Earthly Powers

by Anthony Burgess

Book Overview

Kenneth Toomey is an eminent novelist of dubious talent; Don Carlo Campanati is a man of God, a shrewd manipulator who rises through the Vatican to become the architect of church revolution and a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671414909
• ISBN13: 9780671414900
• Release Date: December 1980
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 607 Pages
• Weight: 2.23 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Burgess Power Personified

...First thing for me, though, is that the book combines the intellectual rewards of "serious" lit' with the more popular joys of any "thumping good read"! Critical analysis can be (and probably has been) made in great depth, if you're so inclined, from the thematics of the plot to close exegesis of the imagery, the syntax, the sound, the intricacies and subtleties of the prose: polymath Burgess is certainly up to any level of detailed appreciation, being more than capable in that area himself. But this is so much more than just a "clever-clever" exercise. Burgess rejoices in language as the virtuoso rejoices in musicianship: that is, he makes brilliance and insight accessible, entertaining and enlightening with the same effortless, but technically expert and hard-won, ease as Mozart or Shakespeare.So there's that erudite, piquant, moving, hilarious voice to recommend Earthly Powers, just for starters. Then consider the story: well, it's about Good and Evil in the Twentieth Century, right? OK, it's about the Devil and his possession, at some time or other, of just about anyone who ever tried to do right, let alone the weak and downright villainous. Satan is even shown to act - and occasionally speak, if you pay attention - through the "author" himself .This narrator, Kenneth Toomey, is what Earthly Powers is "about" on the simplest level: his outrageous cultural, religious, literary and sexual adventures amongst the movers and shakers, fictitious and real, of the modern age. The Toomey persona is clearly close to Burgess in many ways - he's witty, self-deprecating, eloquent, tortured, magnanimous, irascible. Very "real," then; but also brilliantly imagined - witness more than one glib critic being fooled into writing of Burgess as "homosexual" (wrong) on the strength of this most convincing of personae.Earthly Powers is exciting and entertaining in so many ways, from sheer quality of authorship through to scope of plot and impact of incident. Lovely characters, too. It has true and important things to say about human behaviour; profound messages about love, respect and inhumanity. Please read it.

Faith, duty, home

I rate this Burgess' best novel, having bought it at least three times! It's a big, heavy book, so I take it to the beach it, read it, and bin it before leaving, to save luggage weight. Then I realise I need to reread it...Burgess' narrator namedrops his way shamelessly through the twentieth century as he tells the story of his own life and the intertwined fortunes of his brother-in-law, Carlo Campanati, a Catholic priest whose dearest ambition is to "make Pope". It's a huge sweep of history and human times to cover, but Burgess centres it around faith, duty, and home, and makes it look easy. One warning: he is *very* erudite, so you'll need a dictionary at times. I reckon I have a good vocabulary, but I had no idea what a "venerean strabismus" was. It's up there with "Brideshead Revisited" as a "foodie" book too. One of the beaches I read this on was in Goa, and I was gagging for the Italian meatballs and "cold, black wine" which I couldn't get over there! Stylistically it's self-conscious; the narrator intervenes frequently to remind you he's writing his autobiography. It's not a major problem, and in fact it's necessary. The first time you notice this is the absolutely show-stopping opening paragraph involving archbishops and catamites (reach for your dictionary if you don't know)...!Did I mention this book is frequently very, very funny? I cried laughing at the later scenes featuring the shoplifting bisexual Nazi. Warmly recommended; just don't expect Clockwork Orange!

An unjustly neglected masterwork

Burgess's 1980 EARTHLY POWERS, like Styron's SOPHIE'S CHOICE(published around the same time), hearkens back to the grand 19th century novels of Dickens, Balzac, and Galdos. It is a novel the reader enters and inhabits, a world of its own. Kenneth Toomey, supposedly modeled on Somerset Maugham, is a middling range popular novelist who finds himself in the midst of some of the great literary and social maelstroms of the twentieth century. He knows everyone - Churchill, James Joyce, John Maynard Keynes; you name them, Toomey has sipped tea with them - and gets involved with everything - censorship trials and ancient voodoo, for instance; he even has a brush with the Jim Jones cult through one of his nieces. Critics carped at the book for its lack of focus, but it has a definite focus: the twentieth century. Toomey's not a great artist, but he is a great observer, and through him Burgess gives us the full sweep of the twentieth century, its follies and its glories (but more folly than glory). In the past, English literature has had an Age of Shakespeare and an Age of Johnson. In the future critics and historians will judge the late twentieth century as the Age of Burgess. EARTHLY POWERS will help solidify that certainty.Read it.

Here is God's plenty!

As the venerable English reviewer Peter Marcus noted, this is Burgess' masterpiece. While "A Clockwork Orange" is the better known book (chiefly because of the film - which most people know of but few have seen),"Earthly Powers" is without doubt the finer work. Huge in scope, covering a multitude of decades, this extraordinary acheivement is one of the few truly epic novels that actually manages to sustain the interest constantly. There is no point in explaining about Ken Toomey, Geoffrey, Hortense, Carlo and Domenico Campanati (not pronounced Campa-neighty) and the host of other characters which litter this superlative piece of literature. Their various appeals become plain as day to even the casual reader - which it is very difficult to be when faced with a book as challenging, humourous, and rewarding as this. I, too, spit on the so-called "literary" establishment who overlooked this book in favour of the frothy tripe they awarded honours to. However, so debased are the awards by overlooking this novel that, paradoxically, I am now glad Burgess' genius is not sullied and soiled by association with such scandalous ruffians as the awardsmen truly are. I'll stop now, and you'll click on the bit that says... buy, buy, buy! Or, do what I did, and get it from your local library, saving time and money.