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bognose · Joined: 02 Mar 2006 Posts: 1

Finding it difficult finding a definitive answer on Anthony Burgess' sexuality, possibly there is none. Would love to know your insights- especially from reading Earthly Powers and the Wanting Seed.

JohnLinds · Posted: 2 Mar 2006, 5:31 am Post subject: Re: Anthony Burgess' sexuality

His book on Shakespeare is illuminating too; how he deals with himself and his understanding of Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson and so forth.

This does raise some good issues of method, and anachronism.

JohnLinds · Posted: 8 Mar 2006, 4:33 am Post subject: Again on Anthony

Rather by accident, I found that he wrote the introduction to the republication of James Hanley's Boy, Penguin, 1990, about which I am going to start another thread.

brod · Posted: 17 Jul 2006, 11:46 am Post subject:

Anthony Burgess is completely frank in his own biography. I believe he mentions that he might have regretted not being homosexual. But not being, he was quite evidently perfectly comfortable with himself as he was, and that together with his being also a remarkably intelligent and observant man made him sympathetic to all aspects of human nature. I think this insistence on 'gay' literature, books about homosexuals written by homosexuals, is very unfortunate, and tends to produce tedious polemics or self-pitying introspections at the expense of 'art'