Customer Reviews

Enderby

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.