Earthly Powers: A Resource for Reading Groups
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A selection of materials to introduce Anthony Burgess’s most complex novel.
Earthly Powers in brief
‘It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.’
Narrated by a famous British writer in his eighties, Earthly Powers is the life story of Kenneth Marchal Toomey, from the First World War to his later years of sun-drenched idleness in Malta. A gay man who is unable to reconcile his nature with the doctrines of the Catholic Church, Toomey has chosen a life of loneliness and exile — first in the Paris of James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway, and later in Hollywood at the height of its glamour and corruption.
His travels and his sexuality bring him face to face with some of the most savage manifestations of evil in the modern world: the murder of a beloved friend in Malaya; the brutality of Mussolini’s fascists; a Nazi death camp; mass suicide in the name of love in California. Breathing the stench of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Toomey believes that evil is man-made. According to his brother-in-law Carlo, a saintly and sybaritic priest, it is an active force in the world which must be challenged in all its guises.
Critical reception
‘This is exciting stuff. It is not surprising that the novel was short-listed for the Booker prize. The narrative is compelling, the arguments important.’ — D.A.N. Jones, Listener.
‘Burgess has written a novel epic in its sweep, subtle in its portraiture, graceful in its unforbidding exploration of ideas, and brutally funny.’ — David Caute, New Statesman.
‘Burgess plays games with language with a skill no other living writer can equal.’ — Peter Prescott, Newsweek.
‘The astonishing Mr Burgess has somehow managed to graft James Joyce onto Somerset Maugham, with a demented laugh track.’ — John Leonard, New York Times.
‘Earthly Powers — hugely entertaining and inventive as it is — remains a most ironic version of “the big book”.’ — Lorna Sage, Observer.
‘Earthly Powers is a big, grippingly readable, extraordinarily rich and moving fiction by one of the most ambitiously creative writers working in English.’ — Jeremy Treglown, Times Literary Supplement.
Background
Earthly Powers comes from a period when Burgess was thinking about his autobiography. In the early stages of writing Earthly Powers, he was thinking of his early years as a Lancashire Catholic, his family’s relationship with the Church and own decision to leave it. Although Burgess described himself as ;an unbeliever’ in later years, he also said: ‘I have never been able to doubt the existence of God, but whether really this affects the way I live, I don’t know.’ He remained on good terms with his cousin, the Very Reverend George Dwyer, the Archbishop of Birmingham, and elements of Dwyer’s character are visible in, Toomey’s brother-in-law and a Catholic priest.
Other fragments of autobiography in Earthly Powers include Toomey’s expedition to colonial Malaya, his work as a Hollywood screenwriter, and his strong interest in music. Lyrics from Burgess’s musical Blooms of Dublin appear in the novel: this was a stage adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, completed in 1971 and later broadcast as a radio play in 1982.
Earthly Powers also emerged from Burgess’s relationship with literature. In the second volume of his autobiography, You’ve Had Your Time (1990), he claims that he wanted to write Earthly Powers to demonstrate his literary craftsmanship, as Ford Madox Ford had done with his famous novel, The Good Soldier (1915). The character of Toomey bears some resemblance to the novelist, playwright and screenwriter Somerset Maugham, and some of his adventures in Malaya reflect the atmosphere of Maugham’s short stories. Speaking of Maugham, who was bisexual, Burgess said: ‘I had to start with a real person.’ Toomey’s sexuality is central to Burgess’s exploration of faith: ‘God had made him a homosexual,’ he wrote. Burgess uses the sexual identity of his protagonist to explore the notion of sin and the exclusive nature of a faith which preaches universality.
Burgess was quick to remind readers that Earthly Powers is a work of fiction, which deliberately takes liberties with matters of fact and history. Speaking in an interview, he said: ‘There are a lot of lies in it, a lot of things which could not have happened. My publishers were very worried that I might be making mistakes. George Russell, for instance, could never have seduced my author in that Dublin hotel. But this book is about memory. We rely on memory, but we don’t know how reliable it is.’
The history of the twentieth century provides the novel’s backdrop, including two world wars, the decline of the British Empire, the complexities of Hollywood and the massacre at Jonestown. Despite historical events anchoring Toomey’s story in the real world, Burgess did not intend this as a novel which is constrained by its historical research: ‘When Nothing Like the Sun came out, one reviewer said, “Learning drips from every sentence, like sweat from the nose.” I thought: I’ll never do that again. Let’s bamboozle the reader rather than feed him history.’
Questions for discussion
Burgess’s novel was originally titled The Prince of the Power of the Air and The Instruments of Darkness before being published as Earthly Powers (a title imposed by the American publisher). How does the choice of title affect the way you read the book?
Are there particular episodes or chapters which stand out? Why are they so memorable?
Toomey refers to ‘home’ throughout the novel. What is the significance of this? What does the idea of home represent to Toomey?
How does the use of real people and events affect the way you read the story? Can you think of other novels which use similar devices?
How far do you think of Toomey or Don Carlo as sinners? What does the word ‘sin’ mean in the context of this novel?
Carlo believes in evil, but Toomey rejects the idea. But is there such a thing as evil? What conclusions does the novel reach?
Toomey’s sexuality is an important part of the novel. Why do you think Burgess chose to write Toomey as a gay character?
Earthly Powers is Burgess’s longest novel. Does the length of the novel reflect its weighty themes? Would you have preferred it to be shorter? Which parts of the book work well? What, if anything, would you have cut?
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