Burgess is a natural writer, if such an animal exists, but he is certainly no struggler. Throughout his career he has been all too content to let his undeniable talents as a wordsmith, and his not inconsiderable erudition, carry more than their fair share of the artistic burden. That is a great pity since Burgess, a Joyce scholar and a writer almost painfully attuned to the possibilities of language in modern fiction, is superbly equipped to undertake a really major work. His apparent unwillingness to do this—to take the time to do it—is the worst kind of arrogance. It is as if he feels he is so clever, so on top of things, he need not exert himself. He's wrong.

Burgess has written only one first-rate novel: A Clockwork Orange. In it, he succeeded in transforming his oft-expressed anxieties about the future into an inspired work. But it would be a mistake to attribute the artistic success of the book to its theme: It is possible to disagree totally with Burgess' assertions and still admire his achievement. Clockwork is a brillant tour de force because, for once, the author marshaled all his linguistic inventiveness to the service of his art—rather than simply to make a point or to exhibit his cleverness. And the book sang.

Unfortunately, 1985 is merely the most recent confirmation that A Clockwork Orange, far from marking a turning point in Burgess' career, was one of those happy accidents where a writer who has been his own worst enemy succeeds briefly in giving full voice to his talent….

As the title indicates, the book is in part Burgess' attempt to correct and amend the totalitarian prospect as put forward by George Orwell…. [The] book in toto is a kind of polemic that Burgess has chosen to express in a variety of different prose forms. The argument, it must be emphasized, is practically the same one made in A Clockwork Orange, but that book did not demand to be judged as an argument….

Burgess believes that Orwell's vision of the future, as expressed in 1984, does not even come near to being an accurate portrayal of what real totalitarianism might be like…. The future, he argues, will be both more anarchic and more repressive than Orwell would have imagined, since Orwell had no notion of what Burgess calls "the scientific takeover of the free mind." In short, Burgess faults Orwell for believing that the individual consciousness had the slightest chance of surviving the pressures brought against it by state-controlled technologies.

To illustrate, Burgess presents 1985. In place of Orwell's Winston Smith we are given Bev Jones and taken on a revised tour of late 20th century Britain. It is a chaotic place, brimming with Arabs, and utterly dominated by the trade unions….

Bev Jones rebels against this system after his wife dies in a fire (the firemen were, of course, on strike). His odyssey through the underworld of Tucland comprises the bulk of 1985. Without a union card he is an unperson: The true totalitarian state will brook no resistance, nor will any be successful. (p. 16)

There is nothing particularly novel about all this. Science fiction writers have been cranking out similar narratives for a good many years now…. Moreover, Burgess' criticisms of Orwell for having extrapolated too much from his own historical situation make very curious reading when one realizes that the anarchic Britain painted so lovingly in 1985 is itself little more than an exaggerated rendering of a certain kind of Tory rhetoric….

Not only is Burgess guilty of precisely what he attacks Orwell for, but in his case the offense is more serious. Orwell was not fundamentally concerned with the details of life under Big Brother; he was trying to depict the nature and danger of totalitarianism. In contrast to Burgess, he really knew something about politics, about the totalitarian impulse and the totalitarian temptation. Burgess, who understands almost nothing about politics, dismisses or distorts the real nature of Orwell's thrust and proposes instead a vision of the future that is little more than cranky union-baiting….

Unlike sadness or horror or foreboding or despair, indignation—particularly in sclerotic form—is a rather callow emotion. And while 1985 is rich in indignation it is poor in everything else. Burgess' cleverness is not enough to carry him through what is, by any reckoning, a project demanding a great deal of thought, and enormous sophistication and, above all, sobriety. None of this would have been required to produce an interesting novel, as witness A Clockwork Orange. The artist can fulminate to his heart's content without endangering his enterprise; that is his special privilege. But in seeking to apply the artist's freedom outside of its realm, Burgess only serves to demonstrate how widely the laws and rights of art have diverged, in the modern period, from the laws and obligations of political and social discourse. (p. 17)