The Wanting Seed (1962)

So here we have a quirky novel about population control. In a nutshell, the main character is having an affair. How that issue resolves itself is the plot, along with Burgess’ references to problems in society, the environment, and war. This is a world where homosexually and sterilization are encouraged, promotions are given to those with the least about of offspring, and cannibalism is a sport. Although creative at times, I felt this sorta thing has been done before.

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This book is….very strange, and I honestly am not exactly sure what Burgess himself is saying, although some of the characters say some horrible things.

The first half of the book reads like a treatise by a Quiverfull (Evangelical Christians who believe in having as many children as possible, more info: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/what-is-quiverfull) with some terror of a hyper-liberal future where people are denied their right to choose to have children (funny how they fear that but don’t get that pro-choice is all about protecting a woman’s right to choose what to do with her own reproductive organs but that’s another rant for another day), and people are forced into being gay/lesbian. I know this sounds like it could be an interesting flip-flop of current times, but it didn’t read that way for me. It read as a lot of homophobia and yelling about how population control goes against god’s plan and going against god’s plan sends the plagues. Seriously. That’s how it reads. But, I traveled on because this is Anthony Burgess, and characters don’t have to be likeable. They could be used to show the opposite point. But that’s not really what happens. What happens is that this set-up gets ditched for a mad-cap dash through sociology.

The last half of the book is kind of an interesting sociological exploration of how the world moves through the liberal/conservative/military cycle. It is mad-cap and bizarre, and as a person with a BA in History, I really enjoyed seeing a country move through those cycles at rapid-fire in a slapstick humor style. This part of the book felt like an entirely different book in fact. But I also think only a certain type of person would enjoy it. (Like, oh, Political Science and History majors).

As for character development, there is none. Everyone ends up pretty much where they started after having lived through the cycles of political change. It really reminds me a lot of playing Civ or SimCity where you move artificial people around to illustrate greater points. I enjoyed this alright, but I would have preferred stronger characterizations or at least some growth.

So, is the book a phobic conservative dream of what a liberal society would look like? I don’t think so. I think Burgess actually presented each part of the political cycle as awful, including the fall into tribal-feeling paganism. It sort of felt like the book was saying that someone somewhere will always be unhappy no matter what the political/sociological situation is. Depressing, huh? And yes I know it’s dystopian and lot of people think dystopias are innately depressing, but personally I think they can frequently offer a lot of insight and hope for the future. This just felt a bit defeatist. With some Quiverfull and homophobic characters to boot.

Overall I’m left feeling decidedly no reaction either way to this book, which is not what I was expecting from Burgess. I was neither offended nor enlightened and mildly entertained but I could have had the same entertainment from playing Civ on my computer. I think this book best appeals to readers who also enjoy studying political science or the history of societies, but even they should proceed with the caution that this is decidedly a mad-cap, non character-driven look at those topics.

Check out my full review: http://wp.me/pp7vL-X9 ( )

Last month I reread Anthony Burgess's most famous novel, A Clockwork Orange. In it I found new insights into Burgess's creative thought, encouraging me to read more of his oeuvre. I followed up on that idea with The Wanting Seed, which he wrote immediately following Clockwork. This dystopian novel demonstrates one of his persistent themes, the conflict between 'Augustinian' authoritarianism and 'neo-Pelagian' liberalism. The novel is set in a future similar to A Clockwork Orange, where Burgess projects an England in which Christianity, fertility, and heterosexuality will have been outlawed. His heroine, Beatrice-Joanna, is a dissident earth-mother who runs away to Wales to give birth in the home of her brother-in-law. Her husband, Tristram, is a history teacher who, in an early scene in the novel, explains the history and meaning of pelphase (Pelagianism) and gusphase (Augustinianism), while his brother heads the Ministry of Infertility. The brothers' relationship leads Tristram to think, “If you expect the worst from a person you can never be disappointed.”  Using an almost over-the-top comic style Burgess comments on themes including: the tyranny of the state, homosexuality, perpetual war, spontaneous orgies, the persistence of religious feeling, and cannibalism. After his escape from prison Tristram hitches a ride from a sort of local militia-man who comments:  "There doesn't seem to be a government at the moment, but we're trying to improvise some kind of regional law and order. . . We can't have all this, indiscriminate cannibalism and the drains out of order.  We've got our wives and children to think of." (pp 171-2)  Although the setting of the novel demonstrates the worst aspects of pelagian liberalism and addresses many societal issues, the primary subject is overpopulation and its relation to culture.

The novel is inventive with a comic seriousness that is humorous with periodic moments of unease; the line between the comic and the serious is sometimes blurred. The author's signature fecundity of ideas, his love of quotations and literary allusions, and his brilliant use of language carries the reader through the rough spots. However, it is not hard to understand why it was "considered too daring" by potential backers of Carlo Ponti's proposed film version. My admiration for Burgess as a novelist of ideas grows with each of his novels. This comically heretical entry, combines with its predecessor to provide a veritable one-two punch of dystopian delight. ( )

I read this about a week or two ago, but it's already fading in my memory.I guess the basic premise is that the world is overpopulated, so you're limited to how many children you can have. But polite, genteel people don't have any.Which has a knockoff effect of, if you're gay (particularly male and gay) you advance more quickly in your career, and things like that. So there's a real advantage to pretending to be gay. And the culture has adopted gay dress and mannerisms. And that is really the most interesting and appealing part of the book, so it's a shame that this isn't dealt with much and is soon enough overthrown.Because limiting population goes against the natural order of things and society tries to restabilize itself with heterosexual orgies. And oh yea, cannibalism comes into play too.And you don't realize, or I didn't realize, right off that this is some sort of absurdist fiction. That I'm not meant to take it too seriously. Which can work, but sort of only if you also care about the characters. Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is silly, but.. you can feel for Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect is fun, and some of the other characters are fun and/or interesting. And in this book, just.. no, you can't really like them. Well, I can't like them.So the book is kind of interesting in an intellectual way, but I wouldn't call it particularly enjoyable on any other front. ( )

Satirical novel set in a future England that is coming apart at the seams. The world is overpopulated and "it's sapiens to be homo" among other thing. We see the world collapse around the protagonists ears and come together again. This is a novel in which cannibalism is funny.