In 1973 I suffered a Kierkegaardian Sickness Unto Death over this one - now, in retrospect, I feel strangely vindicated by my so doing.

Same feeling - different judgement - does what came around go around? Well, maturity heals.

In '73, you see, I was a lame duck Nemo in a hole of a bureaucrat's office - relegated to hopeless oblivion by my first-gen neuroleptic mood stabilizers in a grim green fog of nothingness.

Burgess was then my pastime. He confirmed my recent hospitalized paranoia in spades!

It was a confirmation of truly Sartrean nausea.

Okay - what, exactly, is that nausea? An acute perception of the Void within us, and in those around us. It is the Clear Light in The Tibetan Book of the Dead. AKA, God’s conviction.

Many put that inevitable fact off indefinitely, sloughing it off as the “correct” perception of absolute atheism. Yet it will convict us endlessly and relentlessly unless we’ve let ourselves be led from hand to hand by hand.

Ron Fockitt was such a wastrel. He took endless older-and-wiser delight in being given a special delivery package for senior managers requiring signature.

Old Gus in the Mail Room, in which Ron was a runner, called it - leering - a BY-HAND. So wise-guy Ron learned to leer knowingly too. He considered himself Wiser than other Goody-goody Simpletons.

It's the germ of pop-up Mad Ads spiralling through our brains, having issue in a new paucity - a desert of endless wanting - in an environment of plenty, which morphs in turn, overnight, into scarcity.

You’re the wiser man, remember?

But in a society headed toward anarchy, the seed produces monstrously ghoulish forms of wanting. Literally dog EAT dog.

It's downright nightmarish. Yes, Burgess is right.

A little "harmless" in-crowd gentrification is a dangerous thing.
***

Well, Fergus, you say. So how come Burgess' literary stock has mushroomed in value since your harping and carping (remember the ancient Thomas the Rhymer?) review of Napoleon Symphony?

Simple. I relaxed.

Since starting his phenomenal Here comes Everybody (a wonderfully informal and erudite look at the staggering oeuvre of James Joyce) I've seen that Burgess is a pretty decent fellow and a Genius to boot!

And I saw the only thing that survives us is our love.
***

And The Wanting Seed is very close to being a dystopian masterpiece.

Nowadays, we all want. All the time. The seed has sprouted.

Beware.

It's SO important that this seed -

Which once was embedded in our subconscious "Full Fathom Five" -

NEVER undergoes a monstrous "Sea Change" into such a monstrous, "Rich and Strange" transmogrification as in this book.

Note: the novel, at time of review, was due for RE-RELEASE.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

E con questo romanzo chiudo il rapporto con Burgess iniziato con la lettura di Arancia Meccanica.
Non è un autore che fa per me, sia per il suo stile sia per la peculiarità delle sue storie. C'è troppo cinismo, troppo pessimismo, troppa violenza fine a sé stessa. Tutto è estremo. Riconosco le sue capacità linguistiche e di sperimentazione narrativa ma non le apprezzo, mi hanno reso la lettura pesante e fastidiosa, talvolta mi hanno addirittura disgustato.

Strange. Funny. Scary. Thought-provoking. Pretty much the way you can sum up anything Burgess wrote.

In classic Anthony Burgess style, I only understood about 2/3rd of the words he used. A true wordsmith. The conecept, albeit all over the place at times, was very interesting but I found the execution lacking at times. I enjoyed the philosophical questioning that the book elicited, but I thought the plot was lacking and messy, especially in the middle of the book. The beginnig third of the book was engaging enough, the second third lost me a bunch and was sloppy, but the final third was good writing and philosophically deep. However, after reading this, I can see why I had no idea Burgess had written more books beyond A Clockwork Orange as this was nothing extraordinary.

It's a good thing I chose to read A Clockwork Orange (my favorite novel) first. Had The Wanting Seed been my introduction to Burgess's work, I'd never feel inclined to approach any of his writing again. It's boring, unfocused, silly, unrealistic, cliched, homophobic, racist and misogynistic. In regard to those latter few complaints, it's true that an author is a product of his or her time period. Great literature may contain offensive themes. This is not great literature, though. The characters act solely out of self-concern; it's near impossible to care for any of them. The dystopian elements aren't well-developed either. Burgess clearly doesn't create a realistic futuristic situation, but it's not some sort of believable imperfect alternate universe either. Also, the writing is so pretentious. Especially towards the end, I found myself skimming more than reading. I'd lost all interest, and solely wanted to be able to know that I'd at least finished the book.

Rambling, bonkers dystopia, like a messier version of the world of clockwork orange. Good fun though, and the final military section is one of the best bits of speculative fiction I've read

a hillariously unsettling dystopian dream of an overpopulated world, where wars are fought against nobody, your rationed meat is probably your nextdoor neighbor, and "it's sapiens to be homo." Burgess is famous for "a clockwork orange," but this book fucking rules.

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.

Разбирам защо за тази книга има толкова противоречиви мнения. За мен това е една много важна спекулация, която обаче прави смели стъпки към осъществяването си в реалността. Човеконенавист, гримирана с добри намерения. Препоръчвам.

This novel was...interesting. I was anle to become fully immersed in the story and i enjoyed the take on the dystopian future. The future shown i believe is very realistic but highly unlikely. The characters were aweful with the exception of Shonny in my opinion. This was an easy read because of its great storytelling.

The Wanting Seed is the companion to Burgess' far more popular Clockwork Orange. They both were published in 1962 and represent original dystopic views on a near-future where the liberal society collapsed in favour of a police state.

While Clockwork Orange's Alex is a memorable character and I never will forget the Korova milk bar, I can't even recall the name of the Wanting Seed's character one week after finishing it. He remains pale, none of his actions are memorable. He's there to give us a rundown on what's going on in society. The grand focus lends itself less to memorable interactions than Alex had in Clockwork Orange.

What makes The Wanting Seed a satisfying read, is it's macro approach to speculative fiction depicting an everlasting historical circle from liberalism via an interregnum to police state and back again in a massively overpopulated world. If there's a message, it's the thriving of opportunists no matter which regime is ruling. Essentially, man is evil and good deeds are the exception, usually not rewarded. Burgess sparks with ideas. Not everything appears plausible but never was meant to be in this exaggeration of negative societal tendencies Burgess sensed in the early 60's.

I had fun with it. It doesn't reach the heights of it's overpowering companion book but it has enough of the dystopic qualities that made Clockwork Orange shine to warrant a read.

This may be the most mad and outrageous book I ever read. Cannibalism and endless war become solutions to the population bomb about to detonate in the not-so-far-off future. Burgess writes with a mix of humor and horror, the humor makes the story easily digestible and enjoyable. He likes to push his reader and all the shock and disgust you may feel has an ultimate purpose as it is thought-provoking. This is one of the great dystopian novels. "The Wanting Seed" was released the same year as his other classic dystopian novel "A Clockwork Orange" and ultimately has the same feel.