The Real Life of Anthony Burgess [Unabridged] [Hardcover]

In seeking to encompass Anthony Burgess's life in 400 pages, Andrew Biswell has taken on quite a task. Not only did Burgess produce poetry, biography, autobiography, works on music and linguistics, screenplays, children's books, mountains of journalism and over thirty novels, but almost every claim he made about his life seems to have been disputed at one time or another. Biswell, though, proves to be more than up to it. He manages to resolve the various controversies with something that looks like finality. Did Burgess's father really come in one evening to find his wife and daughter dead of Spanish flu and the infant Burgess still alive next to them? The answer is yes; but Biswell re-dates the episode by reference to the death certificates, and points to inconsistencies in Burgess's subsequent re-tellings of the story. What of his claims to have been trepanned by Sir Roger Bannister and given a year to live, leading him to bang out five novels in twelve months? This has been believed widely, but it turns out not to be true. Biswell shows as much by digging out Sir Roger and asking him. The neurologist (and, of course, athlete) explains he never performed a trepanning because he was never a surgeon. Burgess's legendary prolificness must have had its roots elsewhere. In these cases and others, Biswell does not allow his evident affection for Burgess stop him puncturing his claims. Of course, the biography has its faults as well. It says nothing about the supposed rape of Burgess's wife by GIs, an event said to have inspired a passage in A Clockwork Orange but which subsequently has been called into doubt. Also there are moments where one suspects that, having done his research, Biswell is reluctant not to display the results - so we get to hear an account of English defamation law (Burgess didn't grasp it) and the ins and outs of a portal haemorrhage (Burgess's wife died of one). Still, this is at least educational, and throughout the book Biswell is forensic, thought-provoking and even-handed. This really is the real life.

For longtime admirers of Anthony Burgess, as well as for members of his growing posthumous readership (like me), this book is an event. A dozen years since the death of one of the dozen best British novelists of the last half-century, Anthony Burgess finally has the biography he deserves. As scrupulous and as scholarly as the pseudo-biography of Roger Lewis of 2002 was distinctly un-so, this book captures all the personal and professional contrasts and contradictions of a mercurial, myriad-minded novelist-composer-poet-critic-playwright-translator whose lapsed Catholicism and lust for language were the twin goads that drove a stunning prolificness. For me his great verbal fluency—in books like the epic Earthly Powers and the picaresque verse-novel Byrne—match anything done since by Martin Amis, Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Richard Powers, and all the other prizewinning wunderkinds and polymaths of the present day. An unworthy critical reaction to Burgess’s unapologetic creative overplus seems to own the review pages in the UK right now, but Burgess is bigger than the land of his birth, and an embarrassing about-face may shortly follow, once the English rediscover what Burgess’s international readers already recognize—a comprehensive, insightful literary intelligence that any nation would be proud to lay claim to. From the rough streets of Manchester to the rowdiness of the Far East to the drunken roustabout of Burgess’s first marriage to the stylistic refinements of his best work, Andrew Biswell paints a careful, colourful portrait of a formidable artist and a fallible man. A Real pleasure, not to be missed.

Returned from holiday, where this book proved to be good company for a good few days, a dismissive and ill-informed review in today's Guardian (London, 3 December, 2005) prompts me to spring to its defence. Because, though this new biography undoubtedly has its faults, there is no way in the world it is `a dull book', as Guardian critic, Anthony Thwaite, would have us believe. Personally, I found this book to be a distinct improvement on Roger Lewis' recent biography, which to my mind was overloaded with far too many chunks of Burgess's own extant prose, seemingly as space fillers. (Roger Lewis's only saving grace, it seems to me, was in suggesting that the Burgess persona is itself the author's most convincing fictional creation.)

On the plus side, this most recent biography is written by a Burgess aficionado (which Roger Lewis most certainly was not), so it is to the author's credit that he chooses to reiterate this truism about Burgess that was first postulated by his biographical predecessor. (See page 306, where Deborah Regan, Burgess's literary agent since 1987 says: 'The distinction between life and fantasy was completely blurred.') In addition to this the author goes on to provide us with a multitude of fresh insights into Burgess's life story via contributions from former colleagues, friends, acquaintances, and writers - Robert Graves' footnoted reminiscence of a remembered Burgessian critique being an absolute gem. And last but not least, the author is generous enough to accord to L. W. Dever, Xaverian's long-serving history master of hallowed memory, the distinction of having introduced Burgess to the work of James Joyce, as opposed to his serving ignominiously and untruthfully (see LITTLE WILSON AND BIG GOD) as a boozing partner pure and simple.

On the minus side, the author is occasionally remiss with regard to Mancunian geography. For example, it is the right bank of the River Irk, not Manchester General Cemetery that is `the western border of [Burgess's birthplace] Harpurhey'. And he is mistaken too in referring to THE (i.e. colloquially there should be no definite article preceding) Lower Park Road, the location of Burgess's secondary school, Xaverian College. In fairness, though, this is not so severe a fault as Anthony Thwaite's imagining Xaverian to be a `Jesuit' school. (Has Anthony Thwaite perhaps not actually read this book - or, indeed, Roger Lewis's book, to say nothing of Burgess's two volumes of autobiography?)

Even so (p.224), it is surely demonstrably unsound for Dr Biswell to say that, amongst the things that so appalled Burgess upon his return to the UK from Malaysia were `sexual permissiveness' and `a falling away of religious belief'. (Burgess can't have it both ways - or can he?)

Imprecision is occasionally irritating too in THE REAL LIFE. On the one hand, the actual plot number of Burgess's mother's grave in Manchester General Cemetery is gratuitously volunteered, whereas the exact location of Burgess's own resting-place in Monaco is not pinpointed in any way.

Was imprecision such as this perhaps the price of access to Burgess's widow, Liana? Is this the reason too why the untimely death of Burgess's son, Paolo Andrea, is nowhere described as a suicide in this book?

This last omission is particularly interesting in view of Burgess's own speculation (page 7) that: `One becomes less able to give affection or take affection - because one never had this early filial experience'. So, did Burgess perhaps blame himself for insensitivity in his relationship with Paolo Andrea? And, if so, is a further volume of Burgessian biography perhaps needed on this account?

But all things considered with regard to THE REAL LIFE OF ANTHONY BURGESS, I would say unhesitatingly, by way of conclusion - paraphrasing Burgess's dedication of THE CLOCKWORK TESTAMENT (to Burt Lancaster, incidentally):

`. . . deserves to be read, deserves to be read.'