Ten O'Clock News; Anthony Burgess

dawned on me that this might well be the mode of viewing for the future. We were when television began very easily saturated with visual information. Now we're getting used to it. I think we need more than a single screen to give us. And when I was watching last night on television, the giving of the Oscars in Hollywood, I noticed that it was quite simple to split the screen up into two haws, two scenes from films under discussion, and set round them as many as five or six moving portraits of actors as if, well, no, that's a lot of information to be taken from a small screen. And I think the time may well be coming when family is able to afford it may get onto three screens, two screens, three screens, and take in far more visual information than we're capable of doing at the moment. On the other hand, when we view television late at night, especially late at night, there are so many commercial interruptions that we're getting to the habit of changing rapidly from one channel to another to evade the commercial, which often very dull with it. They're all

usually used car sales, or something like that. So we're getting to the habit of taking in two, three, or four or five narratives at the same time. My idea was to see if the same technique worked in the field of the novel, if it was possible to present three distinct narrative strands, which the reader's mind could take in. And as attitude to one strand might possibly condition, as attitude to another, if you accept that Freud exists, or existed, it might be quite willing to accept that the end of the world is a possibility. And so on. It was an exercise in testing the belief of the reader. In that sense, it's experimental. How seriously you want to take it? I don't know, probably not two seriously, because if you can take it in a relaxed, in a relaxed spirit, it has an entertainment. The thing will work on the deeper elements of the mind, but I'll be going to worry about it too much. I think in America, we tend to be a bit too serious, not approach to a book. You get James A. Mitchen as great space. It's not a great book. It's just a big book. The approach to this is of tremendous reverence, because it contains knowledge, it contains

information, and so on, and this is not the right approach, we should. Our vision as a metaphor, has it simply, has it really opened us to more layers, or has it just kind of spread the distraction? I don't think we realise yet how important it is. We don't realise yet how, basically, it is changing our, what the philosophers call our epistemology, our capacity of taking in the outside world. It's changing it more than we imagine. One or two people saw this, Marshall McLuhan saw it, I think fairly clearly. Not many others did, but the mere act of being exposed to television is changing the kind of people we are. Not only in terms of the way we take in information and the way we make moral judgments, because we see with our own children, my son could watch a scene of fictitious violence on the screen, which he knows to be fictitious, then see a scene from the Vietnam War, some violence in the Middle East, and have exactly the same model

approach to this. It's seen on the screen. It's on the same level as being a fictitious violence. Our moral judgments are changing, whether this is good or bad, I don't know, but the certainly our big change is going on, and this little novel is just an example of the matter in which the viewing of television may well change. Our attitudes are writing fiction in the future, our way of using words. But this book changes focus the way television does, and it goes very quickly from one thing to another. Do you find that on the whole liberating or sort of... It is, I think it's liberating. With this book I was talking about a few minutes ago, this book called Napoleon Symphony, in which I had to follow the pattern of Beethoven's heroica. Everything in Napoleon did. It had to follow what Beethoven was doing. This meant very, very rapid change of the focus, a far more rapid than you would find in a film, because Beethoven will change from one key to another for a single bar, a single measure, than change again. The change is so rapid that to try and

accommodate the way you write fiction to Beethoven's method involves a much greater attention to the part of the... A much greater capacity for a tendency to change all the part of the reader. This is not about anything which revivifies or makes us more aware with our senses of what's going on the world. It's a good thing. What's wrong with a great, the best-selling fiction we have, especially in the States here, is that it's torpid, it's banal, it's deals in cliches, it doesn't encourage us to look at things new. I mean, I think like Judith Krantz, Princess Daisy, or the new book, she's come out, doesn't encourage us to test our senses or test our responses, test our views of morality. It's torper, sheer escape, nothing more. In that sense, it's dangerous. I have to ask you in that country, what American writers are you reading these days? Well, I've got to say this, not

because I'm a guest here and trying to be kind to Americans, but the fact is that the interesting stuff is coming out of America, not out of Europe at the moment with one of two exceptions. Norman Mailer's new novel, Ancient Evening's, which he's been working on for the last ten years, has been described by various critics as a disaster, an intelligible opsy, but still it's a big thing. You can't ignore it. We're not getting that sort of thing out of Europe these days. America has taken control of the English language, which is fine, delighted. Any Britain, like myself, any British writer must feel himself to be enclosed by American language, know that he's working inside it. In other words, I'm writing in a dialect of American, not a dialect of British English. And American's still have this capacity for writing big, writing a big book. Who besides Mailer at the moment? Well, I've always vaguely admired Saul Bellow, or until he got the Nobel Prize and began writing

Badlays or Nobel Prize winners. I admire William Steyron, the Walker Percy Bart, John Bath, the Philip Roth, I used to admire, the Jewish Americans, the Black Americans, Ralph Ellis, and James Baldwin. These have brought changes about the English language of immense value, immense interest. There's a fellow who works here in another incarnation interviewed you. It must have been when you were working on Napoleon, but he remembered your son holding court and playing sort of all-comers in chess and being everybody. This was probably most of 10 years ago, but it would be 10 years ago. The son was then 89 years old. The question was as a moralist and a musician and a writer and a renaissance man. How have you educated your son? Badly, apparently, I'd speak boldly. It's just over a

fort and just over two weeks ago that he tried to commit suicide. He tried to cut his wrists. I have no panacea. I have no cure for the generation that's growing up. There's something desperately wrong. I won't go into the details, but any parent must say, what the hell are I done wrong? Where have I gone wrong? What has happened? And then one has to take a hold of oneself and say there's something happening in the world which one can't explain solely in terms of oneself as a parent. There's something happening to this generation which has got to be put right. I don't know how. I'm only a novelist. But yes, you're right. I look back at my son in Boston and 10 years ago, young and happy boy then. Suddenly wants to kill himself a love, falling in love with an older woman. Says this is only just a symptom of a general disease, a general distaste with the world. I don't know what's

going wrong. I don't know what's happening at all, but I'm not desperate. We saved his life, got him to hospital and there he said he would never do it again because to be in a French hospital, as far worse than being in a Christian hell. He needed his a Christian hell or rather non-Christian hell. But this is the way we live. This is the way we live today. We're always in trouble. We're the novelist. I wanted to ask you earlier, do you defer in the sort of in the world of art and artists to the musicians? Do you still envy the musicians? Not altogether. I'm happier with being in the situation of farmers of a somewhat mediocre writer and a somewhat mediocre musician. At least I've got a grasp of both of the arts to some extent, to a sufficient extent, to know where they both tend. I don't envy Beethoven, while he's dead. That's probably one reason for me. I don't envy Beethoven's incapacity to cope with any field of knowledge outside music. I mean, the man couldn't even multiply when he

was making out his laundry lists. He had to write 777777 and add them together. He couldn't multiply. He read very few books. He was unstable, moderately unstable, physically. No, in general, I don't envy the musician. I just envy the fact that music can produce pure form and I work in a medium, the novel, which has to deal with the where the instrument, the novelist deals with excrement, the musician deals with pure sounds. It's simple as that, Eddie. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Pleasure to talk to you. I shouldn't have said that about my son trying to get a bit serious. Displenty, you don't like Brahms that much, but... I do like Brahms, very fond of Brahms. Indeed, I could probably whistle the whole four symphonies, I mean, I know them well. I like all the Brahms symphonies. I know the first one better than the others,

but I like them all. Wist will be the third movement. Tell me what key it is. I couldn't tell you what key it is, and I can tell you that I could... He's that major. Okay, all right. You like Brahms first, isn't it? Now, Bobby, who do you want? Him talking? This is for editing purposes, but you can just... you can keep talking about Brahms. Yeah, well, yes, the... Turn a little bit more side of the speed, see if you can ask for that. Why that? Okay. Yeah, perfect. Go to one question by question. A lot of people still think of you as the clockwork orange man,

the sort of a poet laureate of punk. Has all that come and gone? Brothers. Crazy, the clockwork orange. Who said that? That's on the book. Oh. A lot of people still think of you primarily. No, that's not. A lot of people still think of you as the man who wrote the book and the movie of Clockwork Orange, and think of you still as the above all the the poet laureate of punk. What about all that? Has it come? Is it still to come? Is it gone? It's fine, it's a little bit longer than it is. But in all, in all the history of violence, clockwork orange anticipated or distilled a certain

style or fad of 60s, 70s. Is that behind us? I'm thinking of clockwork oranges and then I'm thinking of clockwork oranges and anticipation or distillation of a particular style or fad of violence. What has happened to all of that? Is that long enough? Okay. I'm sorry. I was trying to edit your D.M. Thomas' name was impossible. I'm thinking of clockwork oranges as an anticipation or distillation of a style or fad of violence of the 60s and 70s. What has happened to all of that? Is that long enough? Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Okay. Okay. Next. I'm fascinated by your life as a musician which seems to infiltrate all your writing and I presume all you're thinking, how did you learn music? Do you think that's extraordinary among artists that you, the way you, shuttle back between the music and literary consciousness?

I'm going to add that once a little bit differently as well. Is that extraordinary? Is that extraordinary? You think the way you shuttle back and forth between music and literature? How many other writers are as musical as you are? And I didn't identify it. Isn't that extraordinary? Is that extraordinary the way you shuttle back between music and literature? Or are there others like you? How many writers are as musical as you are? Good.

Okay. I'm struck that in your new book you define the end of the world as almost defined as the destruction of all music except Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. I'm struck that in this new book you almost define the end of the world as almost defined as the destruction of all music except Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. I'm struck that in this new book you almost define the end of the world as a moment when all music is destroyed except for the spaceship cassette of Mozart's Jupiter Symphony. But now I have to ask you what American writers you reading these days? I have to ask you what American writers you reading these days?

Okay. You're a moralist, you're a musician, you're a writer, and a father. I want to ask you what you've learned about educating your son? If people here who remember your son, age eight I believe, taking on all cameras at chess, that's ten years ago. If I may ask I'd like to know how you as a moralist, as a musician, as a writer, have educated your son. Yeah, okay. Ready? Your new novel shifts the focus back and forth quite rapidly among different plots, very much in the manner of television.

Now I want to really what you're saying about television. It does that short span of attention, the great speed of television's focus, is that for you a kind of openness to different kinds of reality or is it just a huge distraction? Okay, yeah. But does television really work to open us to more layers or does it really just excuse a huge distraction, a lack of focus? Okay, I want to ask that once more. But when you think about the effect of watching television, does that quick change of focus really open us up to more layers, more reality, or does it just become a form of a huge distraction? Okay, do you defer in general? Okay, do you defer to musicians?

Do you defer to musicians as artists do envy musicians?