You've Had Your Time: Second Part of the Confessions

The author describes his struggle to earn a living--writing novels, film scripts, television series, and articles--after being told he was terminally ill, discussing the obligations of sudden celebrity and his emotional and psychological rebirth

Burgess returned home to England from Malaya in 1959 to a medical diagnosis that he had less than a year to live. He turned himself into a "busy hack" to earn royalties for his wife Lynne, whose suicide attempt and subsequent death from alcoholic cirrhosis left him with deep-seated guilt. His hectic writing life, "an agony mitigated by drink," was uplifted in 1968 when he married his Italian mistress Liana Macellari, who had borne him a son five years earlier. With disarming candor and coruscating wit, the prolific novelist-critic discusses his distaste for the Beatles and the swinging '60s, the writing and filming of A Clockwork Orange , his peripatetic existence from Singapore to Manhattan, the ordeal of teaching and a roller-coaster career that often left him "too much in the paws of producers and directors." While it lacks the soul-searching urgency of his first autobiographical installment Little Wilson and Big God , this self-portrait is nevertheless a joy to read.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Although this is the second volume of Burgess's autobiographical confessions (with an authorial nod to St. Augustine and Rousseau), it stands on its own. (The first volume was Little Wilson and Big God , LJ 2/15/87.) Covering the years from 1959 to 1982, Burgess has his say on life as a language-obsessed novelist and critic and also takes the opportunity to respond vociferously to his critics. He moves around the world at a blurring pace, writing and translating fiction, drama, and poetry while experiencing the machinations of an alcoholic marriage and the appearance of a former lover/future wife seemingly out of nowhere with his heretofore unknown son. Especially fascinating and lively are his accounts of the creation of the book and the film of A Clockwork Or ange and his translation of Cyrano de Ber gerac . Highly recommended.
- Janice Braun, Medical Historical Lib., Yale Univ.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.