In Pursuit of Freedom

...In Pursuit of Freedom Earthly Powers By Anthony Burgess Simon & Schuster 448 pp $13 95 Reviewed by John A. Glusman One of the most powerful scenes in A Clockwork Orange—derived in part from an experience in Anthony Burgess' own life—unfolds when Alex and his "droogs," out on one of their nightly joyndes, see the word "HOME" on the gate of a roadside cottage and stop off for "the old surprise visit " Begging the pardon of the woman who answers the door and asking for a cup of water with the excuse that a friend is lying hurt out on the road, they break into the house and confront a young writer whose manuscript lies on a nearby table The work, it turns out, is entitled A Clockwork Orange, and Alex, proclaiming himself to be a great admirer of books, proceeds to read from it with savage mockery "'The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen '" The manuscript is then torn to pieces while the author is viciously assaulted and his wife is gang-raped The writer is thus victimized by his own humanity, undone by his belief in man's dignity and unconditional right to freedom Yet despite the traumatic experiences his characters suffer at the hands of reality, Burgess remains committed to individual freedom He stands opposed to almost any type of authority—whether exerted by family, religion, society, or the State—even if its removal would pose the threat of violence against himself A belief in the right to choose, in his view, implies an awareness ol thepo tential for its abuse Freedom is defined primarily by its negation We free ourselves from one thing only to become vulnerable to another, just as man's knowledge of good was originally attained through his experience of evil Since fiction is the rendering of one's vision, it is not surprising that Burgess' characters strongly reflect his own sense of reality as a perpetual conflict between opposing forces freedom of will vs determinism, or, when seen from the perspective of time as in The WantmgSeed, the Pelagian vs the Augustmian eras Like two of Burgess' earher heroes, Enderby and Beard, the protagomst of Earthly Powers, Kenneth Marchal Too-mey, is a writer An octogenarian living in Malta when we first meet him, he is entrusted with the canonization of the late Pope Gregory XVII, his brother-in-law, formerly named Carlo Campa-nati Toomey has been chosen for the honor because he was the sole witness when a young boy stricken with tubercular meningitis was miraculously cured by the touch of Carlo's hands Ironically, Toomey has led a life cut off from the Church The son of an Irish Catholic father and a French Protestant mother, he claims he was born a homosexual But society regards his aberration as willful vice, rather than a trick of nature, and judges him guilty of the sin of Onan Forced into rejecting his belief in God, Toomey wanders across the face of the globe searching for faith, loyalty and, above all, love Inverting Joyce's technique in Ulysses, which portrayed one day m the life of Leopold Bloom, Burgess sketches each year of Kenneth Toomey's life in 82 chapters that span World War I, the rise of Fascism and Nazi Germany, the Depression, the Spanish Civil War, World War II, the Cold War, the emergence of Black activism, and the rebirth of evangelism As if on a tour through Madame Tussaud's gallery, we meet a succession of major figures of the period, trom American expatriates to Hollywood film stars, foreign dignitaries to Papal politicians For all his cosmopolitan connections, however, Toomey remains very much alone—abandoned by his family condemned bv the Church, and exiled from his native England He is living in an age when taith and moralit\ are assured through violence, w hen personal ideals seem destined to meet with disillusionment Nevertheless, he harbors a desire to be accepted by the very authorities who have rejected him As symbolized by Toomey's relationship with the missionary doctor Philip Shawcross—the one loving bond he is able to form aside from that with his sister Hortense—homosexuality comes to sigmfy man's love for his fellow men agape rather than eros Once the subject of that love is lost through death, Toomey is left with nothing but the memory of spiritual bliss Thereafter he can feel merely emptiness Even so, he does not repent of love Though his sentimentality may be tinged with rational cynicism, Toomey remains humble to the end—literally a man who turns the other cheek He also cannot censure others for fear of being censored himself Instead, he must stand up for them, even where this results in betrayal, the demeamng of his reputation And Toomey suffers not only social ridicule but physical abuse as well He is assaulted by a gang of youths, punched in the teeth and kicked in the testicles a symbolic emasculation His tolerance earns him humiliation His belief in free will seems, finally, to confirm man's inherent evil But if man is deprived of liberty in this earthly life, he can attain it through his fiction, for the line between actuality and art is a thin one indeed Imagination has its own reality and, as in Toomey' s homosexual account of the Creation, the writer can make us belie\ e for a moment what he himself wants to believe Always above us, controlling us, he is the creator of our universe He gains his freedom at our expense, like his characters, the reader has little choice but to submit Our experience ol the text acts as a paradigm tor the conflict at its heart So the real miracle around w hich this book centers turns out to be not the one pertormed b\ Carlo, hut the storv behind Toomev's account ot the event Like the function ot conceit in meta-phvsical poetrv, the plot weaves a pattern ol correspondences and reconciles oppositcs therebv providing an image ol order Burgess' novel becomes an authentic—if somewhat bizarre—canonization of the Pope Although it may slacken in narrative tension during the fictional depictions of modern history, Earthly Powers is Anthony Burgess' most ambitious effort so far, and serves as a testament to his talent He forces us, without being overly didactic or moralistic, to examine the attitudes we have toward society, and our motivations for them He charms us with his scintillating wit, challenges us with his verbal ingenuity, and proves once again that he is one of today's most stimulating writers...