What Is the Writer Saying? - The 92nd Street Y, New York

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How and What do the Arts Mean?

What Is the Writer Saying?

May 3, 1988


Author and composer Anthony Burgess, best known for his 1962 novel, A Clockwork Orange, discusses creativity and expression in literature. Burgess studied music and language at Manchester University and served in the British Army as an education officer before beginning his writing career with his first novel, A Vision of Battlements, in 1949. In this lecture, he discusses expression and creativity in poetry and novels, and how literature can communicate ideas and emotions. Burgess shares his views about the meaning of literature and music, and how they come together in the written form. He discusses the use of the “nonsensical” in poetry and how he finds that writing fiction (and writing novels in general) is different from and more challenging than writing poetry. This discussion concludes with audience questions.

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