The Complete Enderby : Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, Enderby's Dark Lady [Paperback]

Anthony Burgess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996

Collected here for the first time under one cover are the four novels featuring Anthony Burgess's greatest comic creation, the perdurable poet F.X. Enderby. "With the most offhand, scurrilous charm, Burgess illustrates (how Enderby the artist) is the man who expresses for all men their unbuttoned true selves".--Time.

Product Details

• Paperback: 630 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786702486
• ISBN-13: 978-0786702480
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.2 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #656,664 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anthony Burgess (25th February 1917-22nd November 1993) was one of the UK's leading academics and most respected literary figures. A prolific author, during his writing career Burgess found success as a novelist, critic, composer, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer, essayist, poet and librettist, as well as working as a translator, broadcaster, linguist and educationalist. His fiction also includes NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life, but he is perhaps most famous for the complex and controversial novel A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, exploring the nature of evil. Born in Manchester, he spent time living in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England, until his death in 1993.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burgess' Best, January 25, 2000

By 

Paul Arnold (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Enderby : Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, Enderby's Dark Lady (Paperback)

In these novels, Anthony Burgess has done more to de-mystify the creative process (and those who persue it) than any other modern writer. His protagonist, F. X. Enderby, professional English poet, is as flawed as any character ever created. From his almost constant malapropisms down to his bodily emissions, he is every person with true human frailties. He stumbles his way through everyday conversations (often both misunderstanding and misunderstood) while at the same time offending almost everyone he comes into contact with. He is incapable of handling life in the "real" world and is shamelessly exploited by those who do.

In spite of his human failings, Enderby produces things of great beauty. The delicately worded, well balanced verses offer a wonderful counterpoint to Enderby's social ineptitudes and lack of common sense.

There is also a fairly strong political angle in the books which readers in today's society should heed. Censorship, that demon of modern P.C. sensibility, is discussed here intelligently and honestly. Bear in mind, these books are fairly old and some of the racial and sexual comments made in them will reflect this. However, I think you will find a certain balance in their use; everyone gets it in the end. Including Enderby.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Awaiting rediscovery., June 4, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Enderby : Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, Enderby's Dark Lady (Paperback)

Burgess is probably the most underrated writer in English in the last half of the twentieth century. This collection of somewhat autobiographical novels about F.X. Enderby is on the surface an inventive jaunt about the globe and on little slips of paper, collecting half-noticed experience and half-lines of eventual poetry. Nabokov said that his work was (is?) most appreciated when the reader assumed the point-of-view not of the protagonist, but of the author or fashioner. Burgess is tricky on this point and seems to have played with the difficulty in this distinction throughout his career, making the character who is the narrator assume some part of the creation of the finished work and putting some part of himself in the animated speaker. I hope that in the near future this and other of Burgess' works (I'm reading Earthly Powers now) find a new audience because there is a great deal to enjoy and to absorb. He wrote a great deal and much of it is very great

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enderby, Burgess at his best, July 30, 2001

By 

"umd_cyberpunk" (MA, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Complete Enderby : Inside Mr. Enderby, Enderby Outside, the Clockwork Testament, Enderby's Dark Lady (Paperback)

"Inside Mr. Enderby," is wonderful and off beat. "Enderby Outside," follows the off kilter story of Enderby and the absurdity that is his life. "The Clockwork Testament," as the title would suggest, has shadings of Burgess' very well known book, "Clockwork Orange." The "Testament," is surreal and twisted while funny at the same time. The final story, "Enderby's Dark Lady," is wonderful and surprising to the reader with value not only for fans of the dyspeptic poet but lovers of Shakespeare as well.

While slightly dated, these stories have a bite to them that speaks volumes of truth for anyone who has been an academic, a professional writer or just a little bit out of touch with the world around them. Enderby is often misunderstood and though he makes his living in a "communication" field, he has a lot of trouble getting his point across to others.

Not only are these books funny, but as is often the case with Burgess, the satire is thinly veiled and pointing at both society and himself.