Earthly Powers Group Read: whole book

Let 'er rip.

I'm not to the end yet, but I'm past chapter 42...I took a break for a while but am enjoying coming back to the novel. The narrator's experience in Nazi Germany is one of my favorite sections so far. How bizarre, the connection between him, his mother-in-law, and a certain famous Nazi official!

Kudos to Burgess for tracing some of the swastika's history. Not very many people seem to realize the original meaning of the symbol, much less mention the fylfot (also known as a swastik; basically a rounded version of the swastika).

I think my favorite section was the narrator's interlude in Asia. It was a point where I felt he really changed and matured and his intuition deepened. He is such a well-written character. Is anyone done yet who wants to discuss the ending, because I have some thoughts on that?

Anna, I'm hoping to finish in the next two days so that I don't have to lug my door-stopper hardcover to college. 120 pages left...

I'm on chapter 56, which I see is the shortest chapter. OK, now I'm on chapter 57.
One of my favourite sentences, as they are given the tour of the concentration camp in chapter 56:
"Among the members of Parliament was an overnourished Tory, very big, a former rugger blue, who said, "Good God," continually as though he was being made to sip bad port."

Done! I thought, as a teenager, one of the most perceptive parts was where Toomey was describing Eve's cultural education - decades later, students are still the same. They thrive on cheap popular culture but find it too difficult to read even Animal Farm and Hawthorne's Tales. Most people in my classes just go straight to Cliff Notes.

OK, I'm finished it. Great book (in the true meaning of the word great). If anyone asked me what it was actually about, I'd have a hard time replying. I'd probably say, "Everything."

Finished in the wee small hours. Part of the fascination for me is my reaction on re-reading. It had stuck in my mind for 30 years as a great book but as the years passed the reasons became vague. Now I know.

Anna -- Would love to hear your thoughts on the ending. He had to come full circle back to England, didn't he?

I absolutely loved this book. I think Toomey is one of my favorite characters EVER. In all the vast number of books I've ever read, he really stands out for being so very human and such a great character. His courage in standing up for his absolutely awful gay friend was one of my very favorite scenes.

The only issue I have with the ending is that I was kind of troubled by the whole "God" thing where he found out that "God" was actually the miracle kid. It was a weird, Dickensian fate-based coincidence in a very non-Dickensian book. It didn't seem to fit and I could not figure out how I was supposed to feel about it and felt sort of irritated.

I loved Earthly Powers too. I read it as a trade paperback during a summer internship, but loved it so much I hunted down a used hardcover copy. It's one of those books I like to dip in and read choice phrases and passages. Also a good "Next Steps" book for getting people into Anthony Burgess. Since people are either in love with or put off by Clockwork Orange and its Cockney-Soviet slanguage, Earthly Powers is a more traditional novel. Then, if one is so inclined, they can pursue the Burgess Sci Fi route and read The Wanting Seed or do the Burgess Comedy route and read the Enderby series. Or hunt down Burgess's book reviews and literary essays, along with A Mouthful of Air, his work on the English language.

Burgess, and this book, are a good litmus test for literary snobbery.

Anna: I thought Burgess was just being anti-religious there. Of the two great things he really stressed about Carlo - the working of miracles and the spread of the faith - both ironically ended up resulting in the deaths of the descendants of the woman Carlo referred to as a saint. I thought the twist was weird, but intriguing rather than irritating.

Anna and Susie, I agree with both of you. I thought it was a bit heavy-handed, but it didn't irritate me. I don't know about anti-religious - I'll have to think about that. What the ending definitely did was challenge the notion of free will, the foundation of all Carlo's philosophy, but for Ken Toomey irreconcilable with the hand he had been dealt. Carlo, the great proponent of free will, seems to have been a tool of "fate," or, at the very least, the exercise of his free will led to tragic (in the real sense of the word) consequences.

But he was allowed by his God to keep the kid alive, right? He was healing by spiritual means, i.e., prayer. Or are we supposed to start wondering if he was actually being given some sort of anti-God/demonic power?

I realize that Carlo is a very ambiguous character and some of the stuff he does is horrifying or at the very least hard for us non-saint readers to understand - but am left just feeling a little bit let down.

Maybe it is not so much the theological question but the fact that I was completely immersed in this very real story all the way through, and suddenly I was very heavily reminded that it is actually a plot that was made up by an author because of this twist.

I agree with Anna that the coincidence-driven denouement is generally found in much lesser works but I forgave the contrivance given the importance to the novel of the nature of evil and the role of faith. Also, because the book is so magnificent I'm willing to give Burgess a pass on a writerly device or two.

14: Oh yeah. It was GREAT. If it had not been so GREAT I would not even have been fazed in the slightest by the Dickensian Twist O' Fate. It is still great even with the DTOF. It is one of the greatest books I've ever read. Toomey is an unforgettable character.

12: Anti-religious for lack of a less ambiguous vocabulary word.

I think it's interesting that Ken and Hortense end up attending the Church of England, a kind of Catholicism with its fangs drawn, more comfortable, less demanding, more relaxed about things. I also found the character of the (quondam) Bishop of Gibraltar interesting. I thought he was going to be a figure of fun at first, but he actually seemed to be a point of sanity and calm, a "nice" man. It's interesting that he keeps popping up for no reason that affects the narrative. Sometimes these appearances are almost as improbable as the Dickensian Twists of Fate Anna mentions, which means he has to be there for a reason independent of the demands of the plot.