Beyond Nadsat

Like most people, I think, my acquaintance with Anthony Burgess is based solely upon A Clockwork Orange, and like most people, I think it is an excellent book. But the problem with it is that it is so saturated with words of Burgess’ own invention that you almost lose sight of whether or not the man can actually write in English. It is his power of invention that dazzles us most, not his storytelling.

That’s why I bought Burgess’ collection of short stories, The Devil’s Mode, a week or two ago. The Devil’s Mode makes it very clear that Burgess is an exceptional storyteller, but also suggests that when the author wrote these short stories – at the age of 72 – his power of invention was waning. Just take a glance through the contents pages: the first story describes an encounter between a foppish young Shakespeare and an embittered Cervantes; the next follows Marlowe and Goethe as Dr Faustus conjures the notorious beauty Helen of Troy; the third is based around an opera libretto. There is also a pastiche of Sherlock Holmes and a historical novella about Attila the Hun.

If I was being incredibly critical, I would say that this suggests a lack of imagination, perhaps even laziness. This is the same charge that can be levelled at all historical fiction. What is easier than inventing characters and situations? Why, using ready-made ones, of course. And then rudely imbuing those ready-made characters – whether they are the product of someone else’s imagination or of history itself – with one’s own thoughts and prejudices.

These remarks are general, not specific to Burgess. His stories are written with great liveliness and intelligence, and when he resurrects a character it is done incredibly convincingly. He transforms Attila from the ravening barbarian we expect him to be into a sophisticated strategist, his land-grabs preceded by tenuous diplomatic pretexts that are so civilised that the Romans are unable to refute them.

My favourite story was the first one, Shakespeare and Cervantes. Burgess is protective of English culture, almost to the point of being jingoistic. Cervantes blasts the English, their amputated stump of Christianity, and their infantile written culture which lacks the dramatic suffering of the Spanish mindset. Shakespeare’s task is to convince a vaguely hostile, non English-speaking crowd that his work has some value, and can convey the gamut of emotions expressed in Cervantes weighty tome. The solution is beautiful. A seven-hour production of Hamlet, incorporating Falstaff and other additional characters, shows both the range of Shakespeare’s talent and the pigheadedness of Cervantes’ insistence that the length of Don Quixote is one of its chief virtues. It is a story of literary one-upmanship, giving Shakespeare an appealingly childish personality worthy of Angela Carter’s Wise Children.

The Devil's Mode is a finely crafted selection of short stories, and I think that the accusation of a lack of originality is combated by the obvious depth of reading and research that has gone into them. After all, pastiches, imitations, or whatever you want to call them are fundamental building blocks of literature. If you only read Shakespeare, you would write like Shakespeare, and if you only read Cervantes, you would write like Cervantes. Burgess’ achievement is to put all of these into a melting pot and produce something – certainly not something coherent, because that’s not the point – but something wide-ranging, intelligent and very enjoyable.