BOOKS
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Does this leave us in a phantom esthetic house furnished wholly
with the shapes and sounds of words by a writer who has nothing
momentous to say and is therefore preoccupied with ways of saying it?
Only if we insist, stubbornly and ungraciously, on regarding the "it" as
doctrine to be finally revealed, rather than bodied forth in the sequential
behavior of a voice. At first glance it might be thought odd that a book
whose subjects include gluttony, satyriasis, covetousness, smacking self–
regard and nagging self-disgust turns out to be not just human but
humane ; free of malice, superciliousness and puffed-up condescension,
its comedy is as sane as Joyce's. Whatever happens to Father Hillier after
his concluding "Amen," his creator has obeyed Empson's injunction and
learned a style from a despair. That there are readers who may feel
Burgess' stylistic company is not of the best, is, I suppose, a fact of life
comparable to finding out that not all your friends like one another.
Anthony Burgess, like Hillier in this novel, plays the secret-agent game
of "being a good technician, superb at languages, agile, light-fingered,
cool."
But behind these ambiguous gifts, sentence by sentence, there
stands revealed the man who wrote them, an extraordinary and attrac–
tive character whose like has been seldom seen.
William H. Pritchard
THE SCHOOL OF LETTERS
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
1966-67
Summer, Fall, and Spring Courses
On the graduate level in the theory and practice of
Literary Criticism
Including work toward advanced degrees in
Criticism, English Literature, and Comparative Literature
1967 Summer Courses
by:
MIROSLAV BEKER
SVEN LINNER
URSULA BRUMM
JACKSON MATHEWS
RICHARD ELLMANN
LEONARD UNGER
Address Inquiries to:
The School of Letters
INDIANA UNIVERSITY
208 S. Indiana Avenue
Bloomington, Indiana 4740 I
