You've Had Your Time - Couverture rigide

Burgess, Anthony

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0434098213 ISBN 13 : 9780434098217

Editeur : William Heinemann Ltd, 1990

Synopsis

This is the second part of Anthony Burgess's confessions, the first volume of which was entitled "Little Wilson and Big God". The narratvie begins in 1959, with the author's return to England from Brunei and, after the explosion of a prognosis which gave him a year to live, the start of a professional writing career which is still in gaudy flower. It ends, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1983 with the centenary celebrations of James Joyce's birth, which prompt certain conclusions about the relationship between literature and life. The life depicted here is that of a man desperate to earn a living through writing. The writing comprises all the media, including film, and the reader will learn about cinematic enterprises that succeeded and failed, novels the critics snarled at, journalism that scandalised the morally scrupulous. A strange marriage ends with the cirrhosis of the wife, a second marriage brings a triumphant rebirth of sex, creative energy and foreign travel, as well as an illegitimate fatherhood made legitimate.

A propos du livre

Présentation de l'éditeur

After returning from a trip to Brunei, Anthony Burgess, initially believing he has only a year to live, begins to write - novels, film scripts, television series, articles. It is the life of a man desperate to earn a living through the written word. He finds at first that writing brings little success, and later that success, and the obligations it brings, interfere with his writing - especially of fiction. There were vast Hollywood projects destined never to be made, novels the critics snarled at, journalism that scandalised the morally scrupulous.

There is the éclat of A Clockwork Orange (and the consequent calls for Burgess to comment on violent atrocities), the huge success - after a long barren period - of Earthly Powers. There is a terrifying first marriage, his description of which is both painful and funny. His second marriage - and the discovery that he has a four-year-old son - changes his life dramatically, and he and Liana escape to the Mediterranean, for an increasingly European life. With this marriage comes the triumphant rebirth of sex, creative energy and travel - to America, to Australia and all over Europe.

Revue de presse

"Extraordinarily lively, amazingly zestful, gutsy, bawdy fun" (Sunday Express)

"This autobiography, packed with extraordinary moments... provides a unique picture of today's literary world. It also has the effect of pinning Burgess down, making him, improbable as he is, real and believable. We will, I think read him better for this, and appreciate him more" (Observer)

"What Burgess ''shows off'' in these pages is the vivid interest that a writer's life can hold when it is lived by a writer with a robust temperament, a showman's appetite for vulgarity and the kind of gargantuan, omnivorous learning that helps give polymathy a good name... You've Had Your Time is an exhilarating book which, like the best of Burgess's novels, fulfills the ancient obligations of delighting, instructing and moving with incomparable panache" (Independent)

"In two huge volumes of "confessions" Burgess wove a vast tapestry of his life. William Boyd, an admirer, said they were among the best novels that Burgess ever wrote" (Guardian)

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: William Heinemann Ltd
• Date d'édition: 1990
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0434098213
• ISBN 13: 9780434098217
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 416
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible