Volume 26, Number 13 · August 16, 1979
'Love and Do as You Please'
By Frank Kermode
Man of Nazareth
by Anthony Burgess
McGraw-Hill, 357 pp., $10.95
The Living End
by Stanley Elkin
Dutton, 148 pp., $7.95
Anthony Burgess has many of the traditional skills of the novelist and some others besides, one of them being a pleasant habit of introducing into his books puzzles that don't strictly belong to the form itself but, once in, present difficult formal problems. The best example is the Lévi-Straussian armature of MF; it worked better than the Beethovenesque structure of Napoleon Symphony. His new novel is based on the scripts he wrote for the television production 'Jesus of Nazareth,' which I haven't seen. Perhaps one might have expected him to take a break from puzzle setting and solving in this book; it would be enough to flesh out the familiar narrative with characters, extra dialogue, local color, as many have done before him. And to be sure he does that; but much of the interest of this work lies nevertheless in the deft solving of problems most writers would not have allowed in.
Review, 2469 words
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