The Wanting Seed (Norton Paperback Fiction)

Product Information

Part One of The Wanting Seed is all about the Exposition. As we follow Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram around on a less-than-ordinary day, we learn almost everything we need to know about the dystopian world they inhabit. As the twelfth and thirteenth chapters wrap up with the news that Beatrice-Joanna is probably pregnant again, and that a brand new Population Police Force has been set upon the city, we're well primed for the novel's Rising Action. Rising Action (Conflict, Complication) Not-So-Hot Fuzz The threat to reproductive freedom in dystopian novels is often used as a metaphor for wider social freedoms. The principle of family life being free from intervention by governments is a major element in discussions about human rights. Dystopian fiction often questions the limits of state power, and it contributes to ongoing debates about how many new lives should (or should not) be created, to ensure the future happiness of all citizens. One of the major conflicts of the novel is between Tristram and his brother, Derek. Very much alike at first, Derek chose a different path from Tristram and pretends to be homosexual while in public, to help his career as a government official. Derek has an affair with Beatrice-Joanna, and when she forgets to take her State-provided contraceptives she becomes illegally pregnant. She has sex with her husband, Tristram, and his brother, Derek, within a 24-hour time span, thus the paternity of her twin boys is uncertain.

Thanks to a new collaboration with JISC Library Hub, it is now possible to search the complete list of English-language book titles in the Burgess Foundation’s collection. The Wanting Seed’ by Anthony Burgess is a disguised religious novel by an intellectual who may or may not still have been a Bible believer, but he most certainly retained gender prejudices and a blinkered social paradigm only someone raised in the Catholic Church would have. I think Burgess’s mind was trapped inside a Christian Catholic-themed box with a set number of rigid philosophies. Reading his novels is like living in a world with only two choices possible for every question of self, civilization, politics and social governance. An either-or paradigm of Humanity. Plus, he seemingly enjoyed poking political activists of all sorts into a rage. Pelphase is named after Pelagianism, the theology of Pelagius. The Pelphase is characterised by the belief that people are generally good. Crimes have slight punishment, and the government tries to improve the population. The government works through socialism. According to Tristram "A government functioning in its Pelagian phase commits itself to the belief that man is perfectible, that perfection can be achieved by his own efforts, and that the journey towards perfection is along a straight road." The novel begins – and ends – in Pelphase. Yes, the love story was clumsy, but t served the purpose of showing this world's dichotomy and hypocrisy, his wife leaving him for a fake gay man, being cursed in either worlds for asking questions and being against the establishment no matter who is in charge. The final payoff of the book wasn't as great as the sum of its parts.

Retailers:

The story is concerned with the vicissitudes of Tristram Foxe and his wife Beatrice-Joanna in their skyscraper world of spacelessness where official family limitation glorifies homosexuality (" It's Sapiens to be Homo") and which is eventually 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. The novel begins by introducing the two protagonists: Tristram Foxe, a history teacher, and his wife, Beatrice-Joanna, a homemaker. They have recently suffered through their young son's death.

Billed as a satire, I found The Wanting Seed to be plenty absurd, but not particularly funny. Fifty years ago (the book was written in 1962), I have no doubt that much of the "humor" was intended to be derived from the unnatural homosexual behavior of a few of the principal characters and several of the incidental characters. (I don't put "unnatural" in scare quotes above because the idea here is that the homosexual behavior of these characters is truly unnatural. That is, they would be heterosexual if it were up to them, but because of society's strictures, they are essentially forced to ACT gay in that stereotypical, homophobic way, with lots of mincing around, simpering, etc.--in addition to having sex with members of the same sex. Of course, in Burgess's view, clearly, all homosexuality is unnatural, thus making the use of the word "unnatural" redundant in this context, as far as he's concerned.)

Dystopias: The Wanting Seed and the politics of fertility:

Gusphase is named after Augustinianism, the theology of St. Augustine of Hippo. In short, Gusphase involves the lifting of the Interphase. The leaders begin to realise how horrible they have become, and realise that they are being overly harsh. Therefore, the government relaxes its rules and creates havoc. Tristram describes the Gusphase: What I didn't expect was the idea of this 'dystopia' being a rather attractive society to live in - one where homosexuality is not only legal but promoted and religion is absent. The entire narrative is laced with repugnant prejudices, which was to be expected from a novel written in the 1960s - however it was laughable to me that something which seemed to be viewed as a terrifying future in this book is rightfully accepted today. I eventually learned to just grit my teeth and bear it, although it originally made it hard to sympathise with any of the characters. Beware those who are easily offended, there is some especially incendiary stuff in here. The book was regarded as a light, if dark, comedy, and nobody would take seriously that cannibalism might be the solution to the world’s crowding and hunger. I was told that all human flesh was toxic. Then came the Andes disaster and the survival of the fittest through the eating of their fellows. The survivors proved, on examination, to be well nourished but terribly constipated. I think it possible that one day we will find cans of meat in our markets called Mench or Munch, human flesh seasoned with sodium nitrate. Interphase is the darkening of Pelphase into Gusphase – an "Intermediate" phase. As Tristram explains things, the government grows increasingly disappointed in its population's inability to be truly good, and thus police forces are strengthened and the state becomes Totalitarian. In many respects, Interphase is a finite version of George Orwell's 1984.

A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy. Throughout the first portion of the novel, overpopulation is depicted through the limitation and reuse of materials, and extremely cramped living conditions. Further research into the book collection will allow us to investigate the sources of Burgess’s writing in more detail, and to establish new connections between the books on his shelves and the works which emerged from his typewriter. Beatrice-Joanna and Tristram try to get through a day that starts with the death of their son, and ends with police brutality, "accidental" impregnation, and the inauguration of a frightening new police presence in the city. And you thought you were having a bad day.Burgess once said, "I have spent the last 25 years thinking that The Wanting Seed could, in my leisurely old age, be expanded to a length worthy of the subject." The Wanting Seed watches the death of government, but not of a people and how somehow they manage to carry on in their own way. How different levels of society first react and then respond to the failing food and their way of rationalization to differentiate themselves from the "others" and their lower ways. It is also a analogy of changing times England faced when the book was written and should be seen in this light. It is a statement of the ordinary average man in changing times where he no longer recognizes his place. Nothing is normal and the world he knows is gone upside down. But in a society headed toward anarchy, the seed produces monstrously ghoulish forms of wanting. Literally dog EAT dog. It's the germ of pop-up Mad Ads spiralling through our brains, having issue in a new paucity - a desert of endless wanting - in an environment of plenty, which morphs in turn, overnight, into scarcity.