Anthony Burgess, Obscenity, and America

Abstract

ABSTRACT Fifty years ago, in December 1971, Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange premiered in America, releasing nationwide in January 1972, causing the British author of the novel, Anthony Burgess, to be routinely called upon to discuss the topic of violence and obscenity in society. What many observers continue to overlook is that Burgess had been writing and speaking about these topics for close to a decade before the release of the film and its effects on popular culture. Using newly discovered archival and historical materials concerning his time in the United States, and being informed by Burgess’s entire canon, this essay details the untold story of Anthony Burgess’s long and particularly American association with and commentary on the topic of pornography as it related to contemporary cultural debates about obscenity, censorship, and literary and nonliterary intentions in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The findings of such research and analysis, it is argued, are crucial not only for understanding Burgess’s aesthetics and the evolution of discourse surrounding pornography in the second half of the twentieth century but also for better understanding and contextualizing American culture at the time.