Customer Reviews

One Hand Clapping

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

_One Hand Clapping_ is that rarity, a truly rousing, dark, and hilarious satire which doesn't get lost by either being too silly or too dark. An excellent compromise, with an added bonus of not uncovering its true point until around the end. I can't help but sympathize with poor Burgess, whose entire life's work was defined by _A Clockwork Orange_; while that, too, is an excellent work, he has so much more in his back catalogue than just droogs and moloko!

One Hand Clapping is a short, bitterly humorous look at a British working-class couple who strive to win a fortune on a TV quiz show, then spend their fortune in a rather peculiar fashion. Although Once Hand Clapping was written in the early 1960s it's satiric message still rings true. I loved it.

However this novel is not for everyone. Firstly, the book has a very British feel about it. Much of the wording is not used in America, and is even distinctly old-fashioned here in England. But otherwise One Hand Clapping is an excellent introduction to the brilliant world of Anthony Burgess.

I can't disagree more with something12_2@hotmail.com. *One Hand Clapping* is a terrific book, funny, profound, and memorable. Although I read it several years ago, I think about quite a lot -- and remember quite vidily the pleasure I had reading it. I highly recommend it to both Burgess fans and those who have never read him, or think he just wrote *Clockwork Orange.* It's good to see *One Hand Clapping* is still in print.

From the very beginning this book has wit, well defined characterizations and a fine sense of place and atmosphere.
As the story moves along you are taken into the world of the character's loves, hates and desires which ultimately underscores the old saying, "Be careful what you wish for" in a wonderfully delicious black comedy the British seem to do better than most. One is tempted to read it through in one setting because it is hard to wait to find out what will happen next.

Master novelist Burgess entertains in his inimitable style with this nicely drawn character study of a well-meaning genius who makes a load of money on a quiz show. The plot gets rolling when he and his wife invite a starving poet to move in with them.

In the end, I was reminded of Bob Dylan's lyric from his great acerbic song 'Idiot Wind';

"I can't help it if I'm lucky."

Do you remember the BEVERLY HILLBILLIES TV sitcom back in 1962?

"This is the story about a man named Jed...a poor mountaineer who barely kept his family fed...one day he was shooting for some food and out from the ground came some bubbling crude...Texas Tea...the kin folks said Jed move away from there... this ain't the place you ought to be so they loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly...hills that is ...swimming pools... movie stars." (Introduction song BEVERLY HILLBILLIES TV sitcom)

An American TV sitcom complements an English pulp story from 1961 in that both tales make the journey from rags to riches just like Jed.

Howard and Janet are stalwart service proletarians in post war England. Howard is a too candid used car salesman and Janet works as a stocker in a grocery store. Howard has a hidden gift that will change their lives forever. Howard has a photographic memory which enables him to win big on a popular TV game show and later the horse track. Howard views his gift as a "deformity."

How a photographic memory give someone an advantage in horse racing is a mystery to me. How Howard could read as much as he did to answer every single obscure question correctly is another mystery. The couple leave their small home in a tiny village for a lavish spending spree in London. In a small London theatre, Howard correctly explains the Buddhist koan "one hand clapping" to the befuddled Janet only leaving me to wonder how Howard's intelligence can be just photographic.The saga of Howard and Janet continues with Howard strangely aloof and preoccupied as the couple engages in conspicuous consumption and lavish trips. Janet engages in adultery.

Janet's tortured self talk narration in prole-speak is entertaining as we learn that Shakespeare was a beatnik who wore ruffles and never bathed, her full length mink is just like the queen's, and whether the American term "Jumbo Steaks" referred to New York City roasted elephant entree or cooked Jumbo. Janet describes her dramatic turn of events in a dull monotone of high school thought. The prole self talk of Janet is tedious, patronizing and unfortunately dominates the book. I hate Burgess.

Burgess-the well known reactionary-seemed to have declared war on what C.S. Lewis called our "mass produced, conscripted age." In CLOCKWORK ORANGE it is a failed English communist state that produces youth gangs. In WANTING SEED, it is a failed birth control state that leads to a resurgent Catholic Church (a hierarchy) replete with cannibalistic orgies and mass procreation. In M/F, the book is written in Anglo Saxon archaic slang in contempt of the ordinary reader while the common folk in M/F are circus criminals. In ONE HAND CLAPPING, it is a bumbling proletariat gifted with nothing more than a "deformity" who can find success. What did Burgess have against the common man?

Howard's life path is parallel to Janet's yet always remains strangely methodical...a plan with an unknown purpose. Howard becomes more quilt ridden over somehow mimicking true talent with his curse deformity of photographic memory. Guilt ridden Howard gives money to a tabloid to help struggling artists...those with real talent. The cryptic Howard and the vacuous Janet are on a set of diverging paths and destinies that the reader must discover himself. I don't want to ruin the ending. The bored rich Janet sure loves her mink though.

Thy money perish with thee... Acts 8:20. How true here.

I hate Burgess but am attracted to him like a bear to honey. HONEY FOR THE BEARS is another Burgess book I haven't read, yet like Alec in CLOCKWORK ORANGE I am predestined,not to kill, but to finish another Burgess book.

My first encounter with the works of Burgess came in the 1970s, when I read with a frenzy several of his novels, one after the other. I read: A Vision of Battlements; Enderby (it was a single novel, with just that simple title, and not the current omnibus); The Wanting Seed; Napoleon Symphony; A Clockwork Orange (of course); and this one, One Hand Clapping: A Novel. To sum him up in the most general way, he is indeed something else. I found them all at least memorably entertaining, and a couple were absolutely brilliant. And when you consider the range of his novels, and the scope of his subjects, you can't disagree with Gore Vidal's assessment, who believed Burgess was one of the three best novelists from England, "but [Burgess] was unlike the whole lot in the sense that one never knew what he would do next." Vidal added, "He resisted category." Ain't that the truth.

It was when I read THIS novel that I realized just how talented a writer Burgess was, the way he made it sound so easy. He fully captured the uncomplicated first-person voice of Janet Shirley, a very naive housewife. Her husband, Howard, is an ordinary man with an extraordinary photographic memory, and he decides to enter a game show with the aim of winning the top prize. Through Mrs. Shirley's eyes, the reader is treated to observations -- humorous for their naivete -- that hint that there is something squirming in Mr. Shirley's gifted brain, while the first observer herself remains completely unaware of the implications of his disturbing behavior. To her, they were quirky; to the reader, they were portentous. Burgess made his narrator so vivid, he made it believable that she could be so oblivious to what was plainly obvious to the reader. I saw the novel as comic brilliance, and I never stopped thinking about it down through the years. Whenever I think of a fine example of a first-person narrative, this is the novel that comes to mind. So I bought one of these nifty trade paperbacks for my library, and I reread it recently. It turned out to be as good as my not-so-photographic memory told me it was. It was better in a lot of ways than reading it the first time, because I knew what I was looking for. It bears the distinct Burgess brand of originality, that's also easily accessible, and is deceptively simple.

In one scene in the story, the prize money has climbed to the grand sum. During the live broadcast, at this critical juncture, Howard appears to have given an incorrect answer. But Howard, so confident in his abilities, recommends that a bit of research would prove his answer correct. Janet is watching from a seat in the live audience, and tells us, "Then there was a kind of chaos. You got the idea that people were wildly ringing people up on the phone, and that other people were wildly going through big books somewhere at the back of the studio, and meanwhile the organist, who I also met and I thought was not a very nice sort of man, was playing sort of spooky music on his electric organ to fill up the time."

This is a very good book, rich in tone and understated comic flair. If you're a Burgess fan and you've not read this one, you should treat yourself to this gem of a story. Aside from the talent, the plot itself is too original to miss.
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WHEN an ordinary Joe from a used car mart parleys his photographic brain into a couple of hundred thousand dollars, the fun begins. When ordinary Joe (Howard, really) and his ordinary Janet visit the expensive, exclusive playgrounds of the world, the fun continues.

But when the root of all evil begins to sprout leaves and flowers -- watch out! As Burgess fans already know, behind the smile of the tiger, the jaws bit deep!

From the inside front page...

"The best first thing to do, when you've got a dead body and it's your husband's on the kitchen floor and you don't know what to do about it, is to make yourself a good strong cup of tea. So I put the kettle on and got the tea-things down from the shelf, having to step around Howard to do it. I made myself a really strong pot of tea and I opened a tin of evaporated milk to have with it, more like cream than milk. I don't know why I wanted that instead of milk, normally we just had it with tinned fruit salad, but I felt that I deserved a special cup of tea somehow. Then I sat down in the living-room, sipping this tea and wondering what was best to do. I should really get dressed and go for the police..."

This book surprised me a lot. I've read a few of Burgess's books and typically his style is more eloquent and he utilizes an enormous vocabulary. This book is written from the perspective of a woman who is kind of an idiot and therefore he does not put his vocabulary or great writing to work, but the style works really well as it suits the personality of the narrator. All that being said it's a quick and fun read and I'd highly recommend it, but if this is your first venture into Burgess keep in mind his novels are usually much different from this one.

as compared to the whole new language invented for Clockwork Orange but a decent effort that English readers would indentify with more than Americans and what was the horse racing system?