The Lure of the Ordinary World: Anthony Burgess's Concept of High and Low Culture

The complicated relationship of high and low culture has been the centre of interest for many artists and writers. After the initial alarm, caused by the rapid spread of mass culture, subsided, followers of modernist and postmodernist movements in the 20th century have developed a much more subtle approach to this question.The works of Anthony Burgess are of special interest from this point of view. After the first reading of the majority of his novels, it is tempting to conclude that he condemns consumer society and culture. However, the deeper analysis of his life and works reveals a much more complex and interesting relationship.This book aims at discovering and understanding Burgess's real attitude towards high and low culture, exploring what he considered valuable and worthless. His work as a critic, his novels and essays, his jobs and media appearances are all invoked in the analysis to reconstruct his actual views on the two hemispheres of the cultural globe. As a result, readers get to know a literary man, who was able to make use of both worlds and dissolve the traditional tension between them.