Right to an Answer is cynical and ironic. Devil of a State is a farce, while Honey for the Bears is comic throughout. The comic elements of both Earthly Powers and Tremor of Intent are interwoven with philosophical musings on the nature of good and evil. The humor of Burgess’s work is sometimes grotesque, often cynical, but usually integral to the fiction.

Sexuality, especially homosexuality, seems to be another obsession of Burgess. Many of the wives in his fiction are unfaithful: Hortense in Earthly Powers, Sheila in The Doctor Is Sick, Anne in Nothing Like the Sun, Mrs. Walters in Tremor of Intent, Belinda of Honey for the Bears, and Beatrice-Joanna of The Wanting Seed. Incest, and the potential for incest, also appears. Toomey often ponders the possibility of a sexual liaison with his sister Hortense. Shakespeare’s brother Richard has an affair with Shakespeare’s wife, which constitutes a type of incest since she is Richard’s sister-in-law. Hillier, in Tremor of Intent, often ruminates on his paternal yet sexual feelings toward Clara, with whom he does eventually have sex. MF also deals with the incestuous. Homosexuality often appears in Burgess’s work. WS (Burgess’s name for William Shakespeare) in Nothing Like the Sun becomes involved with his beautiful male sponsor. While in prison, Alex of A Clockwork Orange is forced to fend off an inmate to protect himself from homosexual advances. Alan in Tremor of Intent submits himself to a homosexual encounter in order to receive a stolen gun. The husband and wife of Honey for the Bears have an open marriage but are basically homosexual. Derek, the high government official of The Wanting Seed, is homosexual. Kenneth Toomey of Earthly Powers is a homosexual, and his sexual orientation is as much a concern of the novel as is the role of the church and God.

A Clockwork Orange

First published: 1962

Type of work: Novel

In an unidentified future society, teenage Alex recalls his violent gang activities, his imprisonment, and his reformation.

Burgess’s most memorable novel, A Clockwork Orange, cannot be discussed without addressing its language, “nadsat,” a combination of Russian, English, and slang, which was invented for the novel and which catapults its narrator, Alex, into the reader’s consciousness as few other books can. Alex invites readers along with him and his “droogs” (buddies) as they sit in a bar, eyeing the “devotchkas [girls] . . . dressed in the heighth of fashion” and wearing “make-up to match (rainbows round the glazzies [eyes], that is, and the rot [mouth] painted very wide).” He narrates their adventures as they do a bit of ultraviolence: They “razrez” a teacher’s books to bits, then “tolchock” him and treat him to the “old bootcrush”; they come across Billyboy and his five droogs, which leads to a gang fight with “the nozh [knife], the oozy [chain], the britva [razor], not just fisties and boots”; they beat to death an old woman and her “pusscats.”

Throughout part 1, the extreme violence of the novel is made palatable by the unusual language, which presents repulsive acts with strange, new words, drawing the reader into the book and into the violence itself. The language of the novel captures the reader and makes him or her one of Alex’s “droogs,” maintaining sympathy for Alex throughout his violent activities. When he rapes two ten-year-old girls in his room, he tells the reader that “this time they thought nothing fun and stopped creeching with high mirth, and had to submit to the strange and weird desires of Alexander the Large which . . . were choodessny and zammechat and very demanding. . . . But they were both very very drunken and could hardly feel very much.” When he hints at his brutality toward his father and mother, he reveals that his father was “like humble mumble chumble.” In addition to making the violence more acceptable, Alex’s inclusion of biblical language, “Oh, my brothers,” makes the narrator more than just an uneducated criminal; at times, in fact, Alex sounds suspiciously like a preacher addressing his congregation on the nature of good and evil. The language of A Clockwork Orange, innovative, powerful, and original, becomes almost like a character in the novel. The language not only distances the violence being described but also forces the reader to reevaluate that violence. Indeed, the language is one of the things that makes A Clockwork Orange so powerful.

The novel opens with the line “What’s it going to be then, eh?” This question, which serves as the structure to open each of the novel’s three sections, introduces the reader not only to the “humble narrator” Alex but also to one of the novel’s major themes: the nature of free will. In part 2, Alex, who is only fifteen and who has been incarcerated for murdering the old woman with the cats, is subjected to reconditioning by the State. In this, “the real weepy and like tragic part of the story,” the State tries to take away Alex’s free will by making him ill when he views sex and violence, and also when he listens to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which had been a favorite of Alex after his violent activities. The nature of free will and determinism is one of Burgess’s most oft-repeated themes; Alex and the prison chaplain, who constantly addresses Alex as “little 6655321” rather than by his name, discuss the fact that Alex is going “to be made into a good boy.” Burgess’s attack on behaviorists and on totalitarian states is obvious: Alex is made ill by drugs, is forced to view nauseatingly violent films, and is reduced to a sniveling, whining victim.

Part 3 presents the reader with a new, reformed Alex, an Alex without free will or freedom of choice, an Alex who has become a victim, and an Alex who ultimately tries to commit suicide. Something of a celebrity after his reconditioning by the State, Alex views a photograph of himself in the newspaper, looking “very gloomy and like scared, but that was really with the flashbulbs going pop pop all the time.” Upon arrival home, Alex learns that his parents have rented his room to a lodger and that he is no longer welcome there. All of his personal belongings were sold to pay for the upkeep of the orphaned cats of the woman Alex had murdered. Alex staggers away, only to encounter some of his former victims, who beat him and subject him to the same treatment to which he had originally subjected them.

Throughout, Burgess makes it clear that without freedom of choice and free will, even when that choice is used to commit evil, people become helpless victims of society and life. In his despair at his life without choice, Alex tries to commit suicide, leading the State to be accused of failure in its “criminal reform scheme” and to be accused of figurative murder, since the State has, indeed, murdered the real Alex. Alex’s attempted suicide makes him feel “filled up again with clean.” It also makes his parents repent for their abominable treatment of him after his release from prison. The government authorities try to restore Alex to his former, unreconditioned self.

Until 1986, the published novel excluded the final chapter, as did Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, and the second to the last chapter ends with Alex’s imagining himself doing some ultraviolence and his ironic comment, “I was cured all right.” The final chapter, however, though often considered weak by American audiences or critics, reveals another of Burgess’s important themes: an essentially optimistic view of humankind. Alex chooses to reject his formerly violent ways. He tells his audience, “And all it was was that I was young.” Alex decides to grow up and have a family. Just as he had chosen to commit violence, with free will Alex can choose to avoid evil.

Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare’s Love-Life

First published: 1964

Type of work: Novel

Set in Elizabethan England, and using Elizabethan language and idiom, this fictional account of William Shakespeare’s love life concentrates on his sexual encounters.

In Nothing Like the Sun: A Story of Shakespeare’s Love-Life, Anthony Burgess freely imagines the sexual exploits and love life of William Shakespeare. The protagonist, identified as WS throughout the novel, is seduced and forced into marriage with Anne Hathaway by her pregnancy. WS does not believe the child is his, and this establishes some of the themes of the novel: sexual infidelity, manipulation, and coercion. WS’s relationship with his wife is not a happy one, and, despite the birth of twins, whom WS does claim as his own, he goes to London to work and live, rarely returning home to his wife and children, who live with WS’s parents and siblings.

Away from home, WS becomes involved with his beautiful male sponsor, the earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesly, to whom “Venus and Adonis” and the sonnets are dedicated. Like WS’s wife, Southampton is also unfaithful to WS, which forces WS to seek the love of his “dark lady” in the arms of Fatimah, a beauty whom WS describes as neither black nor white, but “gold.” Fatimah, greatly interested in WS’s friends and acquaintances, eventually has an affair with Wriothesly. When WS discovers her infidelity, he returns to Stratford, only to find himself cuckolded by his own brother. WS returns to London. After a time, he takes Fatimah back. From her, WS contracts syphilis, which Fatimah contracted from Wriothesly. According to Burgess, this disease affects WS’s worldview, leading, by implication, to the darker artistic vision of the tragedies.

Interwoven with WS’s sexual exploits and disappointments is the milieu of Elizabethan England, Burgess shows his readers the effects of the plague, the struggles of the theaters, and the tempests of the playwrights and their players, all in the idiom and language of the Elizabethans. Burgess abundantly displays his linguistic ability and playfulness in Nothing Like the Sun. Many of the characters speak lines from Shakespeare’s plays, and Burgess describes the environment, characters, and behavior in language that approximates that of the time period, lending a richness and complexity to the novel that would not have been comparable with contemporary English. The use of language is also of great importance to the “word-boy” WS, so the Elizabethan English in the novel becomes an appropriate metaphor for WS’s struggles to form language that fits his view of the world and to express his deepest beliefs. To emphasize this importance of language, a few parts of the novel are written as a journal or as if they were excerpts from a drama.

As a sort of prologue (though not identified as such) before the novel proper, these words appear: “Mr. Burgess’s farewell lecture to his special students . . . who complained that Shakespeare had nothing to give to the East. (Thanks for the farewell gift of three bottles of samsu. I will take a swig now. Delicious.)” In the epilogue, the reader is again introduced to this samsu-swigging persona, who enters the narrative of the novel only once or twice. The point of view in the epilogue immediately returns to that of WS, however, who is now dying, attended by his physician son-in-law. The viewpoint in Nothing Like the Sun is almost consistently that of WS, so it is unclear why Burgess’s persona intrudes into the narrative, especially since Burgess does so infrequently and inconsequentially.

Tremor of Intent

First published: 1966

Type of work: Novel

In this parody of the spy genre, secret agent Hillier is sent to reclaim a British scientist named Roper, and he encounters the villainous Theodorescu.

In the first part of Burgess’s Tremor of Intent, the protagonist is a secret agent named Hillier, who wishes to retire and who suffers from the “two chronic diseases of gluttony and satyriasis.” He recounts his memories of his childhood and young adult relationship with Roper, a British scientist. Hillier has been sent, on this last mission before retirement, to recover Roper from the Soviet Union.

Many of Burgess’s standard themes appear in this part of the book: the role of the church and religion, the duality of good and evil, the nature of free will, and the infidelity of wives. Roper and Hillier address many of these topics themselves, but Roper also discusses the philosophical issues with others. Roper’s wife, a German girl whom he married after World War II, is unfaithful, and Hillier, ostensibly in the name of Roper’s honor, beats her lover (just before Hillier has sex with her himself). Though at the beginning of the novel Hillier is on a cruise ship on his way to recover Roper, it is not until part 2 that the action of the novel actually takes place on the cruise ship.

In part 2, where the parody of the spy genre begins in earnest, Hillier meets the siblings Alan and Clara Walters, who will aid him in his attempt to get Roper and who will save Hillier’s life. Young Clara represents the innocent female in the novel, and, though Hillier will ultimately have relations with her, he spends much of the novel avoiding sexual contact with her, trying to convince himself that his feelings toward her are paternal. He readily admits his sexual feelings, however, for Miss Devi, the wicked woman of the genre; she is employed as secretary to the novel’s villian, Mr. Theodorescu, a gluttonous, obese pederast.

Hillier engages in a gluttony contest with Theodorescu, and Burgess catalogs the foods they eat in great detail. Hillier also indulges in sexual antics with Miss Devi, leading to his being tricked (by drugs) into giving Theodorescu information, which the villain, as a neutral, plans to sell to the highest bidder. Burgess clearly condemns the villain Theodorescu for being a neutral. Apparently, not choosing sides, or choosing to be on all sides, is a crime in this novel; many of the other characters, but especially the young boy Alan, detest such neutrality.

In part 3, after Hillier finds Roper, he discovers that he himself is the one who has been duped: He has not been sent to rescue Roper after all, but to be killed. True to the genre, however, Hillier is saved. Burgess has the assassin engage in a philosophical discussion with Hillier and Roper, allowing them time to be rescued.

Hillier then finds Theodorescu, gorges the villain with information, and eliminates him. Hillier also has his long-anticipated sexual rendezvous with Clara. Even while parodying the genre, Burgess presents a plot with sufficient twists and surprises to retain the reader’s interest. Though the sometimes lengthy discussions on good and evil or on the nature of choice may seem inappropriate, they can also be interpreted as Burgess’s parody of the genre: His spies and villains deal with major philosophical issues even as they practice their craft.

In part 4, Burgess has Clara and Alan, who were essential components of Hillier’s success in surviving his last assignment, come to visit Hillier, and the three of them briefly discuss some of the philosophical issues present in the early parts of the novel. Hillier, former spy, glutton, and satyr, has now, in the ultimate parody of the spy genre and in the ultimate representation of Burgess’s essentially optimistic worldview, become a priest. Burgess does not play with language excessively in Tremor of Intent as he does in some of his other novels. His characters discuss his usual themes in great detail.

Napoleon Symphony

First published: 1974

Type of work: Novel

In this fictionalized biography of Napoleon I, Burgess employs the structure of Ludwig van Beethoven’s third symphony, the Eroica, as a controlling literary device.

When Beethoven began to work on his third symphony, the Eroica, he viewed the work as a tribute to Napoleon I. As he proceeded with the composition, however, he lost faith in Napoleon; Beethoven was so irked when Napoleon declared himself emperor of France that the composer ended up dedicating the Eroica not to Napoleon but to Prometheus. In Napoleon Symphony, Burgess merges his skill in writing with his highly developed knowledge of music to produce a tragicomical biography of the famed French general and emperor.

Like Beethoven’s symphony, Burgess’s novel is divided into movements, each of which focuses on a significant period in Napoleon’s life. The novel is at once complex but eminently accessible to general readers. Readers with strong backgrounds in history and music will find hidden gems of meaning that might easily be missed by more casual readers. Less sophisticated readers, however, will delight in the basic story Burgess is telling and in the humor with which he tells it.

The novel covers Napoleon’s life from the time he married Josephine to his death and some of the period following it. Just as Beethoven’s symphony has four movements, so does Burgess’s novel. In structuring it, Burgess played the Eroica over and over on his phonograph, timing each movement meticulously. He then worked out a way to make the sections of his novel proportionate to the movements of the symphony.

Following his death on the island of St. Helena, Burgess’s Napoleon assumes Promethean proportions. Despite his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon had moved relentlessly toward his ideal objective of uniting Europe, for which Burgess celebrates him. The greatest strength of Napoleon Symphony is that in structuring it parallel to the Eroica, Burgess succeeds in making the French emperor a rounded character. Readers see him as a conquering hero, but they also are given access to him in his more personal moments.

In one section, Napoleon, who has no heir, is shown presiding over a family dinner. Most of the attendees at this dinner are fueled by greed. The salient question “What is in it for me?” underlies the motives of the people at this gathering. The irony of seeing a Napoleon who, although he could lead armies and shape empires, could not control his and Josephine’s grasping relatives is not lost on readers.

Earthly Powers

First published: 1980

Type of work: Novel

Against a backdrop of international events of the twentieth century, the homosexual author Kenneth Toomey narrates the story of his life.

Earthly Powers contains many of Burgess’s favorite themes: the duality of nature, good versus evil, free will versus determinism, sexuality, and infidelity. The narrator, homosexual author Kenneth Toomey, becomes related, through the marriage of his sister Hortense, to the Catholic family Campanati, whose adopted son Carlo will one day become pope. Though future pontiff Carlo Campanati is rarely in the novel, when he is present, he and the narrator often argue about such philosophical issues as free will, choice, and the nature of a God who creates homosexuals and whose church condemns homosexuality.

Toomey is eighty-one years old at the start of the novel. When he attempts to end the relationship with his unfaithful lover-secretary Geoffrey, Geoffrey threatens blackmail. Geoffrey, however, is then forced to flee to avoid criminal prosecution for some crime he has committed. Early in the novel, Toomey is asked to corroborate a “miracle” supposedly performed by Carlo years earlier; to rid himself of Geoffrey, Toomey sends Geoffrey to Chicago to investigate the miracle.

The novel then explores Toomey’s long life, including his various affairs and betrayals: with Val, who leaves him and who will one day become a poet; with Sir Richard Curry Burt, who involves Toomey in a bizarre homosexual situation at a dock; with Ralph, an African American, who leaves Toomey to return to Africa and his black heritage; and with physician Phillip Shawcross, a platonic relationship that Toomey claims is his greatest love.

Like the wives in Burgess’s other works, Toomey’s male lovers in this novel are often unfaithful and frequently cruel. Toomey, like many of Burgess’s characters, is obsessed with sexuality and often has incestuous thoughts about his sister Hortense, who seems to be the only woman with whom he would consider having a physical relationship. After her divorce, Hortense has a lesbian relationship, despite the fact that she had previously reviled Toomey for his homosexuality. At the end of the novel, Toomey and his sister Hortense are living together, as Mr. and Mrs. Toomey, and sleep in the same bedroom, though in separate beds.

Woven into the story of Toomey’s relatively unhappy love life are the stories of his sister Hortense, who marries Domenico Campanati, the pontiff’s brother, and who is unfaithful in order to give her sterile husband children; of Toomey’s brother Tom, a comedian who dies, apparently from smoking-induced cancer; of Toomey’s nephew John, who is killed in Africa, along with his wife, after Toomey helps finance a research trip for them; and of John’s twin sister, Ann, whose own daughter Eve will become tragically involved with the person whom Carlo Campanati saved in the miracle performed so long ago. Toomey’s life intersects not only with these characters but also with various literary and historical personages, some of whom are actually presented in the plot of the novel, and others who are mentioned only in passing: James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, George Orwell, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels, to name a few.

By the end of the novel, in a bizarre twist of the characters’ fates, Toomey learns that the child miraculously saved by Carlo Campanati grew up to become Godfrey Manning, or God for short, a cult figure who poisons his entire congregation with cyanide but does not join his flock in this ultimate communion. Burgess’s irony is deftly presented, especially in the final chapters of the novel. His homosexual narrator remains a relatively sympathetic character throughout Earthly Powers, and Burgess’s plot successfully weaves the stories of all the characters together. Burgess does not engage in extensive linguistic wordplay or invent new language for this novel, as he does in many of his other books, but he does explore in depth his usual philosophical and theological issues: the nature of good and evil, the nature of free will and choice.