News from the House JULY 26Th-28Th 2007 Please Make a Note of These Dates in July of Next Year
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End of the World Newsletter Vol 2 - November 2006 News from The House JULY 26th-28th 2007 Please make a note of these dates in July of next year. This is when the International Anthony Burgess Foundation and Liverpool Hope University will co-host the next Anthony Burgess Symposium. The Symposium will be held at Liverpool Hope University in the city that Burgess found rivalling Manchester for his affections when he was stationed there during his time in the British Army’s Educational Corps. The theme for the Symposium is Anthony Burgess: Selves and Others. Papers are invited on any aspect of Burgess’s writing (literary, journalistic or critical) or music. Some possible topics are Burgess’s work in the UK and abroad; Post-colonial Press), Aude Heffen (University Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle), Elements in his writings; Gender and Difference in his Writings; J’anine Jobling (Liverpool Hope University), Paul Phillips The English Reception of Burgess and his Work; and Burgess (Brown University), Carla Sassi (University of Verona) and Rob and Psychoanalysis. These are only a few of the possible Spence (Edge Hill College of Higher Education). areas that could be explored from the perspectives suggested by the theme of the conference, and we hope we will receive Thanks to a generous endowment by Liana Burgess, Liverpool proposals for many different ones. More information and Hope University currently has 3 graduate students studying downloadable registration forms will be published on the towards a PhD on the subject of Burgess’s work. Two of the Website as soon as they are available for posting. students are researching his literary writings, and the third is studying his linguistic work. News of any other students PLEASE MARK THESE DATES AND COME AND HELP IN currently working on Burgess at a graduate level would be THE EXPLORATION AND CELEBRATION OF most welcome by the Foundation, and it might be possible to BURGESS’S WORK. help such students to get in contact with each other and make a regular contribution to the Newsletter. Since last year’s Symposium, there have been several exciting developments at the Foundation house. Liana Burgess Undergraduate students are also being encouraged to study has generously donated two more collections of books Burgess at Liverpool Hope, and a full-year course is allowing from Anthony’s personal library and more of the artefacts students to read and explore his work in the context of works and memorabilia from their lives together in Monaco. Nuria by his contemporaries is being offered at a third-year level for Belastegui has taken up the role of the Foundation Secretary the first time. If you know of other undergraduate course on and she is taking a leading role in the organization and Burgess, please let us know so that we can let members know cataloguing of the new books (including the supervision of about such courses. installing new bookshelves to hold them all). This year’s Manchester Literary Festival has a section devoted Manchester University Press has agreed to publish Anthony to Burgess’s work. Aided by Andrew Biswell, the Burgess Burgess and Modernity a selection of papers from the first section is organizing a series of writers to use or respond to IABF Symposium, and David Lodge and Anthony Cronin have Burgess’s work by creating texts that will be transmitted via written a Foreword and After Word for the collection, and public viewing screens and phone texts. Some of the writers Carson Bergstrom from the University of Salford is writing an have already visited the Foundation house to gain some sense Introduction for the book. of Burgess as a writer and a person. This project should be completed in the second half of October. The Foundation is happy to announce that it now has an Editorial Board for the Newsletter. This is the first step The music of Anthony Burgess is not being neglected. In towards having the Newsletter recognized as a refereed addition to the magisterial tome by Paul Phillips that is soon to publication, and scholars in the UK who must participate in be published by Manchester University Press, a production of the government-driven Research Assessment Exercise will Cyrano will be staged at the Royal Exchange Theatre starting be glad to know that submissions to the Newsletter will be in December. At a more local level, the classical pianist and refereed by members of the Editorial and be eligible for RAE teacher, Diane O’Hara is collaborating with Alan Roughley on a submissions as refereed journal articles. Among those who programme of Burgess’s music and literature. The programme have generously agreed to become members of the Editorial will first be presented at Liverpool’s Cornerstone Festival in Board are Á.I. Farkas (University of Budapest), Ben Forkner December and then at regional UK colleges and universities in (University of Angers), Matthew Frost (Manchester University the New Year. 1 Thoughts Under A Green Shade Notes by Guest Editor Douglas Milton OK. A broken laptop, not one but two of grave-rolling from Monaco would have music specialist? Or an English major? lost data sticks, problems with health been too much to bear) has previously Or one whose chosen field is linguistics? and money (but the latter is always appeared on the discussion boards, but Her answer is both apt and amusing. a problem, is it not?) and, on the day I felt it was too good not to be dragged this edition of the End of the World kicking and screaming into the light. Your editor offers up a fragment from Newsletter was due to be put to bed, Thankfully, Yves agreed. a play-in-progress based on Burgess’s the mass evacuation of the building in two volumes of autobiography. The actor which your humble editor lives because Canadian Marty Phipps has contributed Peter Hudson (currently to be seen in hit of a suspected gas leak...none such a typically pyrotechnical essay inspired French film Les Chevaliers du Ciel) was trivia, one can be sure, would have been by Nothing more than a couple of a tremendous help during the writing allowed to get in the way of Anthony lines from one of Enderby’s poems. of this. With any luck at least a part of Burgess’s daily stint at the typewriter, Anybody who read Marty’s scintillating it will be performed at the forthcoming although one hopes he would have contributions to the late lamented Manchester Literary Festival as part of extinguished his cigar. Probably not. www.anthonyburgess.co.uk forum (and their intriguingly-named Burgess Project. Bowing down to circumstances wasn’t where are you people and what are you his style. up to and when will you start writing for I would like to thank Dr Alan Roughley us?) will recognise his familiar wicked and Nuria for their unstinting support, This issue of the Newsletter appears style. Marty offered not one but two along with Mike Anderson of University rather later than it should have done, essays and it’s to be hoped that the next College, London, David A Tait, Simon and it’s all my fault. I can only thank Dr one will appear in issue three. Carr, Tom Kasperkowicz, Dr Sharon Alan Roughley for his seemingly limitless Black, Peter Hudson, Dr Christine patience in the face of my constant From the ancient fastness of Budapest, Lee Gengaro, Andrew Biswell, Mena assertions that, it’s all in the post guv, Akos Farkas serves up a paprika-hot Gidings, and Andrew White. Oh and you’ll get it tomorrow, honest. mixture of abstruse erudition and mad Morrissey for his last album. Another surrealist humour for us to sink our teeth great Mancunian. How one wishes And of course, many thanks also to our into. His book, Will’s Son and Jake’s you could both have met. Who knows , selfless contributors. Without whom Peer remains one of the best things AB, what future generations of writers, etc.They are, fittingly for Burgess fans, a about Burgess ever written. singers, poets, artists you will influence? cosmopolitan bunch. Non omnis moriar. Christine Lee Gengaro, fast making a From Brussels, Yves Buelen’s excellent name for herself in the field of Burgess review of a recent Parisian theatre studies, brings her cool NY-transplanted- production of A Clockwork Orange (one to-California wit to bear on what is which I simply couldn’t bring myself to actually a very important question – how attend because the music was provided does one deal with a multi-talented by 70s disco star Cerrone – the sounds genius like Burgess if one is, say, just a A Bit of a Play by Douglas Milton (This is a brief extract from a one-man- as known in Roman times tacked at a granulocytic. One of those. (Stands up, show I’ve been working on based on crazy angle on the wall above the desk. stretches, in profile to audience) Funny Anthony Burgess’s autobiography. ‘A Left, a battered upright piano. Right, thing is, any one would do. The infinite Bit of a Play’ is not the title, merely a a stereo set. Can’t stress this enough, resources of the English language. warning that you’re only getting a sliver books everywhere, vaguely arranged Dictating, as it were, the terms of what or shive of the whole. It is hoped that on shelves but mainly scattered in the structuralists used to call the récit, it will be premiered either in Paris or tottering piles on the floor. Right of load of bloody nonsense.