Earthly Powers Group Read: first 10 chapters

This thread is for the discussion of the first ten chapters *and nothing after.*

PS: my page number references are from the 2004 Vintage Books version.

In the first few chapters there's some discussion of Malta's harsh censorship laws (page 16). I had no idea the Maltese government did this kind of thing.

Recently blog posting on the issue here: http://www.clydefitchreport.com/2012/07/the-juke-of-malta-reform-promised-yet-ar...

And timeline of Maltese censorship here: http://censorfortress.wordpress.com/about/maltas-historical-censorship/

" 'That is why, in my sad trade of writing, we can never be really devout or pious. We lie for a living.' " (page 17)

Raises an interesting point: do writers tend to be less religious than the general population?

Great book so far, but I wouldn't mind an annotated version.

For example -- the last line in chapter two says "One of those contradictions that come easily to the religious mind, God being quite as large as Walt Whitman." (page 18)

Maybe I'm culturally illiterate, but I had no idea what he meant by "large as Walt Whitman." So I mess around on google and find the line Whitman quotation Burgess is referencing:

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes."

So I found that rewarding and I'm not too lazy to look these things up, but I feel that I'm missing a lot of these references because I just don't notice them. So, yeah, an annotated version would be nice. Can one of you get on that?

Well, I'm really enjoying reading this, though I can't quite figure out why. It's a very absorbing novel.

4: That's interesting. I thought Burgess was just calling Whitman a bit megalomaniacal.

4: I got that reference but there are so many! But part of the fun of reading erudite books like this is figuring things out/finding them out.

Has anyone gotten to the phrase "venereal strabismus" or something like that? It occurred twice in the first few chapters. I looked it up and found a very old chat group discussing this very book! Apparently it means one of the eyes is off center and this is supposed to be sexy. Who knew?

6: Burgess does seem to have a bit of an obsession with wandering eyes. I wonder if any of his close friend or family had one.

Burgess on the Nobel: bitter much?

"As for the Nobel, I did not write inelegantly or tendentiously enough. I was not, like Boris Dyengizhdat, in political chains - which, I felt sure, he would break soon enough when the dollar royalties had mounted sufficiently. I did not, like Chaim Manon or J. Raha Jaatinen, belong to a gallant little nation that, posessing no strategical resources, had to be compensated with a great writer."

Chapter 3, page 21

Finally finished the first ten chapters. I'm glad that the real plot of the book has started, because that birthday party scene was interminable. Not in a bad way, it just very accurately portrayed a really crappy party.

The narrator's voice is impeccable, though as others have said, this occasionally makes for some obtuse references. Still, so far I like the book a great deal - hopefully I'll like it more once the wheels really start rolling.

I really enjoyed the birthday party scene. Very funny in a cringe-making way, although the character of Geoffrey is way over the top. I think Burgess is at his best when he stops just short of the grotesque. When he doesn't, he loses me for a while - chapter 24, for instance.

Speaking of the birthday party scene, what do you think about this line of dialogue from Wignall:

"And how about Shakespeare's ideas? Damn it, Shakespeare had no ideas worth talking about."
(Chapter six, page 34)

I've only read around six of Shakespeare's plays, but they seem to be rife with "ideas worth talking about."

What's strange is that Burgess, a Shakespeare scholar, doesn't show us that he disagrees with Wignall's statement (he doesn't have anyone contradict Wignall on his claim, for example).

I wonder: who is Poet Laureate Percival Dawson Wignall supposed to represent (if anyone)? Is he based on someone?

I love Burgess' roast of Ovington the diplomat:

"The bronze and, to some extent, the wrinkles were a badge of long service in the sunnier and duller stations of the world... The wrinkles could also be accounted for by the long professional habit of insincere smiling."

Chapter five, first paragraph of the chapter.

The party was so cringe-inducing. I was so relieved it was over. I was once a very minor diplomat and one of the reasons I left was inability to smile insincerely. The diplomat's wife, in spite of the brevity of her appearance, really rang true. Especially the way she was only half focused on a given conversation with the other half is running social damage control.