A Clockwork Orange

And so I sit here, struck by literary genius, O my brothers. I must tell you I have indulged in this book perhaps more than any of you, unless you're Russian also. My native language intertwined with this astounding work of brilliant horror, coloring it rich and scary and crazy at the same time, with me imagining it as it was spoken, properly. Brrrrr. I feel like there is the voice of Anthony Burgess in my head, reciting as Alex. I must tell you one more thing, before I go on. I have read the version with the 21st chapter, the very end that's been cut off in the original American publication, but was kept in the British, hence the review might differ from the version that didn't have it. You see, Alex changed, as impossible as it might have seem, he did change in that last 21st chapter, and indeed it changed the story itself. There is hope, after all, for the Alexes of the world. Makes you wonder, doesn't, what kind of decision made it cut from the American version in the first place. But I'm getting carried away into mundane. Now, I must say, this will be the book to re-read and to re-read and to re-read, among such works of genius as Lolita, War and Peace, and the like. I've never read Burgess before, and I plan on indulging more and more in his work in coming years, because, oh well, because the explosion of the beautiful and the appalling, the sophisticated and the primitive strikes such a fine balance, that you feel it, you smell it, you taste it, you hear it, you see it like it's unfolding around you, and you unfold around it, and inside it, and all is in and out and together, and you raise your head from the book to answer that call and you no longer know who you are or why or where. Last time a new writer had such an impact on me it was Haruki Murakami with 1Q84. I can't say wow, because it sounds boring. Let me try. It will deposit fireworks in your brain. It will skin you and pin you with sharp words all real proper. It will put you in a mind of one you don't want to be yet feel for by the end of the book, unsure how it happened. Namely, little Alex. Little Alex. Little Alex has a proper mum and pop, lives in a proper flat, in a proper block, all good. But it's not enough for little Alex. Little Alex likes to perform a bit of ultra-violence every night with his droogs, but it's just simple bloodletting, oh no. It's more sophisticated than that. Alex has wit, Alex is fond of classical music, Alex adds the disturbing twist to his crimes, and that, only at 15. He does everything there is to try, the beating, the cutting, the raping, the stealing, until one day he stumbles on killing, and that's a slippery slope that leads him to an institution where some very interesting new curing methods are tried on him, and lo and behold, I can't tell you no more as otherwise I will spoil it for you, in case you happened to have been untouched by this story, wether in book or film shape. Anyway. It all turns around, of course, as things do in life. Those who do crimes, pay for their crimes, but who is to judge what is fair? How much do you pay, and when can we stop the punishment? I know there have been horsed of scholars who said smart things about this book and about life and people at large and how it relates, but on my level I can tell you that the coin has always two sides, and we may forever wonder if what the author was trying to say, but I have a feeling that is wasn't simple glorifying of sex and violence, as it might seem. Oh no. It's about "Why?", and about "Why not?" Why do we have violence and those who enjoy it? Because those who do it can tell you, why not? When we're blind as to why we shouldn't, we do it just because we can, don't we? We do until we get caught. That's how we learn. Some earlier, some later. Alex does learn, eventually, but at a cost. Okay, I need to shut up now otherwise this will turn into an essay. Go read it. It will, literally, blow your mind.

"The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something **chosen**. **When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man**." When I reached this passage in Anthony Burgess' *A Clockwork Orange*, I immediately recognized it as one of the most (if not the most) important message among the many in this intriguing, fast-paced novel (it is then reinforced later on in the novel by the author/victim F. Alexander). Also present in Kubrick's film, but not stated with the same emphasis and strength, it comes from the 'rot of the Staja's charlie' (or, translating from Nadstad--the slang used by teenagers in Burgess' futuristic dystopian England--"the prison's chaplain's mouth") and tells everything: this book is about free will. To be honest, I've never been much interested in the fortuitous, ultra-violent concept behind Kubrick's film (which I had never seen before finishing the book this week), but decided to give the book a shot after learning about its intricate linguistic complexities, by incidentally reading the 'Translator's Notice' in the most recent Brazilian translation (Fabio Fernandes for publisher Aleph). There, Fernandes enthusiastically go over each of the main devices used by Burgess to create a sense of strangeness in the dystopic future of ACWO and how he as a translator dealt with them: the Russian-derived words in nadsat ('horrorshow'/хорошо for excellent, 'rot'/рот for mouth, 'rooker'/руки for hands, 'litso'/лицо for face, 'malenky'/маленький for little or tiny, 'devotchka'/девочка for girl, 'veshch'/вещь for thing and so on), the childish rhyming slang (like kids talking cute in words like 'skoliwoll', 'gutiwutis', 'eggiweg') and the pompous sort-of-shakespearean discourse (filled with thus's, thou's and thine's). All of that made me start reading the Brazilian translation in Portuguese and the original English version simulteaneously. But soon I felt comfortable moving on only with the original, having a nadsat glossary at hand just not to lose track of anything. Actually, as soon as I made it through the surf of the nadsat, just like in Joyce's *Ulysses* (and Burgess as a linguist was a devoted Joycian), ACWO turned into a very entertaining journey because it is so fast-paced. However, the comparison with Joyce's can't go much beyond the surface of the linguistic mimicking, because Burgess himself admitted in life that he wrote ACWO in a hurry (scholars now say he wrote the book in 18 months, but Burgess himself used to brag he did it in just three weeks because he needed the money). Actually, all Nadsat, the childish rhyming slang and the sort-of-shakesperean discourse seemed to me to be rather gross stylistic shortcuts, like finding a solution to create this sense of strangeness of the dystopic future quickly (it certainly makes it easier to establish that all Nadsat comes from anglicized Russian, but why would it be that way?--was there a time when England was under Russian command?). The same can be said about Alex's pompous Shakespearean tone--it is cool, but it is there just because it is cool, no matter how hard it is to explain in the context of the novel why is that. Differently from the Kubrick's film, 'Your Humble Narrator' Alex is, at the beginning of the novel, only a 15-year-old violent teenager who actually comes from a (presumably) stable family--which maybe could help explain how he had the chance to know so much about classical music and develop his devotion to "Ludwig van", although all references to classical music in the novel seem to be, as Nadsat and Shakespeare, stylistic shortcuts as well. In any event, Alex's story goes on for more or less three years, and that is what makes the whole difference with Kubrick's movie (and indeed caused Burgess himself to depricate it), as clearly Malcolm McDowell was not only much older (isn't that something that happens with all adaptations of Hamlet to the screen as well?) but also out-of-placedly immature. I must confess I was completely 'nagoy' about the controversy surrounding the last, 21st chapter. All I can say is that, at first, it really came to me as a blatantly sarcastic detour. It was like the book was moving in one direction and all of sudden it moved almost 180 degrees around. Until the end, I was eagerly waiting for a plot twist that would put it back on track, but that was a hope slowly vanished as the unread pages diminished. So all I had as a console was the prison's chaplain's phrase: if Alex couldn't choose, he wouldn't be free, so he had to learn by himself what goodness was really all about. It is a sort of naïve idea that maybe was needed in the 1960s when Burgess wrote the book, but an idea that didn't age well. That is not what you could say about the rest of the book, which not only didn't age, it became so fluid with our own reality that it has, sadly enough, fallen almost into our everyday triviality.

fantastic book, and a quick read

I can easily understand the frustration Anthony Burgess had with the public's fascination with A Clockwork Orange but, like most writers, he was forced to acknowledge this book at nearly every public event, because it was one of his most successful books. On the onset, I don't understand particularly why it garnered the level of popularity it did. It's certainly not a commercial book - it's sexually explicit and very atypical in terms of what every other writer was doing at the time. It just doesn't strike me as a book bearing any kind of commercial potential at all... ...But it's a brilliant book. Anthony Burgess flawlessly creates an entirely new language (Nadsat) and teaches it to the reader throughout the course of the novel. It's a distraction at first but the way he manages to normalize it within the first couple of pages is a testament to the genius Burgess possessed. The story is engaging, the reader can easily sympathize with Alex (who, from the start, is a very difficult person to like) and the conclusion of the story is satisfying. It can't be looked at in conjunction with the Kubrick film. Although it's a faithful adaptation of the book, it is it's own entity, and it deserves to be treated as such. It's not a life-changing read, but it's a brilliantly composed piece of fiction that I've read multiple times since I got it.

主人公が暴力に明け暮れる日々から、国の矯正を受けて変わっていく物語。読みやすいとは言えないけれど、自由とは何か、人間らしさとは何かを自然に考えさせられました。

It's a very short novel, and half of the text in this edition is forewords, afterwords, articles, etc., that give further insight on the novel as a world phenomenon.

‘A Clockwork Orange’ is probably one of the most unique novels in the annals of literature. And by unique, I mean unique in every sense, including dark humor, language, and the way Alex has with music. To those voracious readers of this ever-growing community, have you ever thought before picking up this book that it will be a hard read? Let me answer you. You will find the first chapter hard, I agree. But as you go on, you will find that most of the words are repeating themselves. The novel will be engrossing after this point. If you enjoy reading, then you will understand the meaning of Nadsat words from the sentence itself. The language is also pretty comical. Especially the words for 'good' and 'God.' Then there is the music. Rock music was taking baby steps during the time this novel is set, that in the 1970s. But still, it was prevalent. And look at Alexander the Large's interests- Beethoven and Bach. Music is a nice element of this novel; for Alex, it is at first a pleasure, but later on, after the therapy, it is torture for him. A toying with his brains is what changed his response to music. The humor- my god, it is out of this world! I mean, there is a limit to black comedy also, like all genres. But Burgess defied those boundaries and changed the way of this sub-genre forever. And speaking of limits, how can I forget Kubrick's film. Kubrick's film is highly artistic, without a doubt. Not as futuristic and resplendent as '2001: A Space Odyssey', though. He has a habit of changing details, and adding that extra 'spice.' That is what I like about him. But the novel is entirely different than the film. Both the novel and the movie are good in their own way. The former uses background music to lift its humorous tone. The latter uses language. But there as some similarities too. They do not glorify violence; on the contrary, they use violence as a recurring theme to strike a ground reality in the readers. The harsh reality is that the future is not bright. The story is told from the perspective of Alex, our protagonist. The theme is simple enough: is it better for a man to be bad than to be made good forcefully? And to this, Burgess replies yes. The person must himself realize his faults. He must be an orange, capable of coherent thought and decisions, not a clockwork, made to be better by force. The idea is disturbing and thought-provoking at the same time.