Anthony Levings, 'Biographical Perspectives on Anthony Burgess (from Geoffrey Aggeler, Kingsley Amis, Martin Amis, A. S. Byatt, Roger Lewis and David Lodge)’, in Graham Woodroffe (ed.) Anthony Burgess, Autobiographer (Angers: Presses de l’Université d’Angers, 2006), pp. 55-66. Angers PressWhile the writers discussed in the paper do not encompass all of the writing on Anthony Burgess they do capture some very distinctive differences in approach. Geoffrey Aggeler in The Artist as Novelist, for example, provides at the beginning of his work an Enderby-esque portrait filled with a humour appropriate to consideration of a novelist often labelled as comic, whereas Roger Lewis is so humourless that he fails to see why Burgess should be allowed any extravagance whatsoever in his autobiographies or his fiction. A. S. Byatt meanwhile is shown to have reasons for her depictions of Burgess in fiction that go beyond a mere liking for the writer, and Kingsley Amis and Martin Amis are discussed with regard to their congruence and divergence on the man in question. Finally the paper addresses David Lodge’s criticism that has labelled Burgess as an author who is pursuing ‘the Ideal’ (a conclusion that arises from a very narrow section of the author’s work, but is surprisingly more valid than it at first appears). Additional to the writers named in the title, the paper also draws into its theoretical discussion Umberto Eco and Hayden White in order to demonstrate that the imaginary is an important element in biography.
