c o l o p h o n

From Andrew Biswell’s life of Anthony Burgess:

“In the sergeant’s mess at Moorish castle he also acquired a pet chameleon […]. He tested the legend about chameleons bursting into flames if they were placed on a piece of tartan. It refused to combust, but grew ‘palpably unhappy’.” (p.95)

Burgess’s seven wonders of the world:

• Tiger Balm
• the chameleon
• the pre-decimal British monetary system
• The Mikado
• the Petrarchan sonnet form
• champagne
• Fritz Lang’s Metropolis

More sensibly:

“The Ring is symbolism, and only artists who are not sure what they believe indulge in it, since symbols are good at reconciling opposites, resolving ambiguities, suggesting archetypes.” (quoting Burgess’s 1980 TSE Memorial Lectures, at 135n)