Seeing Dead People
by Richard Froude

Anthony Burgess, November 22nd

Not unusually, Anthony Burgess is fascinated by the influence his life had upon others. For every few hundred “your book changed my life” testimonials, he happens across something more engaging. Like the newsagent in Bracknell, dedicating his life to the reproduction of Burgess’s oeuvre through the medium of conceptual pottery.

Or the architect in Prague who designed and built a house according to a geometrical matrix translated from the two volumes of Anthony’s autobiography. Stranger and, as Burgess attests, more interesting than a typical devoted reader.

There is one story though that Burgess finds a mite unsettling. It concerns a life over which his influence seems less direct than that of the architect or newsagent. It begins with an anecdote of the writing life:

Anthony Burgess is told by a doctor that he has six months to live. In reaction, Burgess commits to his work, thousands of words a day. The six months pass, Burgess prepared for the apparently inevitable. But he does not die. He continues to generate. Another six months and Burgess has completed another novel, and another, and years have passed but Burgess has not. It is a commitment he maintains until his eventual death, many years after he is given his six months mortal notice.

This story circulates among young writers. It is used by professors to illustrate the ethic of a master. Anthony has uncovered a less common tangent, pieced together from old newspapers:

A boy in Tiverton, Devon hears the story of Anthony’s prolific habit. For motivational purposes, he decides that he too must write under the looming deadline of the grave. He remains in his bedroom, meals and replacement pencils provided by his doting mother. Years pass. The boy grows into a man. Notebooks are filled and filed in stacks around his mother’s house, each clearly numbered and dated.

Investigating an alert from the worried milkman, Sergeant John Muir of the Devon Constabulary discovers the bodies of both the man and his mother. There are no signs of forced entry or a struggle. Both sit in winged armchairs in their modest living room with no visible injuries or evidence of trauma.

Results of the subsequent autopsies are inconclusive. The cause of death is recorded as an unprecedented, simultaneous case of an adult phenomenon similar to cot death in infants. After reading through a selection of the notebooks found in the house, analysts report a “slow diminuendo toward madness.” As the boy wrote on, he “seemingly exhausted the possibilities of his language. He appears to have invented, at first, an extensive new vocabulary, and in some of the later notebooks, several new alphabets.”

The case has been closed for a number of years. All related evidence strictly classified and unavailable to the public, the notebooks stored underground in a sealed wooden crate between the Ark of the Covenant and the only known pair of functioning ruby slippers.

“Was this my fault?” says Anthony.
“Do you want it to be?”
“No, of course—but…I want to read his notebooks.”
“Like there could be something, anything in them to make it your fault? Or make you proud that it was your fault?”
“I mean, if anyone should read them it should be me. They might make an exception.”
“But you’re dead.” Anthony removes his glasses.
“Yes, I am…And what are you?”