Pelphase-Interphase-Gusphase, Repeat Edition

The Wanting Seed
by Anthony Burgess

In The Wanting Seed, Anthony Burgess creates a world in which overpopulation has a hand in the following: babies are turned into phosphorus pentoxide; homosexuality is outright advertised by the government (complete with posters that say “It’s Sapiens to be Homo”); women are not only discouraged from getting pregnant but are also looked at with collective contempt by men; wars are fabricated so that portions of the population can be killed; food rationing becomes so tight that cannibal groups begin to form.

Now, one would certainly be excused, based on that paragraph, for thinking that this book is really dark. It is dark, but it is totally accessible. Burgess, who is best known for A Clockwork Orange–a modern masterpiece^[1] that perfectly expands on a very dark subject matter that also has a mainstream accessibility to it–published The Wanting Seed, remarkably, the same year as the now-infamous novel about Alex and his droogs.

The Wanting Seed primarily revolves around Tristram Foxe–a history teacher who seems to have a handle on how societies work and how they are cyclical by nature, Beatrice-Joanna Foxe–Tristram’s wife who wants nothing more than to have children, and Derek Foxe–Tristram’s brother, and Beatrice-Joanna’s adulterous lover (which, needless to say, would be very scandalous if Derek were found to be having sex with a woman, considering that he works at the Ministry of Infertility and is a homosexual in front of everyone else).

The story begins with Beatrice-Joanna saying goodbye to her unborn child before it is made into phosphorus pentoxide (it is never explicitly described, but in this society the doctor’s apparently are very careless with pregnant women and allow the child to die rather than resorting to something more direct, like abortion or, you know, delivery). At the same time as this is happening, Tristram is teaching his class. Here is how Burgess describes him as a teacher, prefacing the description with a quote from Tristram’s class:

“‘-The gradual subsumption of the two main opposing political ideologies under essentially theologico-mythical concepts.’ Tristram was not a good teacher. He went too fast for his pupils, used words they found hard to spell, tended to mumble. Obediently the class tried to take down his words in their notebooks.”

From here, the novel delivers the reader to two very important plot points–Beatrice Joanna’s affair with Derek results in her being pregnant, and Tristram’s explanation of socio-political cycles to his class. Both events seem somewhat mutually exclusive but they are tied together quite strongly because both events serve as catalysts (directly, in Beatrice-Joanna’s case; somewhat indirectly, in Tristram’s case) for the trajectories of the book.

Having an affair with someone who is publicly homosexual has its own crosses to bear, but having an affair with someone who is not only publicly homosexual but also about to be promoted to a very high position in a government that is trying to rid the country of new babies is whole other set of problems. What, exactly, is Beatrice-Joanna to do in this circumstance?

Meanwhile, you have Tristram addressing his class on political ideologies, first Pelagianism (the Pelphase):

“‘Pelagius was of the race that at one time inhabited Western Province. He was what, in the old religious days, used to be called a monk. [...] He denied the doctrine of Original Sin and said that man was capable of working out his own salvation. [...] What you have to remember is that this all suggests human perfectibility. Pelagianism was thus seen to be at the heart of liberalism and its derived doctrines, especially Socialism and Communism.’”

Then Augustinianism (the Gusphase):

“‘Augustine, on the other hand, had insisted on man’s inherent sinfulness and his need for redemption through divine grace. This was seen to be at the bottom of Conservatism and other laissez-faire and non-progressive political beliefs. [...] The old Conservatives expected no good out of man. Man was regarded as naturally acquisitive, wanting more and more and more possessions for himself, an unco-operative and selfish creature, not much concerned about the progress of the community. Sin is really only another word for selfishness, gentlemen. Remember that. [...] If you expect the worst from a person, you can’t ever be disappointed. Only the disappointed resort to violence. The pessimist, which is another way of saying the Augustinian, takes a sort of gloomy pleasure in observing the depths to which human behaviour can sink. The more sin he sees, the more his belief in Original Sin is confirmed. Everyone likes to have his deepest convictions confirmed: that is one of the most abiding of human satisfactions.’”

Finally, the intermediate phase (the Interphase):

“‘Disappointment [after realizing that the Pelphase cannot work as promised] opens up a vista of chaos. There is irrationality, there is panic. When the reason goes, the brute steps in. Brutality! [...] Beatings-up. Secret police. Torture in brightly lighted cellars. Condemnation without trial. Finger-nails pulled out with pincers. The rack. The cold-water treatment. The gouging-out of eyes. The firing-squad in the cold dawn. And all this because of disappointment. The Interphase.’”

What happens from here is that Tristram loses his promotion to a younger gay man (“It’s a matter of arithmetic, not of eugenics or social status”), finds out that Beatrice-Joanna has been impregnated by his brother by way of a heterosexual government official who wants to bring Derek down, and begins to drink. He eventually, as per the “guidelines” of the Interphase, is picked up by the police during a time when the police just like to capture people. He escapes from prison with the help of an inmate and goes off looking for his wife. But not before he is tricked into joining the army and ordered to fight in a war, apparently against the Chinese. Beatrice-Joanna, on the other hand, escapes to her sister’s house in the country and eventually gives birth to twins. She is eventually found by the man who informed Tristram of his wife’s affair in the first place.

As the story progresses, so too do the cycles. The societal ones keep chugging away; the military moves at a pace that is the default template for seemingly all futuristic writing (going from background arm of the government to a growing and powerful organism that creates wars arbitrarily); and, quite literally, the female cycle: where at first you were almost outright prevented from having children and looked at with scorn for even having kids, now Beatrice-Joanna is able to walk the twins in their stroller along the sea at the end of the book.

The Wanting Seed is, at his core, a journey story. At a point, Tristram realizes that his fury and anger at Beatrice-Joanna is misguided; he needs to find her. Likewise, Beatrice-Joanna, realizes that Tristram is ultimately who she loves in spite of how Derek’s personality seems to match hers better. The book ends with an epilogue that should really surprise no one w/r/t to Tristram and Beatrice-Joanna. But before that there is a terrific scene when Tristram, after escaping from the “war,” goes to the War Office to let them know that he survived what had happened. He winds up meeting with a Major Berkeley and Tristram threatens to go public with what he knows. What follows is some terrific back-and-forth between the two about war, the War Office, civilian contractors, the dead soldiers. I will not say too much about it because I do not want to spoil anything but the Major, at one point, says “waste not, want not” w/r/t one of their topics. Which, in its context, is quite perfect because it continues the cyclical theme of overpopulation in the book perfectly.

Bottom line: if you are at all interested in starting to read anything by Anthony Burgess I could not dissuade you from starting with A Clockwork Orange first; it is a really phenomenal book all the way through. The Wanting Seed, though, is an excellent place to start too. Its intelligence still resonates today and it is a small, very overlooked gem from one of the best writers of the twentieth century.

[1] For what it’s worth, and not to take too much away from Stanley Kubrick’s faithful screen adaptation, but Burgess’ novel is better than the movie if only because his ending is much more humanizing and fully fleshed out than Kubrick’s abrupt and darker ending.