive battles engaged.  No creator of plots and personages, however great, is to be thought of as a serious thinker — not even Shakespeare.  Indeed, it is hard to know what the imaginative writer really does think, since he is hidden behind his scenes and his characters.  And when the characters start to think, and express their thoughts, these are not necessarily to be thought of as the writer's own… Even the tragic dramatist remains a clown, blowing a sad tune on a battered trombone.  And then his tragic mood is over and he becomes a buffoon, tumbling about and walking on his hands.  Not to be taken seriously.

 

'The Clockwork Condition' (1973, unpublished until 2012)

 

 

 

 

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 an archive/performance space in his home town of Manchester.



https://www.anthonyburgess.org/

 

 

 

 

 

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