Paperback Jukebox: Beard’s Roman Women by Anthony Burgess        Caitlin Crawford

Anthony Burgess, it would seem, has a talent for capturing the unique effects of aging in reflection.  His most famous work, A Clockwork Orange, encapsulates the ignorance and bliss of youth and the regret of such in retrospect.  Beard’s Roman Women finds a man entering old age and facing the challenges of a new life as a widower.  Without any prior knowledge, you feel almost at once that this book has very personal overtones, and indeed, it was composed just after Burgess lost his wife.    

After losing his wife Leonora to cirrhosis, Ronald Beard begins a new life in Rome and takes a stab at being single at 50.  Developing a screenplay for a musical, Beard divides his time between his budding romance with the young Italian Paola and, occasionally, his work.  He finds himself wholly distracted by the romance of a Roman holiday.  He and his young sweetheart discuss poetry and art. In his mind, it is a storybook love, while it is readily apparent to everyone but Beard that she sees it as nothing but a fling.  She is a photographer, looking to make a name for herself in the world of art and politics.  You can see by his lackadaisical work on a musical based on the lives of Byron and Shelley that he has long accepted that ambition is overrated.   He dotes on Paola as she flits about, clicking her camera and analyzing everything she sees through it.  She catches the break of her lifetime, it would seem, and is called on to photograph conflict in Israel.  She drops the news on poor old Beard and dashes about the city to finish a last assignment before she goes.  Paola says that she needs to photograph Rome in reflection.  Throughout the book, we get these images of famous statuary reflected in rain puddles and store windows, always reminding us that everything is subject to perspective and that the world goes on, despite the past. 

When Paola leaves the city, Beard finally must face the fact that he is starting life over again.  He has the intentions of a young man but with none of the vigor.  A series of unlikely mishaps ensue, seemingly the delusions of a man grappling with a world that he no longer knows how to live in.  An old acquaintance Gregory Gregson (old Greg Greg!) shows up to sweep him along from the past through the present all the way into his future.  A boisterous, cocky drunken Englishman, Greg dismisses the mishaps around him so that he may live exactly the way that he likes to.  Beard is often caught between awe and contempt of this man, but in the end, he helps him more than anyone and is his only friend.  Now that he is no longer distracted by his romance, Beard begins to work again on the only other thing he really has going for him, his screenplay.  But the poor man doesn’t seem to be able to catch a break.  He has his bag stolen with his manuscript in it (his only copy), but he manages to get it back with the help of none other than Greg Greg.  Afterwards, Beard begrudgingly shares a drink or two with him, every drink plagued with the guilt of his wife’s death.  He returns to the flat that he and Paola share, only to find it picked clean by Paola’s ex-husband, a seemingly more successful man whom Beard is constantly comparing himself to.  All that is left is the mattress and his typewriter. 

The story becomes rather surreal as he is haunted by his dead wife over the phone.  She claims that she is alive and coming to Rome.   Greg keeps mentioning that he has seen Leonora here or there, which Beard explains to him is impossible.  Beard is left wondering if it is a cruel trick or if he’s losing his mind.  A few other women cross his path—four young ladies all at once, an old crush from the time before Leonora, and his late wife’s cousin—most of whom only continue to make his life miserable.  We begin to wonder if these are the exaggerations of an aging man or if life really is so cruel.  The whole story is tinged with wanderlust and nostalgia, and the reader comes away from it just as confused and hopeful as Beard.

Burgess shows us that there may never come a time that we are truly stable, and stability has that much more potential to become chaos.  Beard feels this great pressure lifted with the passing of his wife, but try as he might, he is always seeking the same end.  Time offers settling, but just like dust, there is always the potential to be swept up.

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Caitlin Crawford graduated in May 2009 from Carlow University with a degree in Biology.  She currently works full time at the Animal Rescue League helping pets find new homes and works part time at Allegro Hearth Bakery helping cookies and bread find new homes, too.  In her scant spare time, she mostly hangs out with her cats or dances, sometimes both.