Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 26, 1993 TAG: 9311260062
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: B-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
A spokeswoman for his publisher said Burgess, who wrote more than 50 novels and dozens of nonfiction works, had died of cancer in a London hospital.
Born John Anthony Burgess Wilson in Manchester, England, he was brought up by his father, a pianist, and a coarse Irish stepmother who owned a tavern in the northern England city. His mother and sister died in the 1918 flu epidemic.
He wrote in his memoirs that both his parents ignored him, and he turned to sketching and writing to keep himself amused.
After he became a successful novelist, he came to be criticized for his aloof characters bereft of emotion. He admitted that he found it difficult to imbue his work with affection when he had received so little of it himself.
In 1962, after successes with "Inside Mr. Enderby," "The Worm and the Ring" and "One Hand Clapping," Burgess served up what was to be his signature work, "A Clockwork Orange."
It deals with the brutality of a psychopathic youth he called Alex and his "droogs," a gang of hoodlums who exist in a drug-saturated culture of the future.
Stanley Kubrick's filmed version of "A Clockwork Orange" won the New York Film Critics Award for best picture of 1971.
by CNB