Maclean’s: Are you very religious? Burgess: I believe there is a God, but He is not benign. You do your best, but you cannot expect too much because of this ingrained capacity to sin. Maclean’s: Why is evil a recurrent theme in your work?īurgess: There are two forces in Western society: one which believes that man was born in original sin and is capable of performing the most terrible enormities the other which sees man as perfectible-that it is only a matter of putting the environment right.
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Yet the theme of the book was very simple: we have to be free to choose between good and evil, otherwise we are turned into a kind of imitation fruit, with clockwork inside instead of juice and color and sense. The film exalted sex and violence in Technicolor. The film version caused it to be reread and misunderstood. Maclean’s: Why have you said that you regret writing A Clockwork Orange? Burgess: I am not terribly fond of the book because it has been misinterpreted. It is about time Canada had a literary Nobel. I have just come back from Stockholm, where I tried to persuade my friends on the Nobel committee to consider Robertson Davies as a possible candidate.
The Canadian novel is on the up and up, chiefly because of the phenomenon of Robertson Davies, who is a great novelist. Maclean’s: What is the state of English literature today?īurgess: The American novel is very healthy, but I am not sure about the British novel. Interviewed Burgess at the Algonquin Hotel in New York while he was in North America to promote his books. Maclean’s correspondent Theodora Lurie recently Lawrence, and The Kingdom of the Wicked, a novel that chronicles the rise of early Christianity and the fall of the Roman Empire. Two new books which are likely to add to his reputation as a versatile and prolific writer: Flame Into Being, a centennial tribute to D.H. An urbane British expatriate who currently lives in Monaco, Burgess is also an accomplished composer, linguist, screenwriter, musician and critic. Anthony Burgess, 68, is best known for his 1963 novel, A Clockwork Orange, which Stanley Kubrick turned into a controversial film in 1971.
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