Clockwork Kumquat

By R.Z.S.

ONE HAND CLAPPING by ANTHONY BURGESS 215 pages. Knopf. $5.95.

What a nice coincidence. Anthony Burgess's One Hand Clapping, first published in England eleven years ago, now comes to the lapsed colonies in time to benefit from the publicity for the film version of his subsequent novel A Clockwork Orange.

Both books belong to the same period in the author's richly pleated life, though it is practically useless to divide Burgess's relatively short and unusually prolific writing career into creative periods. Although light years away in style and impact, One Hand, like Clockwork, is an example of Burgess's concern that modern man has all but shut himself away from spiritual joy.

Howard Shirley, the principal character of One Hand, has little to recommend him except a photographic mem ory, which he uses to store the minutiae of literary history. He spews back information for prize money on a TV quiz show and then parlays the winnings into a fortune at the races.

The story, enhanced by the flat voice of Howard's attractive but simple wife Janet, is something of an inverted play on the now familiar account of the author's life: Burgess, impecunious and convinced he was dying, sat down to write novels as a way of providing a legacy for his wife. Instead of dying, he lingered on to become a chronic writer. Rich, healthy Howard, by contrast, can think of nothing better to do than squander his easy money on a banal overseas tour and then commit suicide. It is not that Howard is outraged or dis gusted by life; he simply does not know what to do with it.

Fortunately for the story, Howard's suicide plan includes killing Janet. This provides Burgess with the opportunity to show a bit of his genius for drollery. Janet does in Howard first and with the aid of her poet-lover gets clean away. Howard, after spending weeks tucked in a trunk, literally ends up as a scare crow. As the title suggests, though, Burgess is not satisfied to play at being Hitchcock. What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the shape of a mind without soul? sbR.Z.S.

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