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Anthony Burgess: The colonial postcolonialist?

This essay will consider whether Anthony Burgesss novels, Time for a Tiger (1956), The Enemy in the Blanket (1958), and Beds in the East (1959) -- later published together as The Long Day Wanes: The Malayan Trilogy (1964) (hereafter collectively known as The Malayan Trilogy) -- are texts that sit at the intersection between colonial and postcolonial discourses. It will first consider the texts as colonial discourses imbued with the weight of European writers biases brought about by arcane cultural, political, scientific, and literary attitudes towards their colonised characters and countries. It will do so by investigating Burgesss use of realism to capture the effect of the British presence in 1950s Malaya and by comparing the themes and characterisation of The Malayan Trilogy with a selection of texts and authors influential to Burgess at this stage of his writing career, notably Graham Greenes The Heart of the Matter (1948). The second part of the essay will make the case for Burgess the proto-postcolonialist. It will focus on the writers use of other languages in the novels and demonstrate how, unlike his literary influences and contemporaries, he foregrounds the colonised in his texts and shows disdain for colonial attitudes and policy. It will consider Burgesss anti-establishment views and sense of apartness and compare them with those of Victor Crabbe in the Malayan novels before turning finally to consider if it is possible, or indeed useful, to try and neatly pack Burgesss writing into colonialist or postcolonial boxes.

Burgess was present in what is now Malaysia but before independence was known as Malaya in the last years of British administration of the country, as Andrew Biswell explains: the period of Burgesss stay there, from September 1954 to August 1957, coincided exactly with the final three years of the British presence (152). Burgess was therefore ideally placed to document the effects of colonialism on the multi-ethnic Malaysian population -- from the colonialists perspective. His chosen form for this documentation of his perception of the complexities of Malaysian society at such a crucial time in its history was the realistic novel, a genre he almost certainly chose after reading novels about the region:

most of what they [Burgess and his wife] knew about Asia and the British colonial territories came out of other peoples books: Somerset Maughams Malayan short stories; Joseph Conrads trilogy of Malayan novels and the works of Rudyard Kipling. (Biswell 154)

Burgess, quoted here by A. K. Biltoo, wanted to write a story about the races of Malaya, as exemplified in characters who have, or had, counterparts in real life (229). Evidently, capturing the reality of life in Malaysia was crucial for Burgess. Realism emphasises character and insists on experience, fact and the skeptical view (Realism 732) and Burgess was to draw heavily on his experiences as a teacher for the Colonial Service in Malaya (Roughley 59) in writing The Malayan Trilogy.

Burgesss use of realism was also inspired by his high regard for Greenes writing (if not his religious belief): I greatly admired the novels of Graham Greene (Burgess, Little Wilson 365). One of those novels was The Heart of the Matter, which was so influential on him that he mistakenly believed his Malayan pupils would be equally enthralled by what Burgess and the vast majority of Western scholarship at that time generally regarded as an example of literature that would be readily comprehensible to all readers in all places, regardless of their cultural background (Biswell 162). Victor Crabbe shares this belief in western logic, regardless of its seeming lack of effectiveness. He firmly believes in its superiority over eastern thinking -- logic was a Western importation which, unlike films and refrigerators, had a small market (Burgess, Malayan Trilogy 58) -- while on the other hand believing that colonisation was somehow preordained:

the process of which he, Victor Crabbe, was a part, was an ineluctable process. His being here, in the brown country, sweltering in an alien class-room, was prefigured and ordained by history. For the end of the Western pattern was the conquest of time and space. But out of time and space came point-instants, and out of point-instants came a universe. So it was right that he stood here now, teaching the East about the Industrial Revolution. It was right that these boys should judge Shakespeare by the Aristotelian yardstick and find it intelligible. (Burgess, The Malayan Trilogy 56-57)

This quasi-religious/-astrological/-historical doctrine not only has echoes of Greene about it but also highlights Britains long-relied on system of colonial education in which literary studies were to play a key role in attempting to impart Western values to the natives, constructing European culture as superior and as a measure of human values, and thereby in maintaining colonial control (Loomba 76).

Given Burgesss job as an education officer (Biswell 152) in Malaya he was well placed to document the effect of colonial educational control. He presents us with a school whose pupils know British rule is coming to an end and that the previously subjugated Malayan, Chinese, and Indian communities will compete for control of the newly independent nation. They also know it is they that will be doing that competing. Burgess reminds us the competition had already begun in the form of the Malayan Emergency, when there were Chinese in the jungle fighting on behalf of the newly victorious ideology of the East: the Marxism decreed by Pekin [sic] (Burgess, Something About Malaysia 36). Some of the Chinese pupils at Victor Crabbes school form a secret discussion group which Crabbe suspects to be focused on Communist doctrine:

its a good book sir, on economic theory. We are interested in these things and we have a right, sir, to discuss them in our own language. We are given no other opportunity to meet for this purpose. Youre here to get an English education, said Crabbe. Whether thats a good or bad thing is not for me to say. (Burgess, Malayan Trilogy 93)

It is not just the Chinese pupils who are showing signs of revolt and contempt towards the colonial educational system and its Western bias. The Malay, Indian, and Chinese pupils are constantly at odds with each other and the teaching staff, and Burgess has them displaying just as stereotypical opinions as their colonial masters. However, any perceived injustice they receive from the British teachers unites these apparently disparate groups into a cohesive whole that can challenge colonial control. As Crabbe wryly observes, this unity was only a common banding against British injustice (Burgess, Malayan Trilogy 53). Burgess here is attempting to provide a realistic representation of the effect of colonial education policy on the non-white peoples of Malaya and the part that system will play in the forming and future of independent Malaysia.

The lead character of The Heart of the Matter, Henry Scobie, shares many characteristics with Victor Crabbe (not least in the fact that both their surnames conjure up thoughts of irritable rashes brought about through invasion by unwanted colonisers): both are middle-aged Englishmen, both have lost close loved ones, they are both unhappily married to women who have passions for poetry, both commit adultery, and both are dead before the end of the stories. Greenes influence on Burgess is evident and shortly before the latters death he was still insisting that The Heart of the Matter was Greenes greatest literary achievement: I still think [it] to be Greenes best book (Burgess, Graham Greene 253).

There are however notable differences between Greene and Burgesss respective approaches to representation and the purposes of their novels. In The Heart of the Matter Greene is ostensibly writing about his concept of the idea of a universal human condition under the auspices of a Catholic examination of the nature of sin and the sinner. Burgesss own analysis of the novel led him to state the heart of the matter that Greene presents in his story is a kind of theological riddle: cannot a man whom the Church must call a sinner perhaps really be a saint (Burgess, The Novel Now 62). Greene is far less interested in representing West Africa and its non-white population. They are noticeable in their absence or when present are marginalised, ridiculed, or regarded as inept: the black policeman at the wheel started his engine and began to grind into gear They dont even give him a good driver (Greene 81). Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that the non-European characters are surplus to requirement in Greenes story. Terry Eagleton ventures to suggest that the reason the likes of Greene and Burgess left England for her colonies was because there was something about postwar, postimperial mainstream English culture which was peculiarly inhospitable to the production of major fiction (Eagleton 334). He goes onto say outposts of empire have proved more stirring settings than Reigate or Bradford (Eagleton 334). The key word there is settings. Yes, Greene lays on thick local colour, in the way of sights, sounds, smells, and other physical sensations (Bergonzi 119) but that is where it ends. Greenes The Heart of the Matter could have been set in any of Britains colonies: Greene sees the empire as nothing more than an outlet for those forces that English life cannot contain The colonies serve as a haven for those whose needs are not met at home (Scannell 431).

Where non-whites are present in Greenes novel they are portrayed in negative terms. This is especially the case with Yusef the diamond dealer, who becomes embroiled with Scobie in the latters efforts to raise money for his wifes passage to South Afric