WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.700 You know, usually when we sit down to talk about 00:00:01.700 --> 00:00:03.960 a writer for one of these deep dives, we have 00:00:03.960 --> 00:00:06.780 a pretty clear, stable picture of who they are 00:00:06.780 --> 00:00:08.720 in our heads. It's almost like a caricature. 00:00:08.839 --> 00:00:11.320 It is. It's a shorthand. Right. If I say Hemingway, 00:00:11.359 --> 00:00:13.140 you immediately picture the beard, the shotgun, 00:00:13.460 --> 00:00:18.219 the bullfights, the terse sentences. Yeah. If 00:00:18.219 --> 00:00:20.559 I say Jane Austen, you see the bonnet, the quill, 00:00:20.579 --> 00:00:23.019 the drawing room manners. We like to put our 00:00:23.019 --> 00:00:25.980 creative geniuses... In boxes. We do. It makes 00:00:25.980 --> 00:00:27.859 them easier to understand. We like categories. 00:00:28.199 --> 00:00:30.679 We like to know that this person does this thing. 00:00:30.859 --> 00:00:33.679 It simplifies everything. Exactly. But today, 00:00:33.899 --> 00:00:37.939 today we are looking at a figure who is so chaotic, 00:00:38.140 --> 00:00:41.939 so prolific, and so utterly contradictory that 00:00:41.939 --> 00:00:44.299 he feels less like a real human being and more 00:00:44.299 --> 00:00:46.340 like a fictional character he might have written 00:00:46.340 --> 00:00:48.899 himself. He just, he explodes every box you try 00:00:48.899 --> 00:00:50.969 to put him in. That is actually the perfect way 00:00:50.969 --> 00:00:53.130 to frame it. It is a fascinating case study in 00:00:53.130 --> 00:00:55.649 how we categorize or often miscategorize creativity. 00:00:56.189 --> 00:00:58.409 Because if I say the name John Anthony Burgess 00:00:58.409 --> 00:01:00.649 Wilson to you, you might pause. I would, yeah. 00:01:00.770 --> 00:01:02.890 You might blink and wonder if I'm talking about 00:01:02.890 --> 00:01:06.049 a local politician. But if I shorten it to the 00:01:06.049 --> 00:01:08.709 name The World Knows Him by Anthony Burgess, 00:01:08.909 --> 00:01:12.670 what is the very first image that hits your brain? 00:01:12.810 --> 00:01:15.409 Oh, it's immediate. It's visceral. It's a bowler 00:01:15.409 --> 00:01:18.400 hat. It's a glass of milk. It's Malcolm McDowell 00:01:18.400 --> 00:01:20.859 with his eyes clamped open. It's a clockwork 00:01:20.859 --> 00:01:24.280 orange. Specifically for me, and probably for 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:26.700 99 % of the people listening, it's the Stanley 00:01:26.700 --> 00:01:29.269 Kubrick movie. The movie. You just can't escape 00:01:29.269 --> 00:01:31.849 that imagery. It's iconic. It is iconic. And 00:01:31.849 --> 00:01:34.609 that is the tragedy and the triumph of Anthony 00:01:34.609 --> 00:01:37.950 Burgess. He is forever tethered to that one dystopian 00:01:37.950 --> 00:01:40.829 novella. It's the one hit wonder syndrome, but 00:01:40.829 --> 00:01:43.209 applied to a literary giant who wrote dozens 00:01:43.209 --> 00:01:45.989 of books. Exactly. And our mission for this deep 00:01:45.989 --> 00:01:48.430 dive is to completely shatter that narrow view. 00:01:48.609 --> 00:01:50.790 We need to move past the droogs and the milk 00:01:50.790 --> 00:01:52.989 bars because the man behind the orange was a 00:01:52.989 --> 00:01:55.920 true polymath. And I want to pause on that word 00:01:55.920 --> 00:01:58.079 polymath. We throw that around a lot for anyone 00:01:58.079 --> 00:02:01.519 who, say, writes code and also bakes sourdough 00:02:01.519 --> 00:02:03.099 bread. But what are we actually talking about 00:02:03.099 --> 00:02:05.129 here with Burgess? What's the scale? We aren't 00:02:05.129 --> 00:02:07.170 talking about hobbies. We are talking about a 00:02:07.170 --> 00:02:10.770 man who composed over 250 musical works. Wow. 00:02:11.229 --> 00:02:13.509 Symphonies, concertos, operas, chamber music. 00:02:13.669 --> 00:02:15.789 He didn't just dabble. He considered himself 00:02:15.789 --> 00:02:17.770 a professional composer who just happened to 00:02:17.770 --> 00:02:20.490 write novels to pay the bills. 250 works. I mean, 00:02:20.490 --> 00:02:22.810 that is a career in itself. That's a life's work 00:02:22.810 --> 00:02:24.909 for most people. It was his primary passion. 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:27.840 And on top of that, he spoke multiple languages 00:02:27.840 --> 00:02:30.620 fluently, including Malay and Russian. He was 00:02:30.620 --> 00:02:32.500 the guy Hollywood called when they needed to 00:02:32.500 --> 00:02:35.000 invent a prehistoric language for a blockbuster 00:02:35.000 --> 00:02:38.039 movie. Seriously? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And perhaps 00:02:38.039 --> 00:02:40.939 most famously, and this is the hook that usually 00:02:40.939 --> 00:02:43.639 gets people interested in the biography, he wrote 00:02:43.639 --> 00:02:46.580 a massive chunk of his literary output in a frenzy 00:02:46.580 --> 00:02:49.199 because he was told by a doctor that he had exactly 00:02:49.199 --> 00:02:52.620 one year to live. The death sentence that launched 00:02:52.620 --> 00:02:55.759 a thousand ships, or in this case, dozens of 00:02:55.759 --> 00:02:58.199 novels. It sounds like a movie plot. It sounds 00:02:58.199 --> 00:03:00.479 too perfect to be true. It does, doesn't it? 00:03:00.560 --> 00:03:02.560 And as we go through the source material today, 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:05.580 which covers a comprehensive biographical overview, 00:03:05.939 --> 00:03:08.979 his literary critiques, his musical archives, 00:03:09.080 --> 00:03:11.099 and accounts of his time in the colonial service, 00:03:11.300 --> 00:03:13.319 you're going to see that Burgess lived his life 00:03:13.319 --> 00:03:16.280 at this intersection of high art, profound personal 00:03:16.280 --> 00:03:19.659 tragedy, and what biographers call mythomania. 00:03:20.740 --> 00:03:23.620 Mythomania. That is a great word. Yeah. So are 00:03:23.620 --> 00:03:26.759 we talking about a compulsion to lie or just 00:03:26.759 --> 00:03:29.479 to embellish? What does that really mean? It's 00:03:29.479 --> 00:03:31.680 a compulsion to tell stories. I think that's 00:03:31.680 --> 00:03:34.020 the best way to put it. Burgess loved to narrate 00:03:34.020 --> 00:03:35.900 his own life. And sometimes the line between 00:03:35.900 --> 00:03:37.960 what really happened in objective reality and 00:03:37.960 --> 00:03:40.639 what he said happened gets a little blurry. He 00:03:40.639 --> 00:03:43.500 is the ultimate unreliable narrator of his own 00:03:43.500 --> 00:03:46.240 biography. I love a reliable, unreliable narrator, 00:03:46.479 --> 00:03:48.699 especially when it's the author himself. It adds 00:03:48.699 --> 00:03:50.300 a layer of mystery to everything we're about 00:03:50.300 --> 00:03:53.120 to discuss. So let's look at the stack of sources 00:03:53.120 --> 00:03:55.360 we have today. We're pulling from a massive collection 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:58.360 of data points to build this profile. And we're 00:03:58.360 --> 00:04:00.699 going to find some incredible nuggets in there. 00:04:00.819 --> 00:04:04.219 We'll unpack the brain tumor incident that kickstarted 00:04:04.219 --> 00:04:06.979 his career. We'll look at the lost 21st chapter 00:04:06.979 --> 00:04:10.439 of his most famous book, which changes the entire 00:04:10.439 --> 00:04:12.719 meaning of the story, by the way. And we'll look 00:04:12.719 --> 00:04:15.900 at his secret life as a serious classical composer. 00:04:16.279 --> 00:04:18.420 Okay, let's unpack this. That started the beginning. 00:04:18.540 --> 00:04:21.519 And for Burgess, the beginning wasn't just humble. 00:04:21.600 --> 00:04:24.860 It was genuinely traumatic. He was born in 1917 00:04:24.860 --> 00:04:29.160 in Manchester. Harper Hay, specifically, a suburb 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:31.540 of Manchester. Right. Harper Hay, Catholic background, 00:04:31.920 --> 00:04:34.660 lower middle class. His parents were shopkeepers 00:04:34.660 --> 00:04:37.720 selling tobacco and alcohol, which, considering 00:04:37.720 --> 00:04:39.399 the Great Depression was looming in the distance, 00:04:39.600 --> 00:04:42.100 was actually a pretty recession -proof business 00:04:42.100 --> 00:04:44.649 to be in. True. People always need a drink and 00:04:44.649 --> 00:04:46.589 a smoke, especially when things go south. But 00:04:46.589 --> 00:04:48.730 the tragedy strikes almost immediately in his 00:04:48.730 --> 00:04:52.449 life. He's just a baby. It does. To understand 00:04:52.449 --> 00:04:55.410 Burgess's psychology, the darkness and the isolation 00:04:55.410 --> 00:04:57.990 you see in his later books, you have to look 00:04:57.990 --> 00:05:02.120 at the year 1918. He is... Just a baby. The Spanish 00:05:02.120 --> 00:05:04.819 flu pandemic is sweeping the globe. And this 00:05:04.819 --> 00:05:07.019 isn't just a bad flu season. This is a biblical 00:05:07.019 --> 00:05:09.519 event killing millions. Right. And in the span 00:05:09.519 --> 00:05:12.439 of just four days, Burgess loses his mother, 00:05:12.620 --> 00:05:15.379 Elizabeth, and his sister, Muriel. Four days. 00:05:15.519 --> 00:05:18.579 He's a year old. He's essentially alone in the 00:05:18.579 --> 00:05:20.699 house with a grieving father. He wouldn't even 00:05:20.699 --> 00:05:22.860 have memories of them, really. Not conscious 00:05:22.860 --> 00:05:25.899 ones? No conscious memories. But that dynamic 00:05:25.899 --> 00:05:28.639 with the father, Joseph Wilson, sets the tone 00:05:28.639 --> 00:05:31.399 for his entire childhood. You might expect a 00:05:31.399 --> 00:05:33.279 father in that situation to cling to the only 00:05:33.279 --> 00:05:35.699 surviving child to become overprotective, but 00:05:35.699 --> 00:05:38.279 Burgess grew up believing that his father actually 00:05:38.279 --> 00:05:40.800 resented him. Resented him for surviving. Yes. 00:05:41.259 --> 00:05:43.800 It's a terrible burden for a child to carry survivor's 00:05:43.800 --> 00:05:46.899 guilt by proxy. The idea that I am here breathing 00:05:46.899 --> 00:05:48.740 and eating, but the people he really loved are 00:05:48.740 --> 00:05:50.480 gone. And every time he looks at me, he sees 00:05:50.480 --> 00:05:53.819 their absence. God, that's heavy. It is. Burgess 00:05:53.819 --> 00:05:56.360 described his childhood as incredibly solitary. 00:05:56.779 --> 00:05:59.660 He used this heartbreaking phrase in his memoirs. 00:05:59.699 --> 00:06:02.480 He said he was either distractedly persecuted 00:06:02.480 --> 00:06:05.740 or ignored. Distractedly persecuted. That is 00:06:05.740 --> 00:06:08.720 such a... specific and painful phrasing. It implies 00:06:08.720 --> 00:06:10.879 he wasn't even worth a focused effort of bullying. 00:06:11.100 --> 00:06:13.860 It was just casual, indifferent cruelty. Exactly. 00:06:14.139 --> 00:06:16.319 It wasn't a grand vendetta. It was just that 00:06:16.319 --> 00:06:18.579 he didn't fit. He talks about being targeted 00:06:18.579 --> 00:06:21.680 by ragged boys in gangs who would pounce on him. 00:06:21.959 --> 00:06:24.720 Now, you have to picture Manchester in the 1920s. 00:06:24.740 --> 00:06:27.740 It's industrial. It's rough. It's smoky. Right. 00:06:27.899 --> 00:06:30.779 And here is Burgess. He's well -dressed because 00:06:30.779 --> 00:06:32.339 his father had a bit of money from the shop. 00:06:32.379 --> 00:06:35.069 And crucially. He could read. So he's the smart 00:06:35.069 --> 00:06:37.009 kid in the velvet suit in a gritty industrial 00:06:37.009 --> 00:06:39.470 town. He's walking around with a target on his 00:06:39.470 --> 00:06:41.329 back. He was a target. He went to a Catholic 00:06:41.329 --> 00:06:43.290 elementary school where illiteracy was still 00:06:43.290 --> 00:06:46.009 common, but Burgess was advanced. He was different. 00:06:46.389 --> 00:06:49.209 And in that rough and tumble world of 1920s, 00:06:49.209 --> 00:06:51.709 Manchester being the other, being the smart one, 00:06:51.750 --> 00:06:54.230 the clean one, is dangerous. It's interesting 00:06:54.230 --> 00:06:56.569 because you could already see the seeds of his 00:06:56.569 --> 00:06:58.769 later work there. The isolated intellectual. 00:06:59.480 --> 00:07:02.720 facing off against mindless, violent gangs. That's 00:07:02.720 --> 00:07:04.879 the DNA of A Clockwork Orange right there, isn't 00:07:04.879 --> 00:07:07.079 it? The fear of the pack. It connects directly 00:07:07.079 --> 00:07:10.019 to the themes we see later in his dystopian fiction. 00:07:10.360 --> 00:07:13.319 But this isolation also drove him inward. When 00:07:13.319 --> 00:07:15.139 you don't have friends and you feel unwanted 00:07:15.139 --> 00:07:17.660 at home, you build your own worlds. You retreat 00:07:17.660 --> 00:07:20.279 into your mind. And for Burgess, that inner world 00:07:20.279 --> 00:07:22.279 eventually became music. But not immediately, 00:07:22.439 --> 00:07:24.040 right? I read in the notes that he was actually 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:27.160 indifferent to music until he had this specific, 00:07:27.300 --> 00:07:30.019 almost spiritual moment. with a home -built radio. 00:07:30.259 --> 00:07:32.540 This is the psychedelic moment, as he called 00:07:32.540 --> 00:07:34.860 it. He's a teenager, tinkering with a crystal 00:07:34.860 --> 00:07:37.300 radio set, very DIY, very much the tech of the 00:07:37.300 --> 00:07:40.019 time. And suddenly, through the static and the 00:07:40.019 --> 00:07:43.519 crackle, he hears a fleet solo. It's Claude Debussy's 00:07:43.519 --> 00:07:46.079 Prelude à l 'après -midi d 'un faun. Prelude 00:07:46.079 --> 00:07:48.600 to the afternoon of a faun. Now, for those who 00:07:48.600 --> 00:07:50.759 haven't heard it, we should explain, this isn't 00:07:50.759 --> 00:07:53.339 a catchy pop song. This isn't a marching band 00:07:53.339 --> 00:07:57.120 tune. No, it's revolutionary. It's dreamy, drifting 00:07:57.120 --> 00:08:00.420 impressionist music. It doesn't have a heartbeat. 00:08:00.540 --> 00:08:04.360 It floats. And Burgess described it as sinuous, 00:08:04.360 --> 00:08:08.600 exotic, erotic. He was spellbound. Wow. He said 00:08:08.600 --> 00:08:11.939 it was a recognition of. Verbally inexpressible 00:08:11.939 --> 00:08:14.300 spiritual realities. It wasn't just a song to 00:08:14.300 --> 00:08:17.360 him. It was a doorway out of Manchester. It was 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:20.240 proof that a beautiful, magical world existed 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:22.759 somewhere else. And so naturally he decides, 00:08:22.899 --> 00:08:25.000 I'm going to be a composer. He wants to live 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:26.939 in that world. He announces this to his family 00:08:26.939 --> 00:08:29.360 and the reaction is... Well, it's brutally practical. 00:08:29.560 --> 00:08:31.759 They told him there's no money in it. Of course. 00:08:31.839 --> 00:08:33.940 Which, to be fair to his father and stepmother, 00:08:34.059 --> 00:08:37.440 was generally true for a kid from Harpurhe. Classical 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:39.820 composition was a rich man's game. But Burgess 00:08:39.820 --> 00:08:41.700 was stubborn. He taught himself the piano at 00:08:41.700 --> 00:08:44.539 14. He didn't have formal lessons. He just sat 00:08:44.539 --> 00:08:46.580 down and figured it out. That is the mark of 00:08:46.580 --> 00:08:49.340 an obsessive mind. But here is the twist that 00:08:49.340 --> 00:08:52.159 changes his life trajectory. He applies to university, 00:08:52.419 --> 00:08:54.539 specifically the Victoria University of Manchester, 00:08:54.860 --> 00:08:57.669 wanting to study music. This is his dream. This 00:08:57.669 --> 00:09:00.210 is his escape plan. And it gets rejected. And 00:09:00.210 --> 00:09:03.129 he gets rejected for the most bureaucratic reason 00:09:03.129 --> 00:09:07.090 possible. Poor grades in physics. I have to ask, 00:09:07.149 --> 00:09:09.909 what does physics have to do with composing a 00:09:09.909 --> 00:09:12.169 symphony? I mean, I know sound is waves, but 00:09:12.169 --> 00:09:14.029 still. Well, the music department at that time 00:09:14.029 --> 00:09:16.149 required a physics qualification, presumably 00:09:16.149 --> 00:09:18.570 for the acoustic side of things, understanding 00:09:18.570 --> 00:09:21.629 how sound waves travel and interact. Burgess 00:09:21.629 --> 00:09:24.389 didn't have the grades, so his path to being 00:09:24.389 --> 00:09:26.909 a professional musician was blocked by a high 00:09:26.909 --> 00:09:29.149 school report card. That is such a sliding doors 00:09:29.149 --> 00:09:31.990 moment. If he passes physics, maybe he becomes 00:09:31.990 --> 00:09:34.549 a famous conductor and we never get Anthony Burgess 00:09:34.549 --> 00:09:36.889 the novelist. So he pivots. He pivots to English 00:09:36.889 --> 00:09:39.529 language and literature. And he does well, but 00:09:39.529 --> 00:09:41.710 even there you see this flash of his personality. 00:09:42.090 --> 00:09:44.889 He graduates with a Bachelor of Arts, upper second 00:09:44.889 --> 00:09:47.590 class honors. But there's a famous anecdote about 00:09:47.590 --> 00:09:49.909 one of his term papers being graded by the famous 00:09:49.909 --> 00:09:52.559 historian. A .J .P. Taylor. Oh, I saw this quote 00:09:52.559 --> 00:09:55.220 in research. It is absolutely brutal. Taylor 00:09:55.220 --> 00:09:57.899 wrote on his paper, bright ideas insufficient 00:09:57.899 --> 00:10:01.700 to conceal lack of knowledge. Ouch. That is a 00:10:01.700 --> 00:10:04.460 burn that lingers for a lifetime. It is, but 00:10:04.460 --> 00:10:07.460 it also captures Burgess perfectly. He was always 00:10:07.460 --> 00:10:10.399 overflowing with bright ideas. Sometimes the 00:10:10.399 --> 00:10:12.600 scholarly discipline, the dry fact -checking, 00:10:12.600 --> 00:10:14.919 came second to the flash of brilliance. Yeah, 00:10:14.940 --> 00:10:16.899 that makes sense. But the key takeaway from this 00:10:16.899 --> 00:10:19.960 period is his self -perception. Even while studying 00:10:19.960 --> 00:10:22.720 English, even while writing essays on Marlowe's 00:10:22.720 --> 00:10:25.600 Dr. Faustus, he viewed himself as a composer 00:10:25.600 --> 00:10:28.539 who was forced to write words. He never let go 00:10:28.539 --> 00:10:31.240 of that identity. He was a musician in exile 00:10:31.240 --> 00:10:33.919 in the land of literature. So we have a frustrated 00:10:33.919 --> 00:10:36.379 musician studying English, living in the shadow 00:10:36.379 --> 00:10:39.340 of a tragic childhood. And then history intervenes. 00:10:39.360 --> 00:10:42.120 World War II breaks out. Burgess joins the military. 00:10:42.299 --> 00:10:44.379 Now, usually this is the part of the biography 00:10:44.379 --> 00:10:46.519 where we talk about heroism and camaraderie and 00:10:46.519 --> 00:10:49.649 bands of brothers. But Burgess. He wasn't exactly 00:10:49.649 --> 00:10:52.129 Captain America, was he? Far from it. He served 00:10:52.129 --> 00:10:54.190 in the Royal Army Medical Corps and the Army 00:10:54.190 --> 00:10:57.210 Educational Corps. But by all accounts, he was 00:10:57.210 --> 00:11:00.070 deeply unpopular with his peers and his superiors. 00:11:00.169 --> 00:11:03.570 Why? Was he just arrogant? Was he aloof? He was 00:11:03.570 --> 00:11:06.409 a prankster, but in a way that feels a bit malicious, 00:11:06.450 --> 00:11:10.039 or at least deeply antisocial. For example, he 00:11:10.039 --> 00:11:13.019 once polished a corridor floor specifically to 00:11:13.019 --> 00:11:15.059 make people slip and fall. That's not a playful 00:11:15.059 --> 00:11:16.960 prank. That's setting a trap. That's something 00:11:16.960 --> 00:11:20.080 a cartoon villain does. Exactly. He also knocked 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:22.899 the cap off a corporal. He had this deep -seated 00:11:22.899 --> 00:11:26.059 loathing of authority. He saw the military as 00:11:26.059 --> 00:11:28.919 this machine that crushed individuality, which 00:11:28.919 --> 00:11:31.500 is a very consistent theme for him. He hated 00:11:31.500 --> 00:11:34.720 being a number. He hated being told what to do 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:36.940 by people he considered intellectually inferior. 00:11:37.659 --> 00:11:39.299 That makes perfect sense for the man who would 00:11:39.299 --> 00:11:41.899 write a clockwork orange. The anti -authoritarian 00:11:41.899 --> 00:11:44.159 streak runs deep. He's basically acting out. 00:11:44.259 --> 00:11:47.039 He is. He even got pursued by the military police 00:11:47.039 --> 00:11:49.299 for desertion at one point because he overstayed 00:11:49.299 --> 00:11:52.480 his leave to be with his future wife, Lynn. And 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:54.460 later, when he was stationed in Gibraltar, he 00:11:54.460 --> 00:11:56.340 was actually arrested in a neighboring Spanish 00:11:56.340 --> 00:11:59.460 town for insulting General Franco. Insulting 00:11:59.460 --> 00:12:01.720 a fascist dictator while on a day trip in Spain. 00:12:02.100 --> 00:12:03.860 You have to give him credit for that one. That 00:12:03.860 --> 00:12:06.460 takes nerve or maybe just a lack of impulse control. 00:12:06.840 --> 00:12:09.860 It shows his reckless streak. But his time in 00:12:09.860 --> 00:12:11.620 Gibraltar is actually very important for his 00:12:11.620 --> 00:12:13.919 development. He worked as a training college 00:12:13.919 --> 00:12:16.259 lecturer, but because he had this incredible 00:12:16.259 --> 00:12:19.320 flair for languages, he got pulled into intelligence 00:12:19.320 --> 00:12:21.700 work. Ah, so this is where that comes in. Yeah, 00:12:21.740 --> 00:12:25.080 he participated in debriefing Dutch expatriates 00:12:25.080 --> 00:12:28.100 and free French refugees. This is the polymath 00:12:28.100 --> 00:12:30.059 showing up again. He wasn't just learning textbook 00:12:30.059 --> 00:12:33.059 French or Spanish. He was dealing with real people 00:12:33.059 --> 00:12:35.879 in a war zone. trying to extract information. 00:12:36.159 --> 00:12:38.759 Exactly. He was absorbing the nuances of language 00:12:38.759 --> 00:12:41.299 under pressure. And he was also involved in a 00:12:41.299 --> 00:12:43.720 program called the British Way and Purpose. It 00:12:43.720 --> 00:12:45.919 was designed to introduce soldiers to the peacetime 00:12:45.919 --> 00:12:48.519 socialism that was expected in postwar Britain. 00:12:48.720 --> 00:12:50.659 The idea was to prepare them for the welfare 00:12:50.659 --> 00:12:52.700 state. Which is interesting because Burgess himself 00:12:52.700 --> 00:12:55.580 wasn't exactly a socialist, was he? No, far from 00:12:55.580 --> 00:12:58.139 it. He described himself later as a Catholic 00:12:58.139 --> 00:13:01.639 Jacobite imperial monarchist with anarchist tendencies. 00:13:01.659 --> 00:13:04.720 That is a word salad of political ideologies. 00:13:05.519 --> 00:13:08.039 Jacobite imperial monarchist. What does that 00:13:08.039 --> 00:13:10.330 even mean in the 20th century? Basically, he 00:13:10.330 --> 00:13:12.809 was a traditionalist who hated the modern bureaucratic 00:13:12.809 --> 00:13:15.750 state. He romanticized the old ways, kings and 00:13:15.750 --> 00:13:18.850 queens, but he also hated rules, hence the anarchism. 00:13:18.909 --> 00:13:20.929 He thought socialism was ridiculous, though he 00:13:20.929 --> 00:13:22.610 did support socialized medicine, surprisingly. 00:13:23.029 --> 00:13:25.649 Yeah. But being forced to teach this socialist 00:13:25.649 --> 00:13:28.289 curriculum gave him a very close look at state 00:13:28.289 --> 00:13:30.789 -sponsored ideology. He saw how the government 00:13:30.789 --> 00:13:32.669 tries to mold the minds of its citizens using 00:13:32.669 --> 00:13:35.450 pamphlets and lectures. Again, this fuels his 00:13:35.450 --> 00:13:37.370 later dystopian writing. Now we have to talk 00:13:37.370 --> 00:13:40.539 about the darkest moment of this. period we mentioned 00:13:40.539 --> 00:13:43.379 his wife lynn this is the event that truly shadows 00:13:43.379 --> 00:13:45.919 his life and his work and warning to listeners 00:13:45.919 --> 00:13:48.720 this is heavy yes it happened during the blackout 00:13:48.720 --> 00:13:50.940 in london burgess was stationed in gibraltar 00:13:50.940 --> 00:13:52.960 but lynn was back in england she was pregnant 00:13:52.960 --> 00:13:55.759 during the blackout she was robbed and brutally 00:13:55.759 --> 00:13:59.019 assaulted by four american deserters god it was 00:13:59.019 --> 00:14:02.039 horrific and as a result of the trauma she lost 00:14:02.039 --> 00:14:05.080 the child To make matters worse, Burgess was 00:14:05.080 --> 00:14:07.799 denied leave to come home and see her. He was 00:14:07.799 --> 00:14:09.740 stuck in Gibraltar while his wife was going through 00:14:09.740 --> 00:14:12.240 this unimaginable physical and psychological 00:14:12.240 --> 00:14:16.600 trauma. He was completely helpless. That helplessness 00:14:16.600 --> 00:14:20.159 must have been eating him alive. To know the 00:14:20.159 --> 00:14:22.320 person you love is suffering and you are stuck 00:14:22.320 --> 00:14:24.799 on a rock in the Mediterranean. It was a defining 00:14:24.799 --> 00:14:28.100 trauma. Lynn eventually developed serious alcoholism, 00:14:28.220 --> 00:14:30.820 likely as a coping mechanism, and died of liver 00:14:30.820 --> 00:14:34.240 cirrhosis years later. But for Burgess, That 00:14:34.240 --> 00:14:36.759 violence, specifically the randomness of it, 00:14:36.820 --> 00:14:39.460 became the core of A Clockwork Orange. Right. 00:14:39.600 --> 00:14:42.240 It wasn't a calculated crime. It was four men 00:14:42.240 --> 00:14:44.519 attacking a woman in the dark just because they 00:14:44.519 --> 00:14:46.860 could. It changes how you read the book, doesn't 00:14:46.860 --> 00:14:48.759 it? Because usually people think A Clockwork 00:14:48.759 --> 00:14:51.100 Orange is just about youth violence in the abstract. 00:14:51.559 --> 00:14:54.419 But for Burgess, Alex and his droogs weren't 00:14:54.419 --> 00:14:57.019 just abstract concepts. They were the monsters 00:14:57.019 --> 00:14:59.850 who hurt his wife. And yet what makes the book 00:14:59.850 --> 00:15:03.210 so complex and so disturbing is that Burgess 00:15:03.210 --> 00:15:05.289 turns the camera around. He doesn't just write 00:15:05.289 --> 00:15:07.409 a revenge fantasy where the bad guys get killed. 00:15:07.490 --> 00:15:09.570 He writes a book about the morality of free will. 00:15:09.710 --> 00:15:12.750 Yes. He asks, is it better to be a man who chooses 00:15:12.750 --> 00:15:15.190 to be bad than a machine that is forced to be 00:15:15.190 --> 00:15:18.190 good? He takes his personal pain and turns it 00:15:18.190 --> 00:15:20.370 into a philosophical inquiry about the state's 00:15:20.370 --> 00:15:22.870 role in controlling violence. It's a staggering 00:15:22.870 --> 00:15:25.570 creative transmutation to take the worst thing 00:15:25.570 --> 00:15:27.370 that ever happened to your family and turn it 00:15:27.370 --> 00:15:30.710 into a debate on moral choice. Most people would 00:15:30.710 --> 00:15:33.450 just want revenge. It is. And it explains the 00:15:33.450 --> 00:15:35.889 darkness at the heart of his work. It wasn't 00:15:35.889 --> 00:15:38.629 performative. It was personal. He was wrestling 00:15:38.629 --> 00:15:41.309 with his own demons on the page. So after the 00:15:41.309 --> 00:15:43.940 war. Burgess moves into the next phase of his 00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:46.320 life. He joins the colonial service. This is 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:49.100 the 1950s. He's teaching in Malaya, which is 00:15:49.100 --> 00:15:52.299 now Malaysia and Brunei. This was the era of 00:15:52.299 --> 00:15:54.940 the expatriate writer. Think Graham Greene or 00:15:54.940 --> 00:15:57.840 Somerset Maugham. The British Empire is winding 00:15:57.840 --> 00:16:00.779 down, but there are still Brits out there administering 00:16:00.779 --> 00:16:03.980 the colonies. Burgess wanted to be the true fictional 00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:06.620 expert on Malaya. He wrote what became known 00:16:06.620 --> 00:16:09.080 as the Malayan trilogy books like Time for a 00:16:09.080 --> 00:16:11.799 Tiger. And he wasn't just a tourist. He went 00:16:11.799 --> 00:16:14.080 all in on the culture. He didn't just hang out 00:16:14.080 --> 00:16:15.799 at the British club drinking gin and tonics. 00:16:15.919 --> 00:16:18.299 No, he really didn't. He learned the language 00:16:18.299 --> 00:16:20.720 fluently, including the Jawi script, which is 00:16:20.720 --> 00:16:23.100 Malay written in Arabic characters. That is not 00:16:23.100 --> 00:16:25.320 easy to do. Not at all. He immersed himself. 00:16:25.500 --> 00:16:27.620 He even wrote a symphony, the Sinfoni Malayu. 00:16:27.860 --> 00:16:30.320 There's a great detail where during a performance 00:16:30.320 --> 00:16:32.860 of the symphony, the audience actually shouted 00:16:32.860 --> 00:16:38.059 Merdeka, which means independence. He's writing 00:16:38.059 --> 00:16:41.129 music. that gets the locals shouting for independence 00:16:41.129 --> 00:16:44.549 from the very empire he's serving. That is irony 00:16:44.549 --> 00:16:47.029 on a high level. It is. He was very sympathetic 00:16:47.029 --> 00:16:49.389 to the local culture, often more so than to the 00:16:49.389 --> 00:16:51.789 British administration. But the crucial moment, 00:16:51.889 --> 00:16:54.110 the pivot point of his entire career happens 00:16:54.110 --> 00:16:57.330 in 1959. He's in Brunei. He's teaching a history 00:16:57.330 --> 00:17:00.509 class. And suddenly he collapses. Just drops 00:17:00.509 --> 00:17:02.529 to the floor. Flat out. He's rushed to the hospital. 00:17:02.649 --> 00:17:05.250 He's flown back to London for neurological tests. 00:17:05.529 --> 00:17:08.420 And the diagnosis comes back. inoperable brain 00:17:08.420 --> 00:17:11.299 tumor. And the prognosis? One year to live, maybe 00:17:11.299 --> 00:17:13.779 less. This is the legend, the death sentence 00:17:13.779 --> 00:17:16.519 catalyst. It is. Burgess is sitting there thinking 00:17:16.519 --> 00:17:19.539 he has 12 months left on this earth. He has a 00:17:19.539 --> 00:17:22.140 wife, Lynn, who is struggling with alcoholism 00:17:22.140 --> 00:17:25.279 and has no income of her own. He is terrified 00:17:25.279 --> 00:17:28.279 that he's going to leave her penniless. So he 00:17:28.279 --> 00:17:30.859 makes a decision. He is going to write. And write? 00:17:31.259 --> 00:17:34.319 And write. He is going to write as fast as humanly 00:17:34.319 --> 00:17:36.400 possible to build up an estate for his widow. 00:17:36.619 --> 00:17:39.339 It's the ultimate deadline. Literally. He starts 00:17:39.339 --> 00:17:42.579 churning out novels at a breakneck pace. He writes, 00:17:42.700 --> 00:17:46.559 The doctor is sick. Inside Mr. Enderby, the worm 00:17:46.559 --> 00:17:49.180 in the ring. He is writing thousands of words 00:17:49.180 --> 00:17:51.700 a day, driven by the belief that the Reaper is 00:17:51.700 --> 00:17:54.359 standing right behind his chair. He's trying 00:17:54.359 --> 00:17:58.210 to outrun death with a typewriter. But. Here's 00:17:58.210 --> 00:18:00.869 the twist. He doesn't die. He does not. He lives 00:18:00.869 --> 00:18:04.130 for another 33 years. So what happened? Was the 00:18:04.130 --> 00:18:06.390 diagnosis wrong or was there something else going 00:18:06.390 --> 00:18:08.410 on? This is where we get into that mythomania 00:18:08.410 --> 00:18:10.789 we talked about. Later in life, Burgess claimed 00:18:10.789 --> 00:18:13.130 that there never was a tumor. He said he was 00:18:13.130 --> 00:18:15.170 driven out of the colonial service for political 00:18:15.170 --> 00:18:17.490 reasons. Political reasons, like he was too radical. 00:18:17.849 --> 00:18:19.970 He claimed he was supporting the Revolutionary 00:18:19.970 --> 00:18:23.069 Opposition Party in Brunei. He even told a wild 00:18:23.069 --> 00:18:25.190 story that his wife, Lynn, had said something 00:18:25.190 --> 00:18:27.250 obscene to the Duke of Edinburgh during a royal 00:18:27.250 --> 00:18:29.609 visit, and the authorities used the tumour excuse 00:18:29.609 --> 00:18:31.630 to get rid of him quietly without a scandal. 00:18:31.809 --> 00:18:34.289 Wait, he claimed his wife insulted the Duke of 00:18:34.289 --> 00:18:37.390 Edinburgh? That sounds very Burgess. It does. 00:18:37.509 --> 00:18:39.109 It sounds like a scene from one of his books, 00:18:39.170 --> 00:18:41.930 but biographers tend to lean toward a more mundane 00:18:41.930 --> 00:18:45.430 explanation. Burgess was drinking heavily. The 00:18:45.430 --> 00:18:47.589 climate in Southeast Asia was oppressive. He 00:18:47.589 --> 00:18:49.309 was overworked and disappointed professionally. 00:18:49.849 --> 00:18:52.190 It's very likely the collapse was due to the 00:18:52.190 --> 00:18:54.809 effects of long term alcohol abuse and exhaustion. 00:18:55.369 --> 00:18:58.470 And the brain tumor was either a misdiagnosis 00:18:58.470 --> 00:19:02.069 or. A dramatic exaggeration that Burgess embraced 00:19:02.069 --> 00:19:04.890 because it gave him an excuse to retire and write 00:19:04.890 --> 00:19:07.089 full time. That makes sense. I have a brain tumor 00:19:07.089 --> 00:19:09.430 is a much better exit strategy than I'm burnt 00:19:09.430 --> 00:19:11.650 out and drinking too much. Exactly. And whether 00:19:11.650 --> 00:19:13.910 it was a medical error, a political conspiracy 00:19:13.910 --> 00:19:16.829 or massive hangover, the result is the same. 00:19:16.930 --> 00:19:19.970 It unlocked him. It turned him from a teacher 00:19:19.970 --> 00:19:22.250 who wrote on the weekends into a literary machine. 00:19:22.750 --> 00:19:25.910 Precisely. That dying year created the work ethic 00:19:25.910 --> 00:19:28.519 that defined the rest of his life. He never really 00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:30.519 stopped writing as if he was running out of time. 00:19:30.640 --> 00:19:33.160 And in the midst of this frenzy, he writes the 00:19:33.160 --> 00:19:36.680 book, A Clockwork Orange. 1962. And from what 00:19:36.680 --> 00:19:38.720 I understand, he wrote it incredibly fast. He 00:19:38.720 --> 00:19:41.980 wrote it in just three weeks. Three weeks? That 00:19:41.980 --> 00:19:44.779 is insane. I struggled to write an email in three 00:19:44.779 --> 00:19:47.640 weeks. He needed the money. He later called it 00:19:47.640 --> 00:19:51.170 a jus d 'esprit. A playful witticism, something 00:19:51.170 --> 00:19:53.549 knocked off quickly. He actually spent a lot 00:19:53.549 --> 00:19:55.569 of his later life resenting the fact that this 00:19:55.569 --> 00:19:58.690 little book overshadowed his massive, serious 00:19:58.690 --> 00:20:01.569 novels like Earthly Powers. Absolutely. He felt 00:20:01.569 --> 00:20:03.869 like a chef who spends days cooking a banquet, 00:20:03.950 --> 00:20:06.049 but everyone only wants to talk about the sandwich 00:20:06.049 --> 00:20:08.970 he made in five minutes. It's the classic creator's 00:20:08.970 --> 00:20:11.210 curse. The thing you spent the least time on 00:20:11.210 --> 00:20:15.009 becomes the thing everyone loves. But we need 00:20:15.009 --> 00:20:16.910 to get into the controversy of the book itself, 00:20:17.109 --> 00:20:19.789 specifically the ending. Because the book I read 00:20:19.789 --> 00:20:22.170 in college might not be the book someone else 00:20:22.170 --> 00:20:24.430 read, depending on where they bought it. This 00:20:24.430 --> 00:20:26.329 is a critical point. The original manuscript 00:20:26.329 --> 00:20:29.690 had 21 chapters. Burgess was very specific about 00:20:29.690 --> 00:20:32.190 this number. 21 was the age of majority, the 00:20:32.190 --> 00:20:34.630 age you became an adult in the UK at that time. 00:20:34.690 --> 00:20:36.809 The structure of the book was symbolic. So what 00:20:36.809 --> 00:20:39.950 happens in chapter 21, the missing chapter? In 00:20:39.950 --> 00:20:43.849 chapter 21, Alex, the narrator, the violent Gug, 00:20:43.869 --> 00:20:46.650 grows up. It's a few years later. He meets an 00:20:46.650 --> 00:20:49.369 old friend who has settled down, and Alex realizes 00:20:49.369 --> 00:20:53.069 that violence is boring. It's childish. He voluntarily 00:20:53.069 --> 00:20:55.690 decides to abandon his life of crime and thinks 00:20:55.690 --> 00:20:58.009 about having a son of his own. It is a redemption 00:20:58.009 --> 00:21:00.809 arc. It suggests that moral growth is possible. 00:21:01.109 --> 00:21:03.289 But that's not the ending in the movie. And I 00:21:03.289 --> 00:21:05.509 recall reading the American version of the book, 00:21:05.589 --> 00:21:08.569 and that chapter wasn't there. No. When the book 00:21:08.569 --> 00:21:10.750 was sold to a U .S. publisher, the editors thought 00:21:10.750 --> 00:21:13.789 the ending was too soft, too British. They wanted 00:21:13.789 --> 00:21:17.089 the gritty, unrepentant ending where Alex reverts 00:21:17.089 --> 00:21:19.869 to his old self. So they cut Chapter 21. And 00:21:19.869 --> 00:21:22.309 Burgess just let them. He needed the money. He 00:21:22.309 --> 00:21:24.190 was still in that I'm going to die any minute 00:21:24.190 --> 00:21:26.950 mindset. So he agreed. So the American version 00:21:26.950 --> 00:21:29.210 of the book ends with Chapter 20. Which ends 00:21:29.210 --> 00:21:31.430 with Alex basically saying, I was cured all right, 00:21:31.589 --> 00:21:33.849 implying he's going back to ultraviolence with 00:21:33.849 --> 00:21:36.269 the state's blessing. It's a cynical, cyclical 00:21:36.269 --> 00:21:38.990 ending. And crucially, Stanley Kubrick based 00:21:38.990 --> 00:21:41.750 his film on the American edition. So the movie, 00:21:41.809 --> 00:21:43.509 The Cultural Phenomenon, tells a fundamentally 00:21:43.509 --> 00:21:45.849 different story than the one Burgess intended. 00:21:46.190 --> 00:21:49.410 It changes the entire moral argument. Burgess 00:21:49.410 --> 00:21:51.470 wanted to say that people can grow out of evil, 00:21:51.589 --> 00:21:54.250 that maturity is the cure for youth violence. 00:21:55.349 --> 00:21:58.529 The movie and the US book says that evil is a 00:21:58.529 --> 00:22:01.009 permanent state and that the only cure is state 00:22:01.009 --> 00:22:03.009 control, which is just another form of evil. 00:22:03.150 --> 00:22:05.450 Which he hated. He hated that his book was used 00:22:05.450 --> 00:22:08.450 to glorify violence. He felt the film made sex 00:22:08.450 --> 00:22:11.849 and violence look cool, which led to misunderstandings 00:22:11.849 --> 00:22:14.690 that pursued him until his death. It's fascinating 00:22:14.690 --> 00:22:16.390 that he actually wrote a follow up about this, 00:22:16.390 --> 00:22:19.829 right? Nonfiction analysis. Yes. In 2019, they 00:22:19.829 --> 00:22:22.130 discovered a manuscript in his archives called 00:22:22.130 --> 00:22:25.890 The Clockwork Condition. It's a nonfiction philosophical 00:22:25.890 --> 00:22:28.470 sequel where he tries to analyze the condition 00:22:28.470 --> 00:22:31.390 of modern man and address the controversy. He 00:22:31.390 --> 00:22:33.170 never published it, but it shows how much this 00:22:33.170 --> 00:22:36.029 misunderstanding gnawed at him. He felt responsible 00:22:36.029 --> 00:22:38.089 for how the culture misinterpreted his work. 00:22:38.230 --> 00:22:40.250 And we can't talk about clockwork without talking 00:22:40.250 --> 00:22:42.859 about the language. Nadsat, this wasn't just 00:22:42.859 --> 00:22:44.920 gibberish he made up. No, it's a brilliant invention. 00:22:45.119 --> 00:22:47.619 It's a teen slang based on Russian. My Russian, 00:22:47.759 --> 00:22:50.220 of all languages. Inspiration struck during a 00:22:50.220 --> 00:22:53.380 trip to Leningrad in 1961. He was relearning 00:22:53.380 --> 00:22:55.640 Russian and realized that merging it with English 00:22:55.640 --> 00:22:59.180 created a weird alienating effect. But the purpose 00:22:59.180 --> 00:23:02.420 wasn't just to be clever. By using this made 00:23:02.420 --> 00:23:05.299 -up slang for the violent acts, he forces the 00:23:05.299 --> 00:23:08.180 reader to work to understand what is happening. 00:23:08.400 --> 00:23:10.380 Can you give us an example for anyone who hasn't 00:23:10.380 --> 00:23:13.279 read it? Sure. Instead of saying blood, he says 00:23:13.279 --> 00:23:16.660 crawvy. Instead of head, he says Gulliver. Instead 00:23:16.660 --> 00:23:19.140 of good, he says horror show from the Russian 00:23:19.140 --> 00:23:22.180 Koro show. So when Alex describes beating someone, 00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:25.240 he's using these alien words. It creates a distance. 00:23:25.380 --> 00:23:28.700 You aren't just consuming violence, you are decoding 00:23:28.700 --> 00:23:31.079 it. It's like a filter. It is. It makes you a 00:23:31.079 --> 00:23:33.180 participant in the decoding, which makes you 00:23:33.180 --> 00:23:35.240 complicit in a way. You're learning the language 00:23:35.240 --> 00:23:38.339 of the murderer. Exactly. And he famously refused 00:23:38.339 --> 00:23:41.160 to include a glossary. He said he would resist 00:23:41.160 --> 00:23:44.359 to the limit any request for a glossary. He wanted 00:23:44.359 --> 00:23:46.359 you to be brainwashed by the language as you 00:23:46.359 --> 00:23:48.420 read it. He wanted you to learn it by context, 00:23:48.519 --> 00:23:50.619 the way a child learns a language. But they put 00:23:50.619 --> 00:23:53.900 one in anyway eventually, right? Of course. Publishers 00:23:53.900 --> 00:23:55.980 eventually added glossaries anyway, which annoyed 00:23:55.980 --> 00:23:58.299 him. Okay, so that's the clockwork phenomenon. 00:23:58.799 --> 00:24:01.779 But, as we promised, we are moving beyond the 00:24:01.779 --> 00:24:05.079 orange. Let's look at Burgess the polymath. Because 00:24:05.079 --> 00:24:08.359 this guy was doing... Polymath is the only word 00:24:08.359 --> 00:24:10.980 for it. Let's go back to the music. We mentioned 00:24:10.980 --> 00:24:14.019 the 250 works. This wasn't a hobby. He wrote 00:24:14.019 --> 00:24:16.460 a symphony for the University of Iowa. He wrote 00:24:16.460 --> 00:24:19.220 an operetta based on James Joyce's Ulysses called 00:24:19.220 --> 00:24:21.559 Blooms of Dublin. And he even structured his 00:24:21.559 --> 00:24:23.859 novels musically. This is the part that blows 00:24:23.859 --> 00:24:26.980 my mind. How do you structure a book like a symphony? 00:24:27.119 --> 00:24:29.000 This is where the expert in me gets excited. 00:24:29.519 --> 00:24:32.559 Take his novel Napoleon Symphony. It is structured 00:24:32.559 --> 00:24:35.160 exactly like Beethoven's Eroica Symphony. The 00:24:35.160 --> 00:24:37.259 Eroica has four movements, each with a different 00:24:37.259 --> 00:24:39.700 tempo and mood. Burgess wrote the book in four 00:24:39.700 --> 00:24:42.339 sections to match those moods. So if the music 00:24:42.339 --> 00:24:45.000 is fast and aggressive... the writing style changes 00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:47.539 to match. Exactly. The prose itself changes. 00:24:47.579 --> 00:24:49.819 The sentences might get shorter, more staccato. 00:24:50.059 --> 00:24:52.740 And if the music is a slow funeral march, the 00:24:52.740 --> 00:24:55.279 prose becomes heavy and slow, more descriptive, 00:24:55.500 --> 00:24:58.140 more mournful. And in Mozart and the Wolfgang, 00:24:58.400 --> 00:25:01.460 he mirrors Mozartian composition. So he's trying 00:25:01.460 --> 00:25:03.519 to make you hear the book. He was trying to fuse 00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.519 the two art forms. He wanted the reader to hear 00:25:06.519 --> 00:25:08.740 the structure of the novel. He was pushing the 00:25:08.740 --> 00:25:11.299 boundaries of what a novel could even be. And 00:25:11.299 --> 00:25:13.390 they're still finding this stuff. It's not like 00:25:13.390 --> 00:25:16.250 we know everything he wrote. Correct. In 2023, 00:25:16.589 --> 00:25:19.089 they found a string quartet in his archives that 00:25:19.089 --> 00:25:21.950 nobody knew existed. It premiered that same year. 00:25:22.089 --> 00:25:24.809 He was composing right up until the end. Music 00:25:24.809 --> 00:25:28.069 was his first love and his last love. Then there's 00:25:28.069 --> 00:25:30.490 the linguistics. We talked about Nadsat, but 00:25:30.490 --> 00:25:32.869 he also invented a language for a Hollywood blockbuster. 00:25:33.029 --> 00:25:36.819 Quest for Fire. The 1981 movie about early humans. 00:25:37.240 --> 00:25:40.619 The director, Jean -Jacques Anod, needed a language 00:25:40.619 --> 00:25:43.519 that sounded prehistoric but had structure. He 00:25:43.519 --> 00:25:46.599 didn't want the actors just grunting. So he calls 00:25:46.599 --> 00:25:49.259 Burgess. That's amazing. He calls Burgess. Burgess 00:25:49.259 --> 00:25:52.099 created Ulam. He combined roots from various 00:25:52.099 --> 00:25:55.099 ancient languages, Indo -European, Native American, 00:25:55.220 --> 00:25:57.640 to create something that sounded primitive but 00:25:57.640 --> 00:25:59.920 had a consistent grammar. So when the characters 00:25:59.920 --> 00:26:02.099 are speaking in the movie, they're actually speaking 00:26:02.099 --> 00:26:04.700 a functioning language. That is some serious 00:26:04.700 --> 00:26:07.640 nerd cred. And he translated huge works too, 00:26:07.720 --> 00:26:10.160 right? Yes, he translated Cyrano de Bergerac 00:26:10.160 --> 00:26:12.480 and Carmen, but there was a bit of controversy 00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:15.359 about his linguistic skills. A biographer claimed 00:26:15.359 --> 00:26:18.359 that in a BBC documentary, Burgess was shown 00:26:18.359 --> 00:26:21.160 speaking Malay to locals, but they didn't understand 00:26:21.160 --> 00:26:24.259 him. The biographer used this to suggest Burgess 00:26:24.259 --> 00:26:27.609 was a fraud, that he faked his fluency. Was he 00:26:27.609 --> 00:26:29.910 a fraud? That fits the mythomania idea. Well, 00:26:29.950 --> 00:26:31.470 the director of the documentary actually came 00:26:31.470 --> 00:26:33.930 out and refuted this. He clarified that Burgess 00:26:33.930 --> 00:26:36.609 was speaking perfect Malay, but the waitresses 00:26:36.609 --> 00:26:39.289 he was talking to were ethnic Chinese who didn't 00:26:39.289 --> 00:26:41.890 speak Malay. Ah, so it was a cultural misunderstanding. 00:26:42.390 --> 00:26:45.109 It was a scene highlighting the ethnic divisions 00:26:45.109 --> 00:26:48.670 in Malaysia, not Burgess's incompetence. So the 00:26:48.670 --> 00:26:51.309 mythomania accusations sometimes went too far 00:26:51.309 --> 00:26:53.329 the other way. It seems like controversy just 00:26:53.329 --> 00:26:55.880 followed him. And on the flip side of high art, 00:26:55.960 --> 00:26:58.259 he was writing screenplays for franchises. He 00:26:58.259 --> 00:27:00.700 wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the famous miniseries, 00:27:00.700 --> 00:27:03.279 which is very respectful and orthodox. But then 00:27:03.279 --> 00:27:06.099 he wrote a screenplay for James Bond, The Spy 00:27:06.099 --> 00:27:09.019 Who Loved Me. No way. Burgess wrote Bond. He 00:27:09.019 --> 00:27:12.619 did. And it was wild. It featured a supervillain 00:27:12.619 --> 00:27:16.220 organization called Sea Aeos. And the plot involved 00:27:16.220 --> 00:27:19.019 a plan to bomb the Sydney Opera House with surgically 00:27:19.019 --> 00:27:21.299 implanted bombs. That sounds incredible. Why 00:27:21.299 --> 00:27:23.269 didn't they make it? It was rejected as being 00:27:23.269 --> 00:27:26.630 a bit too outrageous. One critic described it 00:27:26.630 --> 00:27:30.670 as a medley of sadism and acupuncture. But you 00:27:30.670 --> 00:27:32.589 know the massive submarine silo in the final 00:27:32.589 --> 00:27:34.650 movie? The one that swallows ships? Yeah, the 00:27:34.650 --> 00:27:37.089 supertanker. That idea survived from Burgess's 00:27:37.089 --> 00:27:39.900 script. So a little bit of Burgess DNA is in 00:27:39.900 --> 00:27:42.039 the Bond franchise. That is amazing. So we have 00:27:42.039 --> 00:27:44.240 the writer, the composer, the linguist. Now let's 00:27:44.240 --> 00:27:46.339 talk about the man himself in his later years. 00:27:46.460 --> 00:27:48.559 Yeah. Because he didn't stay in Manchester. He 00:27:48.559 --> 00:27:51.819 became a tax exile. This was the 1960s and 70s. 00:27:51.960 --> 00:27:54.440 Britain had an incredibly high tax rate for high 00:27:54.440 --> 00:27:57.599 earners, up to 90%. Burgess, finally making money 00:27:57.599 --> 00:27:59.660 from his books and film rights, refused to pay 00:27:59.660 --> 00:28:01.880 it, so he left. And he didn't just fly first 00:28:01.880 --> 00:28:04.789 class to a villa. He did it in a van. A Bedford 00:28:04.789 --> 00:28:07.450 dormobile, basically a camper van. He toured 00:28:07.450 --> 00:28:09.930 Europe with his second wife, Liana. She drove 00:28:09.930 --> 00:28:12.450 and he sat in the back writing novels on a typewriter. 00:28:12.609 --> 00:28:15.869 That is a romantic image. The writer on a run, 00:28:15.869 --> 00:28:18.549 clacking away in the back of a van, traversing 00:28:18.549 --> 00:28:20.930 the Alps. It sounds romantic, but the reality 00:28:20.930 --> 00:28:23.609 was chaotic. They lived in Malta for a while 00:28:23.609 --> 00:28:26.210 until the government confiscated his house. Why? 00:28:26.990 --> 00:28:29.390 What did he do? He gave a lecture that offended 00:28:29.390 --> 00:28:32.210 the Catholic priests there. Burgess had a knack 00:28:32.210 --> 00:28:34.789 for offending religious authorities. Then they 00:28:34.789 --> 00:28:36.970 moved to Italy, but they had to leave because 00:28:36.970 --> 00:28:40.049 of the mafia. The mafia. There were rumors of 00:28:40.049 --> 00:28:43.069 a plot to kidnap his son, Paolo Andrea, so they 00:28:43.069 --> 00:28:45.690 fled to Monaco, which was safe and tax -free. 00:28:45.869 --> 00:28:48.009 We need to touch on his personal life here because 00:28:48.009 --> 00:28:50.650 it explains the chaotic movement. We mentioned 00:28:50.650 --> 00:28:53.680 his first wife, Lynn, died. But he remarried 00:28:53.680 --> 00:28:56.299 very quickly. Very quickly. He married Liana, 00:28:56.480 --> 00:28:59.079 an Italian translator, just six months after 00:28:59.079 --> 00:29:02.039 Lynn died. But here's the soap opera twist. He 00:29:02.039 --> 00:29:04.119 had been having an affair with Liana while Lynn 00:29:04.119 --> 00:29:05.920 was still alive, and they already had a son, 00:29:06.119 --> 00:29:08.619 Paolo Andrea. So he had a secret family. He kept 00:29:08.619 --> 00:29:11.579 the affair and the child secret. Why? Because 00:29:11.579 --> 00:29:13.539 he didn't want to offend his cousin. Who was 00:29:13.539 --> 00:29:15.460 his cousin? The prime minister? The Catholic 00:29:15.460 --> 00:29:18.049 bishop of Leeds. Of course he was. You can't 00:29:18.049 --> 00:29:20.170 make this stuff up. Burgess was terrified of 00:29:20.170 --> 00:29:22.430 the scandal, so he lived this double life until 00:29:22.430 --> 00:29:25.529 Lynn passed away. Then he married Liana and adopted 00:29:25.529 --> 00:29:29.230 his own biological son to legitimize him. It's 00:29:29.230 --> 00:29:31.069 like a plot from one of his novels, Catholic 00:29:31.069 --> 00:29:33.829 Guilt, Secrets, and Complex Family Dynamics. 00:29:34.109 --> 00:29:36.930 He also seemed to have a knack for feuds. I read 00:29:36.930 --> 00:29:39.230 about a falling out with Graham Greene. Oh, yes, 00:29:39.470 --> 00:29:42.089 Graham Greene, the titan of literature. They 00:29:42.089 --> 00:29:44.829 were neighbors in Antibes. But Greene cut him 00:29:44.829 --> 00:29:47.809 off. Why? Because Burgess appeared on television. 00:29:48.049 --> 00:29:50.769 That's it. Because he was on TV. Green believed 00:29:50.769 --> 00:29:53.349 that appearing on talk shows was beneath the 00:29:53.349 --> 00:29:55.930 dignity of a writer. He thought a writer should 00:29:55.930 --> 00:29:59.130 be read, not seen. Burgess, who loved the spotlight 00:29:59.130 --> 00:30:01.289 and was a natural performer, did all the shows. 00:30:01.589 --> 00:30:03.910 Green thought it was vulgar and stopped talking 00:30:03.910 --> 00:30:06.549 to him. That is such a specific, old -school 00:30:06.549 --> 00:30:09.289 literary beef. You're too famous, I can't talk 00:30:09.289 --> 00:30:11.920 to you. It speaks to Burgess' character. He wasn't 00:30:11.920 --> 00:30:14.039 an elitist in that sense. He wanted to engage. 00:30:14.380 --> 00:30:16.579 He appeared on a show called After Dark discussing 00:30:16.579 --> 00:30:19.099 sex and divorce alongside Andrea Dworkin. He 00:30:19.099 --> 00:30:21.180 was fearless in that regard. So we come to the 00:30:21.180 --> 00:30:23.859 end. The man who was supposed to die in 1959 00:30:23.859 --> 00:30:27.599 makes it all the way to 1993. He died of lung 00:30:27.599 --> 00:30:30.460 cancer in London, which is ironic because he 00:30:30.460 --> 00:30:32.619 wrote that he expected to die unmourned in the 00:30:32.619 --> 00:30:35.279 Mediterranean. But he came back to London in 00:30:35.279 --> 00:30:38.500 the end. And he's buried in Monaco. And his epitaph. 00:30:39.700 --> 00:30:43.369 It's just two words. Abba. Abba, Abba. It's Aramaic 00:30:43.369 --> 00:30:45.710 for father, father. Is that a religious plea? 00:30:45.950 --> 00:30:48.130 It's a reference to Christ in Gethsemane praying 00:30:48.130 --> 00:30:51.549 to God. But in true Burgess fashion, it is also 00:30:51.549 --> 00:30:54.609 a literary reference. It's the title of his 22nd 00:30:54.609 --> 00:30:56.509 novel, which was about the death of the poet 00:30:56.509 --> 00:30:59.609 John Keats. Ah, of course. So even on his tombstone, 00:30:59.730 --> 00:31:01.910 he is blending the spiritual with the literary. 00:31:02.069 --> 00:31:04.049 He never turned it off. That is perfect. It's 00:31:04.049 --> 00:31:06.130 the ultimate Burgess move. So what does this 00:31:06.130 --> 00:31:08.670 all mean? We started by saying we wanted to move 00:31:08.670 --> 00:31:11.690 beyond the orange, and I think we have. We see 00:31:11.690 --> 00:31:14.930 a man who is driven by a desperate need to create, 00:31:15.009 --> 00:31:17.849 whether it was music, language, or stories. A 00:31:17.849 --> 00:31:20.990 man who turned trauma into art and a medical 00:31:20.990 --> 00:31:24.130 death sentence into a 30 -year career. And here 00:31:24.130 --> 00:31:26.410 is where it gets really interesting to consider 00:31:26.410 --> 00:31:29.210 the legacy. Burgess wrote A Clockwork Orange 00:31:29.210 --> 00:31:31.670 in three weeks. He wrote symphonies that took 00:31:31.670 --> 00:31:35.210 years. He wrote epic biographies. And yet the 00:31:35.210 --> 00:31:37.529 three -week project is the one that defines him. 00:31:37.670 --> 00:31:41.089 It raises a huge question. Do creators get to 00:31:41.089 --> 00:31:43.750 choose their legacy or does the audience decide 00:31:43.750 --> 00:31:45.670 what matters? I think Burgess would have hated 00:31:45.670 --> 00:31:47.789 the answer, but the audience always decides. 00:31:48.049 --> 00:31:50.769 However, the beauty of a deep dive like this 00:31:50.769 --> 00:31:53.430 is that we can reopen the case. We can look at 00:31:53.430 --> 00:31:55.809 the rest of the iceberg. Exactly. So here is 00:31:55.809 --> 00:31:58.829 my final thought for you listening. Don't just 00:31:58.829 --> 00:32:01.950 watch the Kubrick movie again. Go find earthly 00:32:01.950 --> 00:32:05.359 powers. Or better yet, go online and search for 00:32:05.359 --> 00:32:08.140 his music. Listen to the Sinfonia Maleu or that 00:32:08.140 --> 00:32:10.539 string quartet. Hear the man as he wanted to 00:32:10.539 --> 00:32:13.660 be heard as a composer. Absolutely. There is 00:32:13.660 --> 00:32:15.680 a whole universe of Burgess out there waiting 00:32:15.680 --> 00:32:17.240 to be discovered. You just have to look past 00:32:17.240 --> 00:32:18.759 the bowler hat. Thanks for diving in with us. 00:32:18.799 --> 00:32:19.480 We'll see you in the next one.