Other Definitions
anthony burgess (dict)
|
Anthony BurgessJohn Anthony Burgess Wilson (February 25, 1917 – November 25, 1993), better known by the pen name Anthony Burgess, was an English writer. Life Burgess was born in Manchester, England and was left motherless at two years old by the 1918–1919 influenza pandemic. He was raised by his aunt and later his stepmother. Burgess was schooled at Bishop Bilsborrow school in Moss Side and Xaverian College, and graduated in English literature from the University of Manchester. In 1940 he joined the military, becoming a sergeant in the British Army Education Corps, being stationed for a period in Gibraltar. After the war he was a schoolmaster for some years at Banbury Grammar School, Oxfordshire. In 1954 he left for Malaya (now Malaysia), where he was a teacher and education officer, stationed in Kuala Kangsar (at the Malay College) and subsequently Kota Bharu. He attained fluency in written and spoken Malay and wrote his first novels, Time For A Tiger, "The Enemy in the Blanket" and "Beds in the East". Taking up a further post in Brunei, then part of British North Borneo, in 1959, he sketched the novel that, when it was published much later, was titled "Devil of a State". But he collapsed in a classroom, and was repatriated. He is thought at that time to have been diagnosed as having an inoperable brain tumour, with the likelihood of only surviving a short time. However, this is disputed. Some accounts have him suffering from the effects merely of prolonged heavy drinking and overwork. Retiring from teaching, he was by 1960 a full-time writer, living successively in Hove, in Etchingham (both in Sussex), and in Chiswick, west London. Within a decade he was once again living outside Britain, in Malta, in Rome and finally in Monaco. A lifelong heavy smoker, Burgess returned to England to die of lung cancer in 1993. Work In a prolific career he published over 50 books covering a wide range of subject matter, including mainstream fiction such as the Enderby trilogy (about a reclusive poet), dystopian science fiction such as The Wanting Seed, and a guide to James Joyce, Here Comes Everybody. His most famous work (or notorious, after Stanley Kubrick made a controversial film adaptation) was the novel A Clockwork Orange (1962). Inspired initially by an incident during World War II in which his wife was assaulted by US army deserters, the book was an examination of free will and morality. The young anti-hero, Alex, captured after a career of violence and mayhem, is given aversion conditioning to stop his violence. It makes him defenceless against other people and unable to enjoy the music that, besides violence, had been his other only pleasure in life. Burgess had a considerable interest in music, and he composed regularly throughout his life. His music is infrequently performed today, but several of his pieces were broadcast during his lifetime on BBC Radio, including a musical based on James Joyce's Ulysses called The Blooms of Dublin (composed in 1982). His Symphony No. 3 was premiered by the University of Iowa orchestra in 1975. He even modelled the structure of one of his novels, The Napoleon Symphony (1974), upon Beethoven's Eroica symphony. His fluency in languages (he could speak Malay, Russian, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Welsh in addition to his native English, as well as some Hebrew, Japanese, Chinese, Swedish and Persian) was reflected in the invented teen slang of A Clockwork Orange (called Nadsat) and in the film Quest for Fire (1981), for which Burgess invented an entire prehistoric language for the characters to speak. Burgess's literary and musical papers are currently archived in the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Bibliography Fiction Nonfiction External links - http://www.anthonyburgess.com/
Burgess, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Burgess, Anthony Burgess, Anthony
|
 |