Book Description
Product Description
This is the first volume of Anthony Burgess's two-volume autobiography. It tells the story of a disaffected Manchester Catholic from his birth in 1917 up to the commencement, in 1959, of his career as a professional writer. Born Jack Wilson, Burgess grew up in one of the toughest areas of Manchester between the wars. His childhood in his stepmother's rowdy slummy pub, and later in a tobacconist's shop and an off-licence in Moss Side, offered little in the way of love, though later, in the attic bedroom he shares with a succession of putative maids, he was precociously initiated into the physical side of it.
This autobiography also deals with his awareness of a burgeoning artistic talent which for a long time could not find a proper outlet: should he be a cartoonist, a composer, a pianist, a poet? It deals with his unending struggle to reconcile a Catholic conscience with the prematurely discovered pleasures of sex. It also details the long tempestuous relationship with his first wife Lynne, an army career more comic than heroic, and his years as an education officer in Malaya and Borneo. As drinking, infidelity and despair take their toll, Burgess begins to write the first of the novels that would gain him fame if not money.
From the Back Cover
This is the first volume of Anthony Burgess's two-volume autobiography. Complete in itself, it tells the story of a disaffected Manchester Catholic from his birth in 1917 up to the commencement, in 1959, of his career as a professional writer.
Born Jack Wilson, Burgess grew up in one of the toughest areas of Manchester between the wars. His childhood in his stepmother's rowdy slummy pub, and later in a tobacconist's shop and an off-licence in the more respectable suburb of Moss Side, offered little in the way of love, though later, in the attic bedroom he shares with a succession of putative maids, he was precociously initiated into the physical side of it.
This autobiography also deals with his burgeoning awareness of an artistic talent which for a long time could not find its proper outlet: should he be a cartoonist, a composer, a pianist, a poet? It deals with an unending struggle to reconcile a Catholic conscience with the prematurely discovered pleasures of sex. It also details the long, tempestuous relationship with his Welsh first wife, Lynne, an army career more comic than heroic, and his years as an education officer in Malaya and Borneo. It was in the tropics at the age of 37, his marriage in trouble, his wife's health and his own in decline as heavy drinking, infidelity and despair took their toll, that Burgess began to write the first of the novels which would gain him fame if not money.
Wildly evocative of English provincial life in the 1920s, Little Wilson and Big God is an extraordinarily candid book of confessions.
