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 family.

Here you have three fascinating stories bound together. You have the novelised, or very nearly televisualised, life of Sigmund Freud. You have a Broadway musical about the visit of Leon Trotsky to New York in 1917. And, some way into the future, you have the crushing of the planet Earth by a heavyweight intruder from a distant galaxy — the dreaded Lynx. These three stories are all the same story: they are all about the end of history as man has known it.

Love, sex, the ultimate violence - all are here. But there are more things than those. The three greatest events of our century are Freud's discovery of the unconscious, Trotsky's vision of the universal socialist state, and man's proven ability to build new homes in outer space. And when we migrate into that boundless empyrean, what fragments of our abandoned civilisations will we take with us? Perhaps the question is answered in this book.

It is a kind of bargain. Never before was so much offered at so little a price. This book is very deep, and its counterpoint of themes will long ring in your inner ear. This book is entertainment, and as entertainment it is primarily offered. It will slip down as easily as a dozen oysters -well sharpened with lemon juice and tabasco -and surely it will not be found as costly as a dish of those doubtfully nutritious gobs of marine protein. Do you desire lead in your pencil and flowers in your vase? Buy, read, enjoy. End of blurb."

In spite of Anthony Burgess's world-wide reputation as one of the leading novelists of his day, many people do not realise quite how versatile he is. His writings include criticism, scripts and translations, his book and lyrics were used in the Broadway musical, Cyrano, adapted by him from Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac, and he has composed three symphonies which have been publicly performed in the USA. His books have been published all over the world and include A Clockwork Orange, The Clockwork Testament, Inside Mr Enderby, One Hand Clapping, Beard's Roman Women, 1985 and Earthly Powers.

Anthony Burgess lives in Monaco.