Product Description
In the indefinite future, an impoverished Untied States has sold its Southwestern and Pacific Coast states to Mexico. Seattle is governed by administrators and police sent from Mexico on hardship tour. And it is hardship. Human life has been brutalized. At night, gangs control the streets. Idealistic revolutionaries are no less brutal than the gangs.In The Inquisitor, Jerome Gold depicted a society that was disintegrating by increments. In The Prisoner's Son, sequel to The Inquisitor - wait, let the author tell it...

"The Prisoner's Son...portrays a bottoming out of society, an America that is pathological at every level. The rules of society as we know them do not exist. Rather, they do exist, but without the veneer of rationalization that allows us to regard with detachment the breaking-up, not just of society, but of civilization. The world of The Prisoner's Son is one...of desperation...It is the world of the prison imposed on the lives of all of us." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A Day In The Life
The imagery almost seems true to life except that the actual decay of civilization as depicted in this book hasn't actually occurred (yet). The story is unsettling, so much that the reader can't avoid feeling as thoughhe could be one of the characters...or perhaps wish he was. Who wouldn'twant to live in a world of complete chaos where the government is socorrupt that the average citizen gets away with whatever crime or decrepitact he wants as long as the authorities don't care (what authorities)?Overall, a very realistic story, and well written. Thank you for yourhonesty Mr. Gold! ... Read more

Product Description
A novel in verse form, "Byrne" echoes and takes further many of the preoccupations of Burgess's earlier fiction. It tells the story of a rampant Irish artist who, in the early days of the century, goes rapidly to the bad and ends up within Hitler's Third Reich. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Burgess's Byrne great versifying fun
How can I describe "Byrne," a book by Burgess /(Anthony)? Putative novel, his last (O sorrow!). /'S about one Michael Byrne, a "defective lecherous/ Dreamer," all in ottava rima, (borrowed / From Ariosto), but which, to be sure, here is / Livelier and more fun than a carload /Of television sitcoms, no matter they /Be on Sunday, Wednesday or Saturday. / More Rabelaisian and Rabelais, /Out-Byrons Byron's endless long "Don Juan," /Satire, outrageous rhymes, in many ways /Better than Happy Hour, a ten-cent brew one /Downs; a treat for e'en those who're too laz- /Y or wary of poetic doin'. /Relax, sit back, you've got a lot to learn /From this wild poetic novel 'titled "Byrne." / "Why choose this agony of versifying /Instead of tapping journalistic prose?" /Burgess asks, but we know he's simply trying /To have some fun, which, as everybody knows, /'S not easy in this oft PC-ifying /World where everything--and nothing--goes. /Burgess shows that poetry can be fun, /Hilariously accessible to everyone. /Well p'rhaps not everyone. Halfway through he /Briefly changes to a different scheme, /A loftier prosody, more chewy, /Used by dreary Spenser in "Fairie Queene" /(Which we all suffered through in academe). /Meanwhile Tim and Tom appear, reprehend /Vanished pater, etcetera. I deem /"Byrne" versifying fun, it recommend. /It's one of those, you hate to see it end.---James Hursey ... Read more

Product Description
The famous 20th Cenbtury classic of a world dominated by teenage gangs. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A clockwork orange
Exelent, one of the best books ever written. Anthony Burgess goes into the mind of the juvenile delinquent so vividly. great vilin to hero story. ... Read more

Product Description
No descriptive material is available for this title. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A terrific introduction
Burgess, who is known for his almost fetishistic interest Shakespeare, was also quite a Joyce-head as well. This introduction, while difficult to find, is truly wonderful. I have read a few books on Joyce, and none can match Burgess' eloquence and enthusiasm. Ellman's biography is still the definitive Joyce tome, but Burgess has a freedom to wax fan boy in a way that Ellman could not, and the result is marvelous. Burgess' comments on Joyce's life are witty, touching and truthful, but what makes this book a must-have is his commentary on Finnegans Wake. No other critic has, in so few pages, made the "man-made mountain" seem so clear.
There are a few moments when Burgess labels certain linguistic acrobatics as "obvious" when they are clearly not. This book is not, in fact, for the ordinary reader. Presumably, however, an ordinary reader would not tackle the Wake in the first place. Burgess must be excused a touch of pretension here and there (he is a literary scholar, and literary scholars all lost touch with the ordinary reader ages ago), and the sheer rapture of this introduction makes it a must-read for any aspiring Joyce fan.
A lovely book, well worth the high price for a used copy. ... Read more

Product Description
A fascinating collection of images of James Joyce, his family, and friends, including Ezra Pound and F. Scott Fitzgerald, offers photographs, drawings, cartoons, and sculptures, some famous and familiar, some from private collections and previously unavailable. 10,000 first printing. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Demand a reprinting!
What a shame that the publisher let this first rate book go out of print.Perhaps, the market can work if enough folks demand a new printing of the book.

Portraits of Joyce as a Young Dog
OK, so I basically stole the title for this review from Dylan Thomas (another author to read!).At any rate, it seems this oversized book is out of print, although Amazon.com will try to find it for you.If they can't...

122 pages of fascinatingphotos, drawings, manuscript revisions, and quotes by Joyce; statues,drawings, photos, and even stamps of Joyce! The prints are excellent, andhelp you feel like you know the man (and family) just a little bit better. Originally published at $39.95 (a price for Joyce fans only, I think), itsnew low cost makes it an excellent purchase for all interested inliterature and/or photography.I haven't seen the $72 "Images ofJoyce," (sold at Amazon) but this well-designed book, showing Joyce atvarious ages and locations, is well worth looking for. ... Read more

Product Description

With energetically witty English verse throughout, Anthony Burgess’ translation of this well-loved 19th-century French classic about the swordsman-poet with the nose too large to be taken seriously was first acclaimed in the 1985 Royal Shakespeare Company production starring Derek Jacobi, then in the revival with Antony Sher in 1997, as well as providing the subtitles for the film version with Gerard Depardieu.

Customer Reviews (1)

The only translation that captures the poetry of Rostand's original
As time goes on, I am more and more impressed by Anthony Burgess's translation.

Most readers and performers are probably more familiar with the translation of Cyrano by Brian Hooker. Hooker's translation has much to recommend it but it fails to capture the poetic power, whimsy or grace of Rostand's play. I feel the Burgess translation better represents Cyrano to a modern reader.

One previous reviewer suggested that there was something almost absurd about Cyrano as he is portrayed by Rostand. Burgess himself had qualms about translating the play into rhyme. But this convention is powerful because it suggests that the men and women of Cyrano's dramatic world (even the lackwits) were impressed by cleverness, grace and beauty. It is set out in the play that Roxanne is one of the literary precieuse. The type of cleverness that Cyrano portrays in rhyme would appeal to her.

At the same time, Cyrano is not a fop but a man of action whose mind is not stilled even by combat. This translation also shows that Christian's "military wit" was something Cyrano could appreciate for its poetic appropriateness as well as for its courage. I think in some ways Cyrano's chivalry and heroism, as well as the more unrealistic elements of the play, are actually made more vivid and convincing by the use of rhyme.

Burgess transports us to Rostand's imagined world of poetry and chivalry directly. . . and does not relent for a moment in portraying it. I think the real Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac would have appreciated the flair of it all.

This version was also used as the basis for a musical starring Chritopher Plummer.The musical, unlike this translation,adapts the play freely at points. ... Read more

Product Description
Simon Burke's first stage play is a fork-tongued thriller set in the underbelly of contemporary England. ... Read more

Product Description
Publisher: ABBA ABBA delves into a literary mystery with all of the originality, imagination, and relish that readers have prized in the author of A Clockwork Orange, 1985, and Nothing Like the Sun. In this novel, Anthony Burgess conjectures the possible meeting in Rome in 1820 or 1821 of two supreme masters of the sonnet form. One is John Keats, who is dying in a house on the Spanish Steps. The other is Giuseppe Gioacchino Bellian extremely gifted poet little known outside Rome, because he writes unsentimental, often blasphemous poems in the rough dialect of the city streets.In the first part of the book, Burgess sets out a sensational literary speculation: If Belli had known Keats, would the latter have influenced him? If Keats had known Belli, might Keats have adopted something of the Italians earthy style into his own verse? The second part offers a canny selection of Bellis sometimes shocking poetry, translated into English with all of the bite and verbal flair of the originals by one J. J. Wilsonwho, by a stroke of good fortune, appears to have the singular gifts of the novels author himself. ... Read more

Product Description
In these previously uncollected essays written over the past two decades by Anthony Burgess, the masterful English novelist and elegant stylist, contemplates topics as various as oranges, Marilyn Monroe, Yiddish humor, dirty pictures, and the nature of God. His highlights include reflections upon literature and litterateurs, from such twentieth-century literary giants as James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf to the eccentric Sitwells to fellow novelists Evelyn Waugh and Graham Greene. Whether the subject is Charlie Chaplin or Margaret Thatcher, or Prince Hamlet, Burgess's one-man chorus is guaranteed to win your enthusiastic applause. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Burgess should've concentrated on journalism
This is top-drawer Tone-boy. Right up there with A MOUTHFUL OF AIR, his book about languages. His travel writing is on a par with Tim Moore's meisterwerks.

From WINTERREISE: "That wind still blows me towards Germany, but what I have to avoid is a strange siren voice borne on it, a quality of the German temperament that I find in myself and have always tried to subdue. This may be termed the sentimentality of the death-wish, which the end of TRISTAN AND ISOLDE succeeds in ennobling, but, in less transcendental forms, has always subtly qualified the German delight in making, building, constructing--whether a RING or a CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON."

And here's what Julian Barnes never got around to saying: "The French seem determined to destroy their Roman inheritance by chopping up words until they become as short as possible, and as capable of being confused with other chopped-up words as only a genuinely morbid condition of language can allow. Even when a French word or name bears some visual resemblance to its classical original, the spoken form submits to the axe. I can never grow used to pronouncing 'Jesus Christ' as 'Jezu Cri', and I feel that if the French could cut the holy name down to something like 'Je Cr', they would."

Great Book for musicians
Some great, informative writing, especially for musicians - Burgess was a composer as well as a writer. I am a music reviewer and I found his essays on Shaw and music most informative, ditto on Ravel. I do not think too much of the editorial comments, however.

Writing as Music
Whenever I retrospect Anthony Burgess, I am reminded of one comment: 'While the estimation of Burgess as a novelist is controversial, that as a critic is appreciated almost unanimously.' Probably its truth becomes more and more apparent as time passes. Among his well-known critical writings are "The Novel Now" and its development "99 Novels: the Best in English since 1939", and what is more, the collections of journalistic pieces: "Urgent Copy", and "Hommage to QWERT YUIOP". This one, collected poshumously, was published in paperback form this year.

According to the preface, the editor saw Burgess when he came to his university when he was wrestling with a doctorial dissertation and feeling bored. He was fascinated by Burgess'freewheeling character, wide reading and total recall. He says that Burgess could speak on almost all the themes of literature and recite endlessly 'The Wreck of the Deutchland' by G. M. Hopkins.

The construction is: (1)Genius Loci--invocation to a land (2)In Our Time--current pieces (3)Ars Poetica--on general culture (4)Anniversaries & Celebration--a lament for the dead

As is usual, the topics vary widely from Orson Wells, Marylin Monroe to Thatcher. I am a little surprised that I read it through easily as if I were carried by the stream of music of a 4-part Motet. The word 'infinitely readable' also appears on the back cover. His writing seems like a later Mozart. ... Read more