Choosing Goodness: The Scare that Changed Anthony Burgess’ Life
In 1959, while teaching English in Brunei, Anthony Burgess was told that he had a brain tumor and had less than a year to live.
His world was turned upside-down.
He and his wife returned to England to get their affairs in order.
What troubled Burgess the most was finding a way for his wife to survive after he passed.
They had little savings and only modest royalties from a novel he had published five years before.
He figured his best bet was to write as much as he could in hopes that his wife could live off of the royalties when he was gone.
So he wrote. And wrote. And wrote.
By the end of 1960, he had finished five novels with two more on the way including acclaimed Earthly Powers and A Clockwork Orange.
Rarely has the literary world seen such productivity.
What’s more, his headaches and fevers had gone away.
He wasn’t going to die after all.
Getting Stuck
When planning for the future, it is easy to get stuck in a rut of just getting by—you tolerate bad relationships, you work at a job you’re not fit for.
You make choices, not based on what is good or important, but rather on what is good enough or what will get you by.
But, as they say, nothing is more permanent than a temporary fix.
Anthony Burgess knew that he was supposed to be a writer, but he had gotten sidetracked.
It took a terminal diagnosis for him to finally do what he was called to do.
The thought occurs: If he could do it with the fear of death, why not do it without?
Why not “live like you were dying” as Tim McGraw put it?
Choosing Goodness
After his year of writing furiously, Burgess had gotten more than just his life back.
He got an ability to live life to its fullest.
As Burgess put it, “Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.”
He went on to write 33 novels, 25 non-fiction works, television screenplays, a two-volume autobiography, and over 200 musical compositions.
A Clockwork Orange is often listed as one of the 100 best novels of all time. And his Jesus of Nazareth is regarded as one of the greatest portrayals of Jesus to be produced.
He died in 1993 in London at the age of 76.
