Elizabeth Wilson is one of our most radical cultural critics. In "Cultural Passions" she transcends the division between 'high' and 'low' culture, exploring the emotional commitment people bring to the books, performances, objects and rituals in which they find meaning and challenging an enduring suspicion of the pleasure of the aesthetic. Ranging from Marcel Proust to tarot readings, from urban planning to interiors, Elizabeth Wilson investigates an underlying Puritanism in critical commentary on matters as wide ranging as Roger Federer and C S Lewis, Surrealism and fashion and the relationship of religion to fan culture. She questions why pleasure appears suspect, even as consumer society incites it and turns life into entertainment. She questions why there is such fear of elitism when at the same time the fans of mass culture are held in contempt. Subverting conventional views, her oblique point of view provides startling insights on both familiar and marginal cultural experiences.

List of IllustrationsPart One: Cultural Diseases1 Introduction 2 Pleasure's Dangers3 Looking Backward: Nostalgia ModePart Two: Fashion4 Magic Fashion5 Glamour: The Secret Behind the Sheen6 Dressed to Kill,7 The Vicissitudes of Camouflage8 Fashion and Memory9 Urbane FashionPart Three: The Future We Have Lost10 Austerity in Retrospect: the Glamour of Masochism11 Postwar Perverts12 Bethnal Green Part Four: Magic Moments13 Modern Magic14 'Disorientated Agnosticism': Reading the Tarot 15 Secret Worlds16 Temporary Gods17 ConclusionEpilogueNotes Index