Anthony Burgess was a British writer of enormous powers and capacity. Starting his writing career at age forty-two, he was still able to create over fifty books of fiction, criticism, essays, and translation, including the novel, A Clockwork Orange, for which he is perhaps best known, and from whose shadow he was never fully able to escape. Burgess dealt with large themes: mortality, the decline of the West, sex, religion, art, the nature of violence, and the juxtaposition of two opposing world views--one which assumes the best in mankind and one which assumes the worst. Both extremes, Burgess eventually rejected. Often connected to the bleak satiric tone of his dystopian novel, A Clockwork Orange, Burgess also looked at the world humorously, especially in his comic creation, Enderby, the constipated poet who wrote his verses in the bathroom. A composer of note, Burgess delighted in employing musical forms to...