For a while there, I really wasn't sure where this book was going, or why it was worth my time to read it. But, I stayed the course, and I have to admit, I had a hard time putting it down in the final few chapters as the book reached its climax and attempted resolution. The final chapter was pure elegance, and while I don't don't feel it resolved the plot well enough for my taste, I appreciated the power of Burgess' prose.

The problem with reading this book today is quarter-fold. First of all, Burgess was British, so his book is heavy in English jargon and colloquialisms, many of which were unfamiliar to me...and would be, I imagine, to most Americans. Secondly, Burgess wrote this book 50 years ago, which further distances his language from a contemporary audience. Thirdly, he is writing of a future time in the mode of science fiction, which introduces more unfamiliar concepts, words, ideas to his audience. I had a hard time distinguishing the science fiction language from the Britishisms and archaic language. And finally, Burgess is writing satire, so much like Swift's "A Modest Proposal," it relys very heavily on one's understanding of the nuances of social/politial issues of the time in which it was written.

This is a very dense book. The subject matter is difficult (society's relation to God, homosexuality, cannabalism, etc.) and the context is highly philosophical and allusory, which makes for really deep themes, if one has the background knowledge to assist in extracting all the subtext. Go for it if you want a challenge, but I warn you: caveat emptor.

Dobra powieść, jednak sporo jej brakuje do "Roku 1984". Jest to wstrząsająca wizja przyszłości ale i też miejscami obrzydliwa.

Four stars because I could not put this down. The first third of the story is tedious and rather predictable after you learn the rules of this society. You cannot decide whether it is a dystopian or utopian view - it's a little of both. When things go off the rails it becomes completely entrancing. While the social/political changes could never occur at such breakneck speed, it's still fun to read.

This book is full of many subjects which may make people uncomfortable.

This book is made for people who like weird comedies. This author wrote A Clockwork Orange, so be prepared for a foray into strangetown. I think this book is a very interesting look at today's society. The futuristic society in the novel is a complete 180 of what we have right now and it really puts priorities into perspective. I recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about love, loss, government corruption, starvation, and cannibalism. All told in an upbeat and cheerful manner.

This book is a comedy and it's written to help you cope with the slightly horrific details within.

è inutile girarci intorno. in questo libro c'è un'omofobia di fondo che lo rende difficilmente sostenibile (almeno per me). eppure burgess ha tanto, tantissimo da dire: la sua visione del ciclo della storia, la sua certezza della capacità umana di scendere con naturalezza verso la barbarie (col cannibalismo accettato praticamente senza dubbi) e -nel finale- la sua durissima satira della guerra e su quelli che dylan chiamava "masters of war" sono momenti davvero memorabili. anthony burgess (uno scrittore davvero mal servito in italia: per un longseller come "arancia meccanica" ci sono decine di libri irreperibili o mai tradotti) non fa nulla per piacere al lettore, è davvero "politicamente scorretto" quando l'espressione non esisteva, ma è anche un critico acuto del potere e delle sue contraddizioni.

Loved this book. Hilarious and energetic. Comes at you like a psychedelic rock song. I found the story pretty clever but really loved Burgess' sense of apocalypse, as if he transcribed images from Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. I loved Tristram's trek thru degenerating England, the slow sprawl of history, moving from extreme police states on opposite poles of the structure.


Yes, the love story was clumsy, but t served the purpose of showing this world's dichotomy and hypocrisy, his wife leaving him for a fake gay man, being cursed in either worlds for asking questions and being against the establishment no matter who is in charge. The final payoff of the book wasn't as great as the sum of its parts.
|

An amazing hallucinatory romp through what could be called social commentary, the main purpose of The Wanting Seed is to examine the ebb and flow of political life, how the world seems to veer from one set of rules, of justifications, to the next. The plot is nothing special, but Burgess creates such a skewed and hilarious world of cannibalistic spiritualism, forced sexuality, contrived war that the novel's other flaws are only minor stumbling blocks. He achieves this satire by having his world try to re-create the doings of the past---most hilariously by staging wars to create jobs and keep the population in check.

But where the novel really succeeds is representing how each authoritarian figure in the novel grasps almost mindlessly at the next perfect doctrine for controlling the world, be it a general whose only understanding of war is through old movies and the War Poets (a man of many famous first lines) or Tristram's brother, who callously jumps onto each new moral ideal, going from a leader in the INFERTILITY POLICE, needing to hide his illegitimate children in fear of being arrested, to a higher-up in the FERTILITY POLICE, now using those same bastard children as a method of advancing his career.


A wondrous, but flawed, novel. You truly get a sense of this sprawling world, and the journey chapters are very effective.

Think A Modest Proposal on bad Acid.

i love anthony burgess.

he has such a unique way of writing speculative fiction that’s, in one vein, hilarious, satirical, and genuinely makes me laugh, and in the other it’s a bone chilling stark reflection on the momuntum of the present and its potential to propel into an absurd future.

when i first finished eeading this i was honestly not as excited about it as id expected to be, but the more i think about it the more i find it to be really well done and potentially a top 5 favorite for me.

going to start making my way through all his books because after this and a clockwork orange i am caught. hook, line and sinker.

Although it apparently takes place fairly far in the future, technology has barely advanced beyond "nuclear" powered cars and TVs on the ceiling. But, as a satire, the focus is on changes in society - which also are remarkably few. As a reader in 2024, it was hard to see past the inherent homophobia (and subtly present racism) to the satire, but I suppose it was there. It almost seemed like too much was happening too fast, and although there was cleverness and a charming use of unnecessarily big words, I'm not sure I got a whole lot out of it. Try again, Anthony, maybe the next one will do it!

This took me awhile to read cause it was boring and homophobic, but Anthony Burgess is still my babygirl and he can do no wrong in my heart so I read this for him

Sysprint
Zagreb, 2001.
Prijevod: Vlado Opačić
Pogovor: Tomislav Brlek
Roman je izvorno objelodanjen 1962.
Jezično govoreći radi se o izuzetno lošem automatizirajućem stilu, o lošijem obliku tržišnog realizma, aktualizacija kakva je dosegnuta u Paklenoj naranči ovdje se jednostavno nije ostvarila.
Konstrukcija djela je vršena pretežito dijalozima, i to uglavnom zamarajućim dijalozima, ne postoje modernistički unutarnji monolozi, struje svijesti, niti se jezično ostvaruje ikakava atmosferičnost djela.
Žanrovski govoreći radi se o distopiji, možda bismo čak mogli navesti i spekulativnu fikciju kao žanr u u užem smislu te riječi.
Sadržajno ovaj roman tematizira jedan ljubavni trokut u jednom dekadentnom i degenerativnom društvu koje promovira održiv razvoj, koje ograničava broj djece na samo jedno dijete po obitelji, koje promovira homoseksualnost.
U tom smislu tekst je previše ideološki nabijen, ideologičnost se pretjerano ubacuje u tekst, dijalozi se skucaju na površinski način, sve se ostvaruje u svrhu promoviranja protuliberalne ideologije.
Dakako da sam uz konzervativizam koji se promovira, no promoviranje se ostvaruje na hiperbolizirani način, guši se estetičnost teksta.
1984. se, primjerice, razlikuje od ovog romana upravo po tome što ne dopušta da ideologičnost guši estetičnost, postiže sjajnu i duboku psihologizaciju likova te njoj je ideološka kritika pozadina same umjetničke strane djela.
Svime time što ovaj roman ne postiže ispada kao neko amatersko djelo.
Nemojte ovo pročitati, izuzev ako ste fanovi Burgessa.
¡Hasta luego mis murcielagos!
Nos vemos con los pinguinos.

this book had some interesting ideas about government and overpopulation. similar to 1984 or brave new world, it explored political ideas as a story instead of an essay. perhaps it would have worked better as an essay though. the main characters; Tristram, Beatrice-Joanna and Donny weren't especially likeable. Tristram was an important character to follow though, as a Historian he has a deeper understanding of the politics in his society. when the story begins, society follows Pelagianism; a form of liberalism. the principle from this ideology being that man is inherently good. the book shows an extreme, nearly satirical response to liberalism. some aspects, however, can resonate with western society today. for example, homosexuality is strongly encouraged. they are favoured for jobs, and are also found to be part of the elite government like Tristram's brother, Derek is. Tristram himself does not pretend to have any homosexual tendencies, whilst many of the heterosexual men do. in fact, Tristram loses out on a promotion due to, partly, his lack of homosexuality. this all occurs during the first half of the book which i believe is significantly better than the second half; maybe because it's more relevant to our/western society. despite liberalism/pelagianism supposedly being on the good side, there are many dark side to the society too. the book actually opens with Beatrice-Joanna, Tristram's wife, grieving over her son who has just died. whilst he COULD have been saved, he was not. all for the sake of efficiency; it is one less mouth to feed. the government of this society strongly encourage infanticide; it is a way for parents to earn money. contrasted with Beatrice's grief is the people of the ministry of Agriculture who sing cheerfully for the death of her son Roger. the lack of care they have in their business reminded me of the cheerful gravedigger in Hamlet, who also lacks care and has emotional detatchment from what he is doing. her son will be converted to phosphorus pentoxide in order to promote agriculture; ultimately, the growth of food. these are the measures that are taken to deal with overpopulation...
another interesting aspect of this liberalism is the rejection of god and religion completely. it is more or less against the law to be religious or believe in God. "for god's sake" is replaced with "for dog's sake".
overpopulation & hunger are the underlying themes of the novel. Pelagianism and Augstinism are different ways of dealing with this.


the other half of the book involves the shift from pelagiansim phase to the intermediate phase. this is essentially where the faith of goodness in man is lost and government decends into chaos. there are no opposition political parties; only one party. the change in politics is a reflection of the change in the political cycle. this is at the point of transition from liberalism to conservatism. it is during this transition that for me, the book begins to lose its initial spark from the earlier chapters. the story the characters go through is fairly trivial but i'll add in the relevant parts where necessary. Tristram ends up in jail after getting drunk and becoming enraged when he finds out his wife has cheated on him with Derek and is pregnant with their child. when the intermediate phase does hit, all prisoners are released. Tristram actually escapes prison a few days before this and feels ready to make amends with his wife (prison having changed him). the escape aspect is interesting and action packed so makes for nice reading. he ends up on a pilgrimage to find his wife again, who has gone north to live with her sister's family in the hope of keeping her pregnancy a secret. it is during this journey that he witnesses and takes part in the result of overpopulation without control; cannibalism. with a lack of government control, cannibalism has prevailed. interestingly, there is no point in the book at which the word is explicitly stated. it's obvious this is what is going on, but the book stays very subtle in describing it. though at points, the descriptions are also graphic.

during the beginnings of augustisnism, Tristram gets enlisted into the army for a year. for me, i found the army aspect of the story especially dull (army scenes definitely translate better on screen that in books). one interesting point from the book was that in response to overpopulation, the military was being used to clamp down on the population. homeless people, criminals, all sorts were being forced into the army and being forced to fight against another group for no true reason. then when all the bodies are killed, "waste not want not". very dark concepts, not all of them translated well in the book but they were all interesting nonetheless.

3 stars - i liked it and some of the political concepts. characters weren't vivid enough for my liking. the ending was circular like the political cycle; by the end, society was on the brink of returning back to liberalism. this had all happened in a few years according to the book.

If Vonnegut and Huxley dragged George Orwell into an alley and brutally molested him, this book would be the result. I'd always heard that Anthony Burgess regretted that he was most famous for A Clockwork Orange but this book really drives that point home. There is so much going on in this book. The fifth section alone could be fleshed out into its own novel.