Product Description

Set in the near future, The Wanting Seed is a Malthusian comedy about the strange world overpopulation will produce. Tristram Foxe and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, live in their skyscraper world where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality. Eventually, their world is transformed into a chaos of cannibalistic dining-clubs, fantastic fertility rituals, and wars without anger. It is a novel both extravagantly funny and grimly serious. .

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73791 in Books
• Published on: 1996-12-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780393315080
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

Review
Wildly and fantastically funny. . . . Here too is all the usual rich exuberance of Mr. Burgesss vocabulary, his love of quotations and literary allusions. . . . A remarkable and brilliantly imagined novel, vital and inventive. (Times Literary Supplement [London] )

About the Author
W. W. Norton publishes several of Anthony Burgess's works, including A Clockwork Orange, The Doctor is Sick, Honey for the Bears, The Long Day Wanes, Nothing Like the Sun, The Wanting Seed, and Re Joyce.

Customer Reviews

Turns the typical dystopian novel on its ear
Your bookstore is stocked full of novels predicting mankind's future, but none quite like this. With the Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess turns the typical dystopian novel on its ear. Instead of a methodical, technorganic world, Mr. Burgess presents a smelly, macrobiotic mess of overpopulation and disharmony. Instead of a more stringent emphasis on rightwing ideals, the aforementioned overpopulation has caused an enthusiastic governmental endorsement of homosexuality and opposition to typical family ideals. Instead of a grim, foreboding atmosphere, Mr. Burgess employs a lighthearted, quirky tone, allowing readers to smirk at the ridiculousness and incongruity to which the world of the Wanting Seed has been driven. It is obvious that Mr. Burgess, the same literary practical joker who filled his best-know book, A Clockwork Orange, with make-up slang, meant to poke some well-needed fun at the dismal 1984/Brave New World genre.

But just because the Wanting Seed is a work of playful parody and dark comedy does not mean there is nothing profound about it. In fact if I had to pick the one dystopian novel towards which our society is most surely leaning, it would be this one (which is pretty amazing considering it was written in 1962). As counties like China and India are regulating procreation and instituting their own versions of Mr. Burgess' "population police" and the value of human life wilts ever downward, I wonder how close we are to vision of the Wanting Seed. The novel stands as a warning that repressing man's natural urges and diminishing his worth is not the answer to the problem. Your bookstore is stocked full of novels predicting mankind's future, but few as startling and important as this.

Stands with Orwell, can it stand on its own?
Most people will doubtlessly read this book along side or in light of the more famous dystopian novels, such as "1984", "Brave New World", and (let us not forget) "Anthem", and rightfully so. In this literary conversation that considers how humans would respond to different versions of a futuristic totalitarianism, "The Wanting Seed" has its own unique perspective. However, unlike some of these other novels, when it is when forced to stand alone, I'm not sure if it's that great of a read. I gave the book 4 stars because it makes the genre more interesting, but I would have given it 3 stars if I was judging it on its own reading pleasure.

The most interesting aspect of "The Wanting Seed" is Burgess's twist on the usual dystopian plot, where a brave individual battles against some variation of a static, overbearing Big Brother. Instead, Burgess posits a state that has figured out how to gauge and steer man's competing psychological impulses into predictable cycles. Thus, political order is in constant flux between hyper-rational centralization (Rousseau, Marx) and one that gives ample release to Man's all-too-human side (Malthus, Hobbes, Smith). As the novel begins, the political order is at its most rational: homosexuality is encouraged by the state, couples are allowed one child, people eat a state-rationed protein mash, and rules don't have to be enforced by the police. We first meet Beatrice-Joanna Foxe after the death of her only allotted child. The doctor absurdly encourages her to be "modern", "sensible", and of course "rational", telling her to "think about this in national terms, in global terms. One less mouth to feed. One more half-kilo of phosphorus pentoxide to nourish the earth". We then meet her academic husband Tristram, who is also disgruntled by the stifling, prevailing order. It is through Tristram's eyes see all that is unsatisfying in a planned, centralized, and paternalistic state. Naturally, that order collapses due to food shortages and crime (apparently, planned societies can't efficiently feed their people, isn't that right Kim Jong Il?). We then follow Tristram as he seeks out his wife after she leaves him and winds up in the military. All the while and with cannibalistic fun, society moves between various stages of its reordering: from the "state of nature", to ad-hoc tribal units that ensure protection, to the recreation of a militaristic state, and back again to the liberal, rational order. Each stage has outlets for some aspect of Man's will, such as violence and lust, but never all of them, such as security.

While all the political philosophy is great, and there's a few good gags along the way (After hearing a strange tongue, which turn out to be Rabelais, one character must explain that it is "French. One of the Dead Languages."), there are too many unrealized plot lines (what happened to the conflict between Tristram and his brother Derek?) and the key characters at the beginning of the novel disappear. Also, Burgess likes to drop names of his contemporaries in the literai (Halberstam, Toynbee, Maugham, etc.), which is kind of interesting, and why not name the characters after your buddies? But, in addition to some of the frequent and painfully obscure vocabulary Burgess uses (not that I have a wide one to begin with, but don't forget your dictionary), it begins to feel like an internal game or inside joke amongst friends. I don't think this is overt snobbishness, and who cares if it is, but it does make the book drag a bit. Ultimately, "The Wanting Seed" isn't waste of time, and it is a great supplement to a widely read genre of books. However, I think that there is a reason so many people have read "1984", but have not even heard of "The Wanting Seed."

a twisted look at the future, as told by a great satirist
The Wanting Seed is a novel set several hundred years in the future. The population growth has exhausted the food supply. The government scorns human reproduction and rewards homosexuality. God and religion are all but outlawed. Soon anarchy reigns and everything is turned upside-down. Realistic? Well, probably not. Consider it to be a "Brave New World" written by someone with a wicked sense of humour. This is not science fiction, but more of a statement criticizing the world today (even though the book was written in the early 60s).

Much of the book really sizzles, with biting satire on nearly every page. However the story eventually runs out of steam (..it deviates to a sub-story involving the military which, while initially interesting, bored this reader). But let this minor fault not deter you from enjoying a witty book.

Bottom line: a rare, yet slightly flawed, gem.