Earthly Powers

I'm unsure if I'll remember this as fondly in a few years as I do now. The second quarter of the book was extremely dull, and the narrative 'technique' is silly (bad novelist travels to a dozen or so countries in order to pick up royalties cheques through the twentieth century--necessary because there were such restrictions on currency movement). These two problems almost, almost destroy the book's excellent qualities. But then it more or less comes together.

The narrator's friend, Carlo Campanati, is the intellectual center of the novel. He will be elected after Pius XII, as Pope Gregory, in place of the real world's John XXIII and Paul VI. He is, more or less, semi-Pelagian, obsessed with ecumenism, and insists on dragging the church show more into modernity; he's also charmingly human, stands against fascism and is an orphan. In the middle of the book, he asks the narrator to publish a book of ecumenism and semi-Pelagian theology under the narrator's name, and 'Earthly Powers' then becomes an extended meditation on freedom, predestination, grace and how much or how little human beings can contribute to their own salvation.

All of which is enough for me, but those of you who don't revel in obscure theological controversies (or even fairly well known ones) might prefer to think about this through the narrator, Kenneth Toomey, and his sexuality: he insists that he didn't 'choose' to be gay. If he didn't choose his sexuality, however, that's ipso facto evidence against the freedom that his friend the Pope insists (against the traditional doctrines of the church) we possess. Toomey wanders through the twentieth century, generally doing things despite himself. So whereas Carlo/Gregory shows what's possible for a human being who (acts as if he) was entirely free, Toomey shows how life can equally well be understood as nothing more than one contingent event after another (e.g., he 'accidentally' saves Goebbels' life). At the center of all this is a miracle performed by Carlo/Gregory, and the question arises there, too: how much credit does he deserve?

In addition to all this kind of thing Burgess piles on the laughs with groan-worthy puns, literary in-jokes (Toomey meets many of modernism's most important figures, despite being decidedly unmodernist), and occasional thoughts on the unreliability of memory and therefore of first person narrations... like that of Earthly Powers, which of course twists history in important ways to show something like the truth of the twentieth century.

Burgess's prose is clever, sometimes excessively so, and sometimes pointlessly. But I'd far rather read that than yet more sub-Hemingwayan blandishments for the undemanding reader.

For some reason, this stays with me: "He had a compassionate face: he would be compassionate while supervising human liquidation: this liquidates me more than it does you." show less

One of my nearest and dearest sent me her old mass-market copy years ago in one of her purging moods. And, in a deeply unusual act, I've read it twice!

I see lots of breakdowns of this story's alleged core, the Problem of Evil that besets monotheistic religions. In my own opinion, Burgess's point was less simple, as the Problem of Evil is easily resolved (you're wrong, there is no gawd so there is no problem): How, when a man is inextricably linked to another, "superior" or "better" man in the public's awareness, does one contextualize the richness of either's soul in simple material terms?

...you know, come to think of it, I can't figure out a non-spoilery way to review the book...one can't explain the power dynamic that undergirds every show more single decision and shapes every attitude in the men's long, untangential involvement without being either coy or obscurantist. So what can one do to discuss it? I believe my enduring puzzlement at the impossibility of writing a satisfying review has been puzzled out. show less

In a way this book serves as an indictment of the last thirty years of gay literature. If a story could be published in 1980 featuring a man who was openly gay from World War One right through the rest of his life, why are we still subjected to so many narratives in which characters spend most or all of their time in the closet? Although not all writers can be expected to have the courage of Burgess, I look forward to the day when gay writers move on from regarding coming out as the peak gay experience.

As well as courage, this book is full of wit, style, insightful characterisation and intellectual challenge. It's something of a shame that a portion of this intellectual challenge failed to really engage me as it focuses on questions show more regarding the role of the Catholic church, Christianity and religion in the modern world. As an atheist born and raised, I am comfortable with my answers to these questions (none, none and none), but I did find stimulation in many other ideas relating to family, sexuality, art and purpose.

The reader is effortlessly and repeatedly charmed and then pushed back to arms length using all of the tools of the postmodern first person narrator. This is a finely balanced and dangerous trick, of course, and while passages of this book are absolutely wonderful - simultaneously playful and affecting - there are also some passages that I found flat, unnecessary or irrelevant, particularly in the latter half of the book. It is definitely at its best in the first third when the story is at its most preposterous and the narrator is at his most combative and frank.

This will go on the list of my favourite four star books - not quite sublime, but dearly loved.

Oh, and without wanting to sound pedantic, the Amazon Kindle edition of this book is a bit of a dog's breakfast. It has clearly been scanned from the text and many of the mistakes of the software remain (joining "ci" and "cl" into d, so that I'm not sure you ever see "clothes", only "dothes"; extraneous commas that the author could never have intended; etc). The consequence of this is that a reader is never quite sure whether an irregularity (eg. two words joined together) is for stylistic reasons or just as a result of technology failure. show less

This is one of Burgess's most accessible fictions, and obviously his Big Effort. I consider it a great, fun romp through the 20th century and Anthony Burgess's own personal and philosophical obsessions. In this book the lapsed Catholic takes on the modernization of the Church, stacking the deck against Catholicism in an amazing way, implying that one of his chief characters, a liberal pope, is, well, of the devil.

Once again, Burgess finds a way to attack trendy goody-two-shoeisms as a form of the Pelagian Heresy.

And hey: the book has a boffo first sentence, and never really lets up until the end. My favorite Burgess novel.

An astonishing tour de force that starts off as a kind of reworked biography of Somerset Maugham but soon morphs into the most incredible criticism of belief and the workings of miracle. Everything ties together superbly, and as a guide to an alternative-but-real 20th century this cannot be easily bettered.

A monumental novel, currently out of print, that has stuck in my mind for thirty years as an all-time favorite but needed to be reread to remind me why. An octogenarian British writer, asked to attest to a miracle that will support canonization of a Pope writes his memoirs, giving us a personal tour of the 20th-century through his life as a homosexual, lapsed Catholic, successful but mediocre writer, and exile. Examines morality, the nature of evil, the role of religious belief and more. Linguistically playful, the novel features one of the best opening lines in literature, and is funny, painful, thought-provoking, entertaining, challenging and rewarding. Thoroughly magnificent.

In 2019 and beyond, you will either like Burgess or you will very much not like Burgess. I tire easily of many of the verbose old anti-establishment-but-really-part-of-the-establishment white men of late 20th century fiction (Amis, for instance, sometimes Roth, even Pynchon). But then there are others like Mailer whom I adore. Burgess must fit into the latter category.

Still, I am a member of my generation, and can't fully pretend that the length and precocity of the novel are justified! A piece of worth, but which nevertheless has been overvalued.