An autograph postcard signed by Anthony Burgess, addressed to Hedley Brideson, State Librarian of the State Library of South Australia, in his capacity as Chairman of the Writers' Week Committee of the Adelaide Festival of Arts
A plain postcard (89 × 140 mm), postmarked 'Chiswick ... 10 Apr 1968'; postage stamps neatly peeled off the address panel; in very good condition.
The message reads in full: 'London, April 10th. Very many thanks for that kind letter, and do please forgive this brevity - I have an ocean of neglected mail about me. I should, of course, be honoured to come to next Festival. It would be stupid of me to reiterate my regrets about this year. Again my sincerest thanks. As ever - Anthony Burgess'. For context, a few contemporary accounts will suffice. 'Burgess (53), passing through Perth to Adelaide for festival lectures on obscenity, pornography and the novel, is a rough-hewn man who looks more like a cattleman from some sunless plain than an escaped Manchurian. In fact, he so completely lacks pommification and literary lustre that his quest to discover the Australian idiom is likely to be entirely successful.... Burgess was once scheduled for an Adelaide Festival when his first wife became fatally ill. This two months trip is a recompense' (Duncan Graham, 'The Bulletin', 14 March 1970, page 53). 'Anthony Burgess visited Australia in 1970 to open the Adelaide Festival, an occasion that brought much calamity. Even before they disembarked the plane, Liana Burgess had a giant stuffed elephant she had bought in Bombay confiscated by Australian officials (Burgess supposed its body must have been stuffed with syphilitic bandages). She also did not have the correct visa for entry, and was eager to leave the country before she had even properly arrived. Further bad luck ensued when Burgess quoted from Drayton's verses to the Virginia pioneers, angering his audience who saw him as condescending. These experiences soured Burgess's view of Australia, yet the country made a lasting impression. In his 1980 novel, "Earthly Powers," Kenneth Toomey visits the country, and is impressed with its beauty, even as he struggles with the Australian language' (from the official Anthony Burgess website). 'I am quite willing to concede Roger Lewis's point that Burgess was not nice to know. The one time I laid eyes on him, in 1970 when he was on his way to the Adelaide Festival, he gave a disgraceful, contemptuous talk at the University of Sydney. He treated us like cretins - I felt at the time that he had persuaded himself that he was lecturing in Omsk or Monrovia. Afterwards, at lunch, he patronised all and sundry. But does an artist have to be a good chap? Plenty - Wagner, Sartre and Picasso among others - clearly weren't. So there's something distasteful and tiresome about Lewis's endless catalogue of Burgess's betises' (Andrew Riemer, reviewing 'Anthony Burgess' by Roger Lewis in 'The Sydney Morning Herald,' 8 March 2003). The postcard is loosely inserted in Hedley Brideson's copy of 'Nothing like the Sun. A Story of Shakespeare's Love-life' by Anthony Burgess (London, Heinemann, 1964, first edition; a fine copy with the unclipped dustwrapper, initialled in pencil on the front free endpaper by Hedley Brideson). [2 items].
Item #132099
Price (AUD):
$850.00