The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction)

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The orthodox view presents man as a sinful creature from whom no good at all may be expected... It eventually appears that human social behaviour is rather better than any Augustinian pessimist has any right to expect, and so a sort of optimism begins to emerge. And so Pelagianism is reinstated." Characters [ edit ] It’s the old story. Liberalism prevails, and liberalism means laxness. We leave it to education and propaganda and free contraceptives, abortion clinics and condolences. We encourage non-productive forms of sexual activity. We like to kid ourselves that people are good enough and wise enough to be aware of their responsibilities. But what happens? There was the case, only a few weeks ago, of a couple in Western Province who’d had six children. Six. I ask you. And all alive, too. A very old-fashioned couple—God-followers....”” Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram try to get through a day that starts with the death of their son, and ends with police brutality, "accidental" impregnation, and the inauguration of a frightening new police presence in the city. And you thought you were having a bad day.

There is also active discrimination against heterosexuals, homosexuality being encouraged as a measure against overpopulation. Self-sterilization is also encouraged. The Wanting Seed is a great read. Part societal study and certainly a criticism of British society. Anthony Burgess ask what happens to British society if the population overwhelms food supplies. This has been called a comedy, but I am not sure I agree. It is certainly satire, but not so sure it is funny. He certainly lampoons the upper crust and social climbers along with British stoicism, yet it is wrapped in tragedy. The Right Hon. Robert Starling – the effete but harassed Prime Minister of the English-Speaking Union during the initial Pelphase and subsequent Gusphase eras. Retires to comfortable exile while awaiting the political and social wheel to turn again in his favor. Shipped off with other British Army soldiers to the front, Tristram is convinced that the whole war is a sham. When trench fighting erupts between Tristram's men and "the enemy," his worst fears are confirmed.In Anthony Burgess’ The Wanting Seed, the story starts off, in what is known to the main character, Tristram, as the Pelphase. Tristram is a history teacher and knows mostly all there is to know about history. According to Tristram, governments go through three phases: the Pelphase, the Interphase, and the Gusphase. Tristram believes that like almost everything else, government is cyclical. The Pelphase is a time in the government and society where the people are working to better themselves, their surroundings and their country. The book closes with a translation of the final stanza of the French poet Paul Valéry's poem ' Le Cimetière marin'. The quotation clarifies the book's themes: Old Gus in the Mail Room, in which Ron was a runner, called it - leering - a BY-HAND. So wise-guy Ron learned to leer knowingly too. He considered himself Wiser than other Goody-goody Simpletons. Billed as a satire, I found The Wanting Seed to be plenty absurd, but not particularly funny. Fifty years ago (the book was written in 1962), I have no doubt that much of the "humor" was intended to be derived from the unnatural homosexual behavior of a few of the principal characters and several of the incidental characters. (I don't put "unnatural" in scare quotes above because the idea here is that the homosexual behavior of these characters is truly unnatural. That is, they would be heterosexual if it were up to them, but because of society's strictures, they are essentially forced to ACT gay in that stereotypical, homophobic way, with lots of mincing around, simpering, etc.--in addition to having sex with members of the same sex. Of course, in Burgess's view, clearly, all homosexuality is unnatural, thus making the use of the word "unnatural" redundant in this context, as far as he's concerned.)

Yes, the love story was clumsy, but t served the purpose of showing this world's dichotomy and hypocrisy, his wife leaving him for a fake gay man, being cursed in either worlds for asking questions and being against the establishment no matter who is in charge. The final payoff of the book wasn't as great as the sum of its parts. Throughout the first portion of the novel, overpopulation is depicted through the limitation and reuse of materials, and extremely cramped living conditions.Burgess wrote this foreword to The Wanting Seed in 1982. The novel has recently appeared in Bulgarian and French. A new English edition has just been published in the Penguin Essentials collection.

Thanks to a new collaboration with JISC Library Hub, it is now possible to search the complete list of English-language book titles in the Burgess Foundation’s collection. The story is concerned with the vicissitudes of Tristram Foxe and his wife Beatrice-Joanna in their skyscraper world of spacelessness where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality (" It's Sapiens to be Homo") and which is eventually transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious.

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One of the most significant utopian works in the Foundation’s collection is Walden Two by the Harvard psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner, who was one of the pioneers of behaviourism. Skinner’s novel, published in 1948, is a utopian manifesto in the polemical tradition of Thomas More and William Morris. The title comes from an old English folk song. This confuses ‘wanting’ and ‘wanton’. The ambiguity is appropriate to my book.

Further research into the book collection will allow us to investigate the sources of Burgess’s writing in more detail, and to establish new connections between the books on his shelves and the works which emerged from his typewriter. NEVER undergoes a monstrous "Sea Change" into such a monstrous, "Rich and Strange" transmogrification as in this book. Derek Foxe – Tristram's ambitious and opportunistic brother, becomes head of the Ministry of Infertility Burgess' vocabulary is astonishing, and his writing style is engrossing - I learned many words which I have never heard or seen before, words which I struggled to even find definitions for in standard dictionaries. However, this did get a bit difficult at times, and his constant referral to the 'cycle of society', from Pelphase to interphase to Gusphase, was slightly confusing. Despite this, the writing was wondrous and a pleasure to read. Overpopulation and the technology of human reproduction have often been the focal points of the futuristic fiction. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World reproduction is controlled by the state by outlawing reproductive sex and cultivating embryos in test tubes. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four sex between unmarried couples is outlawed, and we see the threatening presence of the ‘Anti-Sex League’.

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Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious. The Wanting Seed by Anthony Burgess – eBook Details What I didn't expect was the idea of this 'dystopia' being a rather attractive society to live in - one where homosexuality is not only legal but promoted and religion is absent. The entire narrative is laced with repugnant prejudices, which was to be expected from a novel written in the 1960s - however it was laughable to me that something which seemed to be viewed as a terrifying future in this book is rightfully accepted today. I eventually learned to just grit my teeth and bear it, although it originally made it hard to sympathise with any of the characters. Beware those who are easily offended, there is some especially incendiary stuff in here. Given the right environment and a willingness to abandon traditional notions of freedom, Skinner claims, utopia might become a reality for everyone.