Enderby [Paperback]

Anthony Burgess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1963

A hilarious and touching "portrait of the artist" by the author of "Tremor of Intent" and "A Clockwork Orange."

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Ballentine (1963)
• ASIN: B001OVLLQQ
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A shy poet is forced to face the world, with comic results., December 2, 1996

By A Customer

This review is from: Enderby (Hardcover)

Enderby is a minor poet, with a safe, comfortable existence.
He is forced by a chain of circumstance to engage the 60's
world of women's magazines, pop stars, and monster movies,
along the way losing and recovering his poetic muse.

This (or these; ENDERBY was originally published as two
novels) book was written while Burgess was under a sentence
of death from his doctor, in an attempt to create an estate
to leave his wife. Nevertheless, the book is both funny and
wise. Along with the comedy, Burgess has interesting things
to say about art and the artist. He also has fun,
especially with word-play. This is the only book I know in
which the word 'onions' appears four times in a row in a
perfectly correct English.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Burgess best, January 21, 2005

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Enderby (Hardcover)

I have read a number of Burgess many fictional works. I know the most well- known and highly esteemed is ' The Clockwork Orange' But because of the violence and language I could not really get into it. This novel Enderby on the other hand I found to be rich in incident, and language, amusing and at times funny. Burgess has irony and humor and intelligence and all these are felt in the bumbling poet's meeting with a fast - changing world of the sixties.

I do not find any of Burgess fiction to be great, or even to move deeply. He is to my mind more in the tradition of Pope and Dryden however remote that may seem in his great intelligence, knowledge, satirical and ironic humor. He is a very very good writer, but as I understand it he is not like his heroes, Shakespeare, Joyce, Lawrence and even Hemingway, a great one.