No More Learning

G. Wells did in his time? " He promptly retorted: "There's nobody to examine me! " At the time, I found that somewhat arrogant, . . . but with the passing of years, I tend to
believe that he was, ultimately, right! )
Most often, he dispatched his typing--never in any way
electric, or modern--as quickly as he could, only to return to a
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casual conversation that he was clearly enjoying more than journalistic work. (Lawrence Durrell, who lived a couple of hours away from us, in Provence, used to do exactly the same. )
Burgess was fundamentally a very good teacher. There was nothing of the pompous academic, or of the haughty bureaucrat about him. . . He was himself, even when he was telling a scholarly fib; for he always executed it with panache. (Cyrano was part of his personality, even in his cordial quarrels in Paris with Stephen Joyce. )
So, as I say, he was enjoying a good scholarly dialogue the way Falstaff would have enjoyed his many pints of beer. Burgess was ready to discuss any subject. . . but more particularly English,
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French and Italian literatures. And Music! All in one. He would indeed have loved to have been the head editor of the Oxford Companion to English Literature. But the job was given instead to Margaret Drabble, the so very dutiful and subdued and obe? issante woman, sitting unobtrusively in her little corner. The outcome, given her by the British Establishment, was a subdued job. Burgess's would have been an ebullient and most unconventional overall outline of IngLit, beyond any shade of doubt.
But to return to Music: that was his forte!
More particularly, the close correlation between Literature and Music. Do you want an example? When he heard that I was bringing on to Monte Carlo the World James Joyce Convention,
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he at once "ordered" me to do it on the topic so dear to him-- Joyce and Stravinsky. And he was adamant about it. . .
It took me hours to explain to him that most Joycean scholars didn't even have enough languages under the belt to be able to translate The Lord's Prayer from Italian to German. . . let alone to take up the music / literature correlation in a proper academic fashion. To say nothing of Stravinsky of all composers in this wide, wide world of ours. . . Do you want proof of that? No paper however tiny on the subject was offered about Stravinsky at the 1990 Monte Carlo Joyce Convention. . . or any other Joyce Convention that I can remember. There was no muscle for that among the overspecialised academics.
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Unfortunately, I was a mere amateur violin player, not a professional composer, as he was. But I was a good listener, and the years of journalism I had behind me with various radio stations in different countries, helped a lot in the systematic prodding him with questions, in order to keep the fire of the discussion going while the bourbon lasted. . .
One last point: I have, recorded on tape, no end of Anthony Burgess talks he gave in Monaco, and everywhere else, whenever I happened to be following him, or whenever we were giving talks at the same international conference. . . Then, I have the six one-hour talks he gave at the Anglican Church Library here, free of charge, for the benefit of the British Association of Monaco.
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Any idea what shall I do with all this? They are almost as relevant to Joyce as "The Cats of Copenhagen" are, for Burgess had Joyce in the blood. . . and practically everything in there is in one way or another connected with James Joyce. . . All suggestions are welcome, though I find the Joyce circles pretty passive these days. Inward looking. Contemplating the belly button? !
We need one anecdote to wind up with. Symptomatic of the man. But not nasty. Burgess, as I always called him, was giving one of the six above-mentioned IngLit talks to the British MonteCarlo community. And he came round to the one-hour talk on William Shakespeare, of course. How did he start it?
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His son Andrea, and his Italian wife Liana (allegedly related
to one of the former Popes. . . see the novel Earthly Powers, for further reference. . . ) were
dutifully seated in the very front row, and so was the British
Association President, Mr Klein, Lloyds Bank manager. (I was by
Liana's side, as always, holding her hand so to speak, as she was the member of the family who always got into a panic, never Burgess! )
And he begins, in his usual stentorial and aggressive and off- the-beaten-track way: "Well, do you want to know the difference between my son and me? The difference is that I have READ the plays! As for Andrea, here present. . . Andrea has seen the FILMS. That is the difference between my son and me! "
And he was right. He was absolutely right the way he was attacking the Generation Gap. . . Which is getting worse and
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worse with every passing year. And we only have Finnegans Wake to protect us from it.
Montecarlo again,
the same day, the same time
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?