Happy Birthday, Anthony Burgess….

Happy birthday to Anthony Burgess, born John Anthony Burgess Wilson this day in 1917 in Harpurhey, Lancashire, England.

A writer with no apparent link to Henry Miller beyond their shared mastery of the English language, Burgess is, nonetheless, a certain Library’s staffer’s favorite writer, which may or may not be important, applicable, or even remotely interesting.

Burgess’s rich and genre-diverse oeuvre is staggering, even if one ignores “A Clockwork Orange.”

Suggested titles include the wildly inventive “Napoleon Symphony,” the dystopian “The Wanting Seed,” the colonial travelogue “The Long Day Wanes,” and “Man of Nazareth,” which is guaranteed to make even the most hardened atheist well up

But his crowning achievement, in this staffer’s humble opinion—and that of the larger academy—is “Earthly Powers….”

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