Biography of Anthony Burgess
Not only mechanical oranges
February 25, 1917November 22, 1993
Considered one of the most important novelists Anglo-Saxons, John Anthony Burgess Wilson was born to a modest English Catholic family in Manchester on February 25, 1917. After spending a childhood essentially serena graduated from the University in his hometown in Philology and literature. Its true, original vocation is music, art that does not practice as an amateur but very professional, when you consider that Burgess is a composer in all respects, with world premieres of his works. He will say that he discovered writing only in 35 years, as a revelation of what was called "aesthetic impulses".
During World War II he served as Music Director of the shows for British troops in Europe and in 1954 gets the post of education officer of literature and phonetics in Malaysia and Borneo, at the Central Advisory Council for Forces Education. Here writes his first novels, unfortunately not yet translated in Italy: "Time for a tiger, The enemy in the blanket" and "Beds in the east", republished even collectively-since 1964-under the title "The Malayan Trilogy" in which the author deals with the theme of racial conflict and the crisis of British colonialism in the far East.
In 1959 falls in England following the diagnosis-turned out wrong-to a brain tumor. He prophesied only one year old and he enjoys writing frantically: five novels, two plays, numerous short stories, scripts, symphonies, sonatas, translations of sonnets, songs and incidental music for radio and theatre. The tone of the novels of this period is comical-satirical, of acute criticism of contemporary society: "Devil of a state" (1961) is a farce on the theme of interference between love and Politics set in an imaginary African Caliphate, while "The wanting seed (1962) is a science fiction satire that suggests homosexuality, war and cannibalism as remedies to the population explosion. The 1962 is also his most famous work, "Clockwork orange" (translated into Italian as "a Clockwork Orange"), and Stanley Kubrick will draw in the 1971 movie "a Clockwork Orange, film which, consequently, will give Burgess renown. Beyond the indisputable merits of Kubrick's film, the writer's work is of exceptional quality and unique in its experimentalism. Written in a language invented, mixing popular jargon in London and by opposing her, aroused slave endings appear reactions among critics, some of whom accused him strangely the author of frivolity Linguistics and sensationalism.
Today the novel is recognized as one of the best of English literature, a serious study of the problem of evil, the faults and responsibilities of society. Anthony Burgess reaches a climax of linguistic acrobatics and pessimistic view of society with novel, non-fiction: the trilogy Enderby: Inside Mr. Enderby (1963), Enderby Outside (1968) and Enderby's End, or the Clockwork Testament (1974)-psychological biography and textual criticism together, anarchist poet of an imaginary alter ego of Burgess and MF (1971)-black comedy about incest and murder in the islands of the Caribbean. In 1968 Burgess leaves England for Italy and Malta moved to France, then use porima. In America gets the place of playwright for the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and the English teacher for New York's City College.
Article contributed by the team of collaborators.