O p e n i n g s4 1of being verbally overpopulated. Since Ali is a foreign name, we
might also assume that we are in some suitably exotic overseas
setting. It is also part of the Western stereotype of the East that
catamites are in greater supply there than in Leeds or Long Island.
Perhaps we suspect that the narrator is a colonial official of some
kind, illicitly making use of the local amenities.
We will soon learn, in fact, that he is a celebrated writer. In fact,
he is modelled on the English author W. Somerset Maugham, who
was once described as ‘one of the stately homos of England’. This
opening sentence is a wicked parody of Maugham’s style – though,
as one critic has suggested, it is a parody superior to anything
Maugham ever managed to produce himself. The copy outshines
the original, rather as the word ‘Vienna’ is more poetic than ‘Wien’.
The novel’s first sentence, then, is supposed to be written by a
novelist, which gives us a clue to the entire affair. The narrator is
trying to come up with the kind of opening literary gambit that will
outdo all others in sheer sensationalism. So there is a sense in
which this initial declaration is secretly about itself.
Part of the joke, however, is that it is not meant to be invented
purely for literary effect (though it is, of course, invented, by Anthony
Burgess himself ). The reader is supposed to take it as an account of
an actual situation. Which is to say that the narrator, who writes
novels, also lives the kind of colourfully dissipated life one might
come across only in a novel. It is here that the interplay of fiction
and reality become truly dizzying. The narrator, who is a novelist,
behaves like a character in a novel – which, as it happens, is exactly
what he is. Yet though he is a fictional figure, he is based on a real one.
However, the author on whom he is based (Somerset Maugham)
seemed to many observers to be a touch unreal. At this point the
reader may feel like falling into bed, with or without a catamite.