Sport: An Ancient Kickaround (Updated)

As the climax of World Cup competition approached, it seemed that the momentous events strained conventional reporting techniques of factual description and analysis. What was required instead was the imaginative reach of a fiction writer. TIME asked British Novelist Anthony Burgess, from whose eclectic mind have sprung such novels as A Clockwork Orange and Enderby, to comment on the Cup. Burgess watched some of the early action in Germany. Here are some of his thoughts:

In West Berlin, the restaurant of the Kempinski Hotel was serving a World Cup Cocktail—equal parts of curacao, vodka...

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