Tremor of Intent
by Anthony Burgess 
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From the author of A Clockwork Orange, a brilliantly funny spy novel.Tags
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A slick satire disguised as a spy novel, this is one of my favorite Burgess books. Who, other than Burgess, could have come up with the following: "This damnable sex, boys — ah, you do well to writhe in your beds at the very mention of the word. All the evil of our modern times springs from unholy lust, the act of the dog and the bitch on the bouncing bed, limbs going like traction engines, the divine gift of articulate speech diminished to squeals and groans and pantings. It is terrible, terrible, an abomination before God and His Holy Mother. Lust is the fount of all other of the deadly sins, leading to pride of the flesh, covetousness of the flesh, anger in the thwarting of desire, gluttony to feed the spent body to be at it again, show more envy of the sexual prowess and sexual success of others, sloth to admit enervating day-dreams of lust. Only in the married state, by God’s holy grace, is it sanctified, for then it becomes the means of begetting fresh souls for the peopling of the Kingdom of Heaven." show less
One of several of Burgess’s Cold War preoccupied novels. It was written during the period he believed he was dying and cranked out 10 books as a life insurance policy for his wife. In it our spy is no 007 of the silver screen. He is haunted by experiences from WWII cleaning up after the Nazis. A spy by default because of a youthful interest in Russian, he believes he has come to terms with his position at the end of a long and infamous career. One last mission forces him to reconcile the past and to carve out a future. Dark and humorous at the same time, masterfully written as all of Burgess’s work is.
Anthony Burgess is without a doubt one of the greatest writers I've read. First the commentary from the narrator is never without opinion but is spot on and never dull. The plot lines and conclusion of this novel make it hard to put down but the description and sheer amount of pre-writing thought that went into its construction make it more than just an entertaining read. It is provocative without ever being ridiculous.
Set during the Cold War, an English spy recounts his beginnings and his "final" assignment. I love his phrases, but not the novel. Perhaps I'm just not a fan of the spy genre in general.
Fun and fizzy spy story, sharply written and infused with melancholy.
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ThingScore 50
The book's longest, best and most rewarding segment is a first-rate run of British suspense writing. Burgess ladles on rich characterization and the best kind of paranoia in this series of chapters aboard a cruise ship with only a handful of passengers and staff, a claustrophobic Agatha Christie environment where everyone is up to something and proper manners mask nefarious intent. Especially show more worthy of mention is a gruesome eating contest Hillier engages in with a fellow glutton. When Burgess sets himself a mark, he hits it, hard enough for the reader to feel and remember. Tremor's failure is in its larger effect, or lack of effect. Late in the book, Burgess the Joyce scholar finds diagetic excuses -- delirium, drug use -- to churn the text into passable but recognizably mid-Ulysses stylee cacophony, fragmenting phrases and words with punctuation, building elaborate homophonic pun games that are respectable accomplishments on their own terms but do the novel that contains them a distracting disservice. show less
added by SnootyBaronet
Author Information
120+ Works 48,185 Members
Anthony Burgess was born in 1917 in Manchester, England. He studied language at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He had originally applied for a degree in music, but was unable to pass the entrance exams. Burgess considered himself a composer first, one who later turned to literature. Burgess' first novel, A Vision of Battlements show more (1964), was based on his experiences serving in the British Army. He is perhaps best known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, which was later made into a movie by Stanley Kubrick. In addition to publishing several works of fiction, Burgess also published literary criticism and a linguistics primer. Some of his other titles include The Pianoplayers, This Man and Music, Enderby, The Kingdom of the Wicked, and Little Wilson and Big God. Burgess was living in Monaco when he died in 1993. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Anthony Burgess has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Peli kahdelle pelaajalle
- Original title
- Tremor of Intent
- Original publication date
- 1966
- Epigraph
- But between the day and night/The choice is free to all, and light/falls equally on black and white. - W. H. Auden
The worst that can be said of most of our malefactors, from statesmen to thieves, is that they are not men enough to be damned. - T. S. Eliot. - Dedication
- To J. McMichael, M. B., Ch. B., gratefully.
- First words
- The position at the moment is as follows.
- Quotations
- ‘And then perhaps a poussin each with barley. And sauce béchamel velouté. Some spinach and minced mushrooms. A roast potato with sausage stuffing.’ He seemed to Hillier to order with a pinch of defiance. Was he at last ... (show all)feeling the strain? Was that sweat on his upper lip?
‘That sounds admirable,’ said Hillier. ‘Another bottle of the same?’
‘Why not some burgundy? A ’49 Chambertin, I think.’
The eating was growing grimmer. Miss Devi said: ‘I think, if you will excuse me, I shall go out on deck.’ Hillier rose at once, saying:
‘Let me accompany you.’ And, to Theodorescu, ‘I’ll be back directly.’
‘No!’ cried Theodorescu. ‘Stay here, please. The ocean is a traditional vomitorium.’
‘I shouldn’t try to make my sister, though. She’s mad about sex, but it’s all what D. H. Lawrence calls sex in the head. She just likes to read about it. Would you like one of these Black Russians?’ From the breast ... (show all)pocket of his Hawaiian shirt he drew out a box, also a Cygnus butane lighter.
Bumping against the stairwell wall he dislodged a little picture that had been unhandily nailed not firmly rawlplugged. It was an old-fashioned woolly monochrome of Seigfried, his gob open for a hero’s shout, his hand grasp... (show all)ing Nothung. This angered me.Who were they in this house to think that Wagner was theirs? Wagner was mine. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)‘Amen,’ said Father Hillier.
- Blurbers
- Brown, Francis; Furst, Alan; Barkham, John
- Original language
- English
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- 505
- Popularity
- 59,324
- Reviews
- 5
- Rating
- (3.64)
- Languages
- 9 — Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 21
- ASINs
- 20
