One Man's Chorus : The Uncollected Writings

by Burgess, Anthony; Forkner, Ben

• ISBN13: 9780786706990
• ISBN10: 0786706996
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-01
• Publisher: Perseus Books Group

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Genius Loci	p. 1
The Ball Is Free to Roll	p. 3
Francophonia	p. 17
Going North	p. 21
Understanding the French	p. 24
Never Again Again	p. 27
Something About Malaysia	p. 32
The Brigg	p. 42
Winterreise	p. 49
The Art of Liking Rome	p. 65
France and Myself	p. 69
Farewell (and Hello Again) Manchester	p. 75
Life (of a Sort) in Venice	p. 81
Manchester as Was	p. 88
In Our Time (and Other Reflections)	p. 93
Cut Off	p. 95
The Royals	p. 99
England in Europe	p. 107
After This Our Exile	p. 111
Thoughts on Time	p. 118
The Jew and the Joke	p. 127
The British Temper	p. 133
The World Doesn't Like Gipsies	p. 138
What Makes Comedy Comic?	p. 141
Thoughts on the Thatcher Decade	p. 146
Dirty Pictures	p. 152
God and God's Voices	p. 157
Ars Poetica	p. 165
Success	p. 167
The Celtic Sacrifice	p. 172
Shaw as Musician	p. 176
Ring	p. 180
The Literature of the British from 1900 to 1982	p. 190
All About Alice	p. 200
Flann O'Brien A Prefactory Word	p. 205
Artist's Life	p. 209
Elgar non e volgare	p. 213
The Gaudiness of Gaudi	p. 217
Orson Welles: The Artist as Bricoleur	p. 220
A Clockwork Orange Resucked	p. 226
The Brotherhood	p. 231
Why Were the Revolutionaries Reactionary?	p. 235
Shakespeare the Poet	p. 239
The Oriental Diseases of Fiction	p. 243
Playing Hamlet with Hamlet	p. 247
Graham Greene: A Reminiscence	p. 252
Craft and Crucifixion - the Writing of Fiction	p. 257
Strega in Do Maggiore	p. 266
First Novel	p. 270
Anniversaries and Celebrations	p. 275
Joyce as Centenarian	p. 277
Great Scott?	p. 285
Rudyard Kipling and the White Man's Burden	p. 291
Domesday	p. 295
Lorenzo	p. 299
Quiet Pioneer	p. 304
Good Gluck	p. 308
Unravelling Ravel	p. 312
God Struck with His Wind	p. 316
Celebrating T. S. Eliot, Parts I and II	p. 320
Lord Olivier	p. 328
Gerard Manley Hopkins 1844-1889	p. 333
Two Hundred Years of the Bounty	p. 337
Our Eternal Holmes	p. 341
The Cold Eye of Yeats	p. 344
Father of the OED	p. 348
Chaplin on Stage	p. 355
Evelyn Waugh: A Revaluation	p. 359
James Joyce: Fifty Years After	p. 363
Tolkien: A Centenary	p. 369
Virginia Woolf Mortua 1941	p. 373
Marilyn	p. 377
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.