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World Traveler
Joined: 29 May 2009
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 Posted: Fri Mar 15, 2013 8:59 pm Post subject: An inspirational story. True? |
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I found this online:
http://www.goal-setting-for-success.com/one-year-to-live.html
...and was so inspired by it.
After that, I googled Anthony Burgess to find out more. After reading the Wikipedia page, it looks like what was written above may not be correct. Any Anthony Burgess fans here? What do you know about his life? If that story is true (or is close to being true), it is awesome. ^__^
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| In 1959 Burgess was ill and returned to England. He was told he probably had a brain tumor and would survive only a year. Luckily, this was a misdiagnosis. But the prospect of death prompted him to turn fulltime to writing, and during this "terminal year" he completed The Doctor Is Sick, Inside Mr. Enderby, The Wanting Seed and One Hand Clapping. Later, Burgess stated in The Economist that his objective during that year had been to provide an inheritance for his wife by writing ten novels |
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| A prolific writer, John Anthony Burgess Wilson (1917�1993) didn�t publish his first novel until he was almost forty. Born and raised in Manchester, England, Burgess spent most of his adult life abroad in the army before teaching in Malaya with the British Colonial Service. Diagnosed with a brain tumor in 1960, Burgess began writing at a frantic pace in the hope that the royalties from his books would support his wife after he died. He wrote five novels that year alone. When he later discovered that his condition had been misdiagnosed, Burgess continued to write and publish novels at a rapid rate. |
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In 1959, he was invalided out of a teaching job in Borneo, diagnosed as having a brain tumor and given a year to live.
And so John Wilson, the teacher, became Anthony Burgess, the writer. Wanting to leave Lynne with some money, he wrote five novels during what he called his "pseudo-terminal year", sold them all, and continued his daily labors as a writer. The erroneous diagnosis, he later said, was more political than medical. |
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| �I leave the myth of inspiration and agonized creative inaction to the amateurs. The practice of a profession entails discipline, which for me meant the production of two thousand words of fair copy every day, weekends included.� |
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andrewchon
Joined: 16 Nov 2008
Location: Back in Oz. Living in ISIS Aust.
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 3:27 pm Post subject: |
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| Not really. I find Buckminster Fuller more inspirational. |
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augustine
Joined: 08 Sep 2012
Location: México
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| Posted: Sun Mar 17, 2013 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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One of the best books I've ever read was a biography of who I consider to be the biggest badass of all time: Richard Francis Burton.
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Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS (19 March 1821 � 20 October 1890) was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas, as well as his extraordinary knowledge of languages and cultures. According to one count, he spoke 29 European, Asian and African languages.[1]
Burton's best-known achievements include traveling in disguise to Mecca, an unexpurgated translation of One Thousand and One Nights (commonly called The Arabian Nights in English after early translations of Antoine Galland's French version), bringing the Kama Sutra to publication in English, and journeying with John Hanning Speke as the first Europeans to visit the Great Lakes of Africa in search of the source of the Nile. Burton extensively criticized colonial policies (to the detriment of his career) in his works and letters. He was a prolific and erudite author and wrote numerous books and scholarly articles about subjects including human behaviour, travel, falconry, fencing, sexual practices and ethnography. A characteristic feature of his books is the copious footnotes and appendices containing remarkable observations and information. |
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| During his first term, he is said to have challenged another student to a duel after the latter mocked Burton's mustache. |
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| In a final jab at the environment he had come to despise, Burton reportedly trampled the college's flower beds with his horse and carriage while departing Oxford. |
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| He also earned the name "Ruffian Dick" for his "demonic ferocity as a fighter and because he had fought in single combat more enemies than perhaps any other man of his time." |
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| ...his party was attacked by a group of Somali waranle ("warriors"). The officers estimated the number of attackers at 200. In the ensuing fight, Stroyan was killed and Speke was captured and wounded in eleven places before he managed to escape. Burton was impaled with a javelin, the point entering one cheek and exiting the other. This wound left a notable scar that can be easily seen on portraits and photographs. He was forced to make his escape with the weapon still transfixing his head. It was no surprise then that he found the Somalis to be a "fierce and turbulent race" |
Also, he introduced the words pajamas and safari in to the English language, snuck into Mecca disguised as a muslim, discovered the source of the Nile river, wrote something like 40 books, and his victorian beeotch wife burned his magnum opus after he died. |
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