“Earthly Powers is a meta-novel, then, an unexpected masterpiece by a mediocre novelist (I mean Toomey, of course), a postmodern collection of stories within stories about the brutality of the 20th century and the homeless wanderers who sifted through it, trying to make it into art. Unlike the works of the modernists, Earthly Powers is packed with that good old-fashioned boil & bang: plot.”
“Burgess has found a place for everything in Earthly Powers: Hollywood, Nazis, gay marriage, British dentistry, black magic, Black Power, even A Clockwork Orange. … What’s amazing is that it all works. It works beautifully.”
(http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/book-review-earthly-powers-anthony-burgess/)
When reading this book, somehow it reminds me Shakespeare in his days. Unsure whether he is only a mediocre writer or not, so keep pumping out one after another work, either Shakespeare, Burgess or Toomey.
A World without Gaps 