The End of The World News by Anthony Burgess, the author of the magnum opus A Clockwork Orange, adapted for the big screen by glorious Stanley Kubrick and made into another chef d’oeuvre, my note on this is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-clockwork-orange-by-anthony-burgess.html where I have a few thousand reviews - 7 out of 10

 

The End of The World News by Anthony Burgess, the author of the magnum opus A Clockwork Orange, adapted for the big screen by glorious Stanley Kubrick and made into another chef d’oeuvre, my note on this is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-clockwork-orange-by-anthony-burgess.html where I have a few thousand reviews

 

7 out of 10

 

The End of The World News sounds like a magnificent book, and perhaps it is, after all, this is on the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read list, where Anthony Burgess has the aforementioned A Clockwork Orange and Earthly Powers https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/10/earthly-powers-by-anthony-burgess-was.html

 

If A Clockwork Orange was such a delight, enchanting masterpiece, I must say that I was not overwhelmed by the other two, first The Earthly Powers was not up to my high, if irrelevant standard, and now The End of World News started fine, and I thought the what, four hundred and seventy pages will be a delight…

But I was wrong and had to abandon the novel, and confess my patience was tested, I am not resilient, I would fail the delayed gratification trial – this was used for children, told they could have a piece of pie immediately, or they could wait some minutes and then get two, those who were patient, would have success later in life

 

Nevertheless, we could also argue that maybe there are no two pies at the end of the tunnel aka the long read, and maybe I was doing the right thing, according to Schopenhauer ‘One can never read too little of bad, or too much of good books: bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind. In order to read what is good one must make it a condition never to read what is bad; for life is short, and both time and strength limited.’

Which is not to say that The End of The World News is bad per se, for you, anybody else, it just does not work for me, and then we have Seneca https://realini.blogspot.com/2023/09/on-shortness-of-life-by-seneca.html to listen to, and his fabulous interpretation of time, he stated that we have enough time, life is not short!

 

Except that we need to pay attention, carpe diem and all that, we treat time as if it were an inexhaustible commodity, we ‘kill time’, sped the most precious possession we have as if we had an infinity of it, which in a way, a Buddhist way, we have, I mean the Hindus say ‘time does not exist’, and then we could move along to…

Einstein, and if we think of the theory of relativity, then we only need a space ship form the loathsome Elon Musk – I mean, right, he has some science in his brain, but what about supporting Orange Jesus, the ultimate vampire? - and then fly away with the speed of light and time has another dimension and we live a few days…

 

With those we live behind dying, and then some generations after that, just in that ‘interval of two hours’, so it does encourage one to think, well, time travel is possible, and I have read that Einstein said as much, although we need to check such things, my memory is not what it used to be, and then you read all sorts of crap these days

I think I have read in the magnificent, hilarious The Belles Letters Papers https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-belles-lettres-papers-by-charles.html about Anthony Burgess being very good when writing about the excellent books, but too lame, lenient when taking on the bad ones

 

It could be that it was not there, but I am sure this is somewhere about Burgess – the start of The End of The World News is promising, but then very soon it just flattens out for yours truly, though it made for such an interesting coincidence, I have seen Freud’s Last Session https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/10/freuds-last-session-by-mark-st-germain.html and enjoyed quite a lot

There were aspects that we find at the start of The End of The World News, concerning Freud, the Nazi abuses, the Gestapo comes to the house, they harass the family, because they are ‘Jewish filth’, they even take the daughter, Anna Freud, with them, and this is where the two narratives differ, one has a version

 

The other, The End of World News, which is of concern for now (right?) proposes a version where the imperious, proud, sophisticated daughter is towering over the goons, she is made to wait and then she even hears a joke, form another poor Jewish man, brought to be tortured, perhaps, and then likely sent to the death camps

So, he talks about two Jewish men, waiting for execution, and the Nazi brute asks one is he has a last wish, I forgot the name, maybe it was Jospeh, who says he wants a cigarette, the other man, when asked, just spits in the eye of the killer, and Jospeh is lamenting, David, why did you do that, what now…Or something like that

 

There is also the bicycle joke, I heard it from my friend, Marius Jaeger, who told me that ‘the evil in the world is because of the Jews and bicycle riders’, and one is supposed to answer why the bicycle riders, when one is antisemitic, and in the book, they have Hitler involved along these lines, he is asking why the riders

It is no laughing matter, they have done the holocaust, and though Freud escaped, could eventually take his family to Britain, it was not the whole family, and he was forced into humiliation, insulted, abused, eventually, this ghastly figure comes with a document, stating that everything was perfect for Sigmund Freud, and he has to sign it, if he wants to be allowed, with the family, out of Austria, and he adds ‘I recommend the Gestapo wholeheartedly’, contrary to what he had been told, that he could not add anything on the official paper

 

 Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”