The Perfect Novel
|
I remember picking this up and getting a feeling of joy bubbling through me when I read the first line and found that I already liked Kenneth Toomey as he explained his thinking behind the first line a little way down the page. I think I was even more surprised that it didn't come across as clever-clever, elitist or smug - it just came over as intelligent, funny, humane writing.
I'm currently reading this for the second time in the space of a year, something I thought I'd long outgrown. This is a book that glories in literary heritage, in theological debate, and in the politics of sexuality, religion and art. Above all, Burgess glories in taking the time to construct a beautifully believable, human hero and peoples the novel with characters both real and imagined (although even the real ones are imagined).
I am a voracious, constant reader and Earthly Powers is my reward - it is the reward for any serious reader. A page turner that is also a great work of art. In my opinion, it's the perfect novel.
|
|
garlicky
|
garlicky puns???omnilingual jokes!!! top hole old boy...
the best sleeping pill I have ever used...a great cure for insomnia..
like 'young turk' amis, 'contrarian' hitchens, 'beaker' mcewan, 'chuckle chuckle..i'm a devilishly humorous fellow' rushdie - this mindless bore saw himself as high above the qoutidian by virtue of being a writer..another useless english novelist full of his own worth...hits the bulleye once or twice in what ? 37 books is it ?
|
|
|
Religion/Power
|
|
4.7 or 4.8 stars. A remarkable parody of that greatest of cliches - the self-indulgent reflections of a writer. But this is happily more than a conceptual joke. The language is sublime, the moments of brutality a punch in the crotch, the politics of religion masterful, the hero-author dynamic suitably ambiguous, the homosexual caricatures a little overblown but the wit laugh-out-loud. Seek it out.
|
|
|
Response from an Ordinary Person
|
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
A tour de force by an erudite and fluent author; he has structured a framework of individual lives and relationships within which he has opened to examination some of the fundamental contradictions of Catholicism and Christian religion. If God is all seeing and knowing how can he permit such horrors? If he gave all his creation free will then how is it no-one feels free? But these comments just touch the surface of a momentous work. Then I also found it self indulgent and exclusive. Exclusive? because I think he wrote this as much for himself and a small coterie of scholars as any ordinary reader such as myself. I believe I am well read and reasonably literate, but I often stopped at words that I had never come across before, so I wrote them down in a little note book to check their meaning later. This disturbed the rhythm of the text for me and I think such boasting of vocabulary unnecessary. Also his passages on a continent -Africa - I think he has never visited (apart from North Africa - the Muslim Territories) - were wholly unreal and naïve, and for me an uncalled for diversion. Finally; I tried to imagine the effort it must take to create such a work, and can only respond with awe and respect at the energy, talent, scholarship and breadth of knowledge Mr Burgess was able to bring to paper. This is a work that will last in my memory and demand I revisit.
|
|
|
Vivid, evocative, brilliant!
|
This, like the Alexandria Quartet, is a book that I initially started reading and stopped again, pretty quickly. Having learnt the error of my ways from re-reading and greatly enjoying the aforementioned AQ, I decided to give this another go and am so glad that I did.
Hard to describe but epic in scope, this book is the personal history of its narrator, Kenneth Toomey, a popular author, playwright and librettist, which also tells the story of a miracle-working (fictional) pope, his relation by marriage. Encompassing the greater part of the twentieth century, and mixing events real and invented, it makes compelling reading, enhanced by the author's vivid style and wickedly funny narrative voice. Well worth persevering with.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada