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

by Anthony Burgess (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1991

  $3.24

  This second and final volume of the autobiography of Anthony Burgess begins in 1959, with the author's return from Brunei and the start of a professional writing career. It ends, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1982 with the centenary celebrations of James Joyce's birth, which prompt the author to certain conclusions about the relationship between literature and life.

• Used

  Paperback
  2002

  $7.11

  After returning from a trip to Brunei, Anthony Burgess, initially believing he has only a year to live, begins to write - novels, film scripts, television series, articles. It is the life of a man desperate to earn a living through the written word. He finds at first that writing brings little success, and later that success, and the obligations it brings, interfere with his writing - especially of fiction. There were vast Hollywood projects destined never to be made, novels the critics snarled at, journalism that scandalised the morally scrupulous. There is the eclat of A Clockwork Orange (and the consequent calls for Burgess to comment on violent atrocities), the huge success - after a long barren period - of Earthly Powers. There is a terrifying first marriage, his description of which is both painful and funny. His second marriage - and the discovery that he has a four-year-old son - changes his life dramatically, and he and Liana escape to the Mediterranean, for an increasingly European life. With this marriage comes the triumphant rebirth of sex, creative energy and travel - to America, to Australia and all over Europe.

• Used

  Hardcover
  1990

  $3.24

  This is the second part of Anthony Burgess's confessions, the first volume of which was entitled Little Wilson and Big God . The narratvie begins in 1959, with the author's return to England from Brunei and, after the explosion of a prognosis which gave him a year to live, the start of a professional writing career which is still in gaudy flower. It ends, somewhat arbitrarily, in 1983 with the centenary celebrations of James Joyce's birth, which prompt certain conclusions about the relationship between literature and life. The life depicted here is that of a man desperate to earn a living through writing. The writing comprises all the media, including film, and the reader will learn about cinematic enterprises that succeeded and failed, novels the critics snarled at, journalism that scandalised the morally scrupulous. A strange marriage ends with the cirrhosis of the wife, a second marriage brings a triumphant rebirth of sex, creative energy and foreign travel, as well as an illegitimate fatherhood made legitimate.