Anthony Burgess, "past all shame ... acting as his own puffer"
I love Anthony Burgess - literate, funny, imaginative and up his own arse In a good way. Take this from his 'End of the World News' which I've had for years and not - yet - finished. It's from the dust cover and, obviously he's written it himself, in his own inimitable style. THE END OF THE WORLD NEWS "THE term 'blurb' was invented by the American Frank Gelett Burgess, a very distant relative of your present, or actual, author, and the composition of a book-blurb - or brief, tantalising, puffy gobbet of sales talk-is traditionally a task of the publisher. On this occasion the author himself, who is past all shame, is acting as his own puffer. What is this new novel, if novel it can be called? It is the new way of reading, derived from the new way of watching television. To view one channel at a time is no longer enough: we need three distinct yet simultaneous imaginative stimuli: the family of the middle and late 1980s will have to be a three-screen fa
