by JULIAN SYMONS
AM. 4pg. 8 x 11. No date [circa 1978]. No place. A lengthy handwritten manuscript by Julian Symons, reviewing an Anthony Burgess novel 1985 that was released in 1978. Symons penned The title Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell said to me, was devised from the fact that he was writing in 1948. He simply transpired the last two numerals. There was a little more to it than that, because the gap in time between 1948 and 1984 was great enough to permit the imagination to run free in creating a new society, a new world. Anthony Burgesss new novel 1985, however, is set only a few years head. Orwell was creating the last and gloomiest Utopia. Burgess is engaging (truncated)