The Enderby Quartet

On October 5, I finally finished reading the last of Agatha Christie's mystery novels. I can't say I've read everything Christie wrote: the list does contain a few of her short story collections in addition to the novels, though there are a few more short stories I'm not going to read at this time. It's taken me since May 29th to read the 73 ebooks I've read.

Also, I haven't read any of the novels Christie published under the nom de plume Mary Westmacott.

Even while reading the Christie novels, my mind was on which direction I would go when I finished with Agatha Christie. In April of this year, my reading consisted of dystopian novels. One book which, naturally enough, made the list was A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. I thought I'd look into whatever other books I could find by Burgess, and read something written by him when I'd finished with Christie.

One group of novels written by Burgess which has received high praise is the, so-called Enderby Quartet, a set of four comic novels: Inside Mr Enderby, - Enderby Outside, -The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End, and Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby. I found a website that allowed me to download several of Burgess' works and began reading the quartet.

As I write this, I've finished the first three novels in the series and have started # 4.

After reading the first two, it struck me odd that those books should be considered two, rather than one novel. I later came to find out that Burgess had originally planned these two to actually be just one novel. However, while working on what was to become Inside Enderby Burgess was told by a number of doctors that he would not be expected to live much longer. Burgess published the 1st "half" of the novel, not expecting to finish the 2nd "half". As it turned out, the doctors were wrong and Burgess lived for several more years.

Burgess' writing style with the quartet reminds me of William S. Burroughs, although I'd consider Burgess to be the superior writer.

In the first novel, the character Enderby uses an expression which I found confusing. When upset, Enderby would often say "for cough". It wasn't until after I had begun reading the 2nd novel that I realized that this was Burgess' response to censorship of the time. "For cough" was actually "fuck off" in much the same way Norman Mailer used "fuggin" in The Naked and the Dead. Apparently, literary censorhip had lightened up by the time of the 2nd novel. Although Enderby would continued to say "for cough", other characters in Enderby Outside say "fuck off" and "motherfucker".

In the third novel of the series, The Clockwork Testament, or Enderby's End Burgess seemed to predict the future that we're living in today.....politically correct pronouns and further censorship of words.

In the introduction of the final novel, Enderby's Dark Lady, or No End to Enderby Burgess explains that, although he had killed off Enderby in the 3rd novel, fans of the series convinced him to bring Enderby back to life. I haven't gotten far enough into the last book to see just how Burgess managed to do that.