Devil Of A State Burgess Anthony

First edition. 8vo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, dust jacket. London, Heinemann. Presentation inscription from Anthony Burgess to David Talbot dated 4.11.89 to ffep., Burgess has additionally undedicated the copy to Graham Greene by scratching through his printed name on the dedication page and writing his own beneath, with accompanying A.L.S. from Talbot explaining this eccentricity. Burgess first met Greene in London in 1957 and they quickly became friends, aided by a gift of silk shirts which Burgess had delivered from Malaysia on behalf their mutual friend Trevor Wilson. ?A rumour was later put about that the silk shirts had opium pellets sewn into the cuffs, but this was not, I think, true? claimed Burgess in a rather ambiguous defence, while admitting that he and Greene ?had in common a devotion to opium? and despite telling Kingsley Amis with some pride that he had acted as Greene?s drug mule. Whatever the truth, Burgess? admiration grew to the point that he dedicated his 1961 novel Devil of a State to Greene. A rather ambivalent response, however, can be implied from his later comment that Greene believed himself to be the ?only living novelist equipped to deal with the questions of mystique and politique which inflame those regions where dictators arise and white men go to pieces. Of my later work he had no considered opinion. He did not read it because he did not like it, or it may have been the other way round.? (Anthony Burgess, Graham Greene: A Reminiscence) In any case, a fitful friendship of sorts was maintained between the two authors until a fateful interview conducted by Burgess for The Observer which outraged Greene: ?Burgess puts words in my mouth which I had to look up in the dictionary.? The final straw came in 1988, when Burgess ?was asked on a French television programme how old Greene now was, and I overestimated his age by a couple of years. This drove him into a fury whose excess was not matched by the exquisite small handwriting in which it was couched. Later I was indiscreet to a reporter about the Greene menage. The fury now modulated to an urgent recommendation that I see a doctor? (ibid.) The present copy was signed by Burgess the following year, and as the loosely inserted A.L.S. from the recipient, David Talbot, explains ?he huffed and puffed when he realised that he had dedicated the book to Graham Greene. ?We can?t have that? he said as he crossed out Greene?s name and wrote in his own. I asked him if he had fallen out with Greene but he didn?t reply? A very good copy, with some wear to extremities of jacket, small tear to upper right corner of rear cover, and a some dust marks to front cover.