M/F BY ANTHONY BURGESS

I’m thinking that M/F by Anthony Burgess must be his reaction to William Burroughs.  How else to explain Burgess’s use of stream of consciousness, oddball fantasy crushed into normal narrative, not using quotes when writing dialogue?  I wouldn’t be surprised if he even used some cut up technique here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cut-up_technique

This story is ostensibly about incest although honestly I got lost in the plot and still don’t really understand how the narrator Miles Faber and his sister are connected.  The best I can gather from the postscript at the end and the scene with the lawyer at the very beginning is that incest is a tradition in the Faber family.

Burgess is a writer that usually skillfully transposes his vulgar yet erudite and busy style on whatever genre suits the narrative be it the futuristic sci-fi of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE or THE WANTING SEED or the thinly disguised memoir of THE MALAYAN TRILOGY or screwball comedy like HONEY FOR THE BEARS (the distant relationship between the narrator’s adventures and homosexuality in BEARS and the narrator and incest in this book are similar).

Here I think he may be a little bit out of his depth although the Burgess trademark fast paced storyline keeps things interesting.  Burgess meets the Beats (especially Burroughs) and the result is babble conversation, surreal ink-every penned word unreal.  This is not Burgess’s best book but worth a read for fans.