Will's Son and Jake's Peer

Download or read book Will's Son and Jake's Peer written by Á. I. Farkas and published by Akademiai Kiado. This book was released on 2002 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Burgess combined high artistic seriousness with very broad popular appeal. The writer of A Clockwork Orange and Napoleon Symphony variously cast himself in the roles of uncompromising artist and willing entertainer. What links these contradictory aspirations is Burgess' ambivalent relationship with James Joyce. In his daring experimentation with the novel form, Burgess always had the Joycean example to emulate, but he also invoked the great precursor to vindicate the rawer components of his art. The author is not blinded by his comparative agenda to Burgess' debts incurred elsewhere. Burgess' work reverberates with echoes of lesser masters as well as securely canonized classics: his voices include the Maughamesque and the Shakespearean as they do the Eliotian and, of course, the Joycean. Anthony Burgess is thus reintroduced as a (post)modern classic himself: Jake's deserving peer and Will's true son.