Name: Vojtech's review of A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Item: A Clockwork Orange
Rating: 5
Author: Vojtech

Anthony Burgess

A Clockwork Orange

Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess' original text of A Clockwork Orange, with a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews Edited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by Martin Amis 'It is a horrorshow story ...' Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean? A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, A Clockwork Orange is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters. This critical edition restores the text of the novel as Anthony Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews, shedding light on the enduring fascination of the novel's 'sweet and juicy criminality'. Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He spent six years in the British Army before becoming a schoolmaster and colonial education officer in Malaya and Brunei. After the success of his Malayan Trilogy, he became a full-time writer in 1959. His books have been published all over the world, and they include The Complete Enderby, Nothing Like the Sun, Napoleon Symphony, Tremor of Intent, Earthly Powers and A Dead Man in Deptford. Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993. Andrew Biswell is the Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. His publications include a biography, The Real Life of Anthony Burgess, which won the Portico Prize in 2006. He is currently editing the letters and short stories of Anthony Burgess.

Restored Edition

roro

Goodness comes from within, 6655321. Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.

But, brothers, this biting of their toe-nails over what is the 

 of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They dont go into what is the cause of 

, so why of the other shop? If lewdies are good that's because they like it, and I wouldn't ever interfere with their pleasures, and so of the other shop.

Avarni B

That was everything. I’d done the lot, now. And me still only fifteen.

Anthony Burgess reads chapters of his novel A Clockwork Orange with hair-raising drive and energy. Although it is a fantasy set in an Orwellian future, this is anything but a bedtime story. -The New York Times

Stephanie 

Vojtech

Clockwork Orange

Amna A.

The tale tell the story of the hero -or anti-hero, depending on how you look at it- Alex, our humble narrator himself. Alex, a common teenager with a perfectly normal childhood, had turned out, like most of the youth his age, an addict of ultra-violence. The chaotic actions of his were put at an end when he was captured and sentenced for 15 years in a state jail. A state jail which had agreed to shorten Alex's sentence to a couple of days if he consents to undergo a governmental experiment, which supposedly tuns bad people into good people. What they didn't tell him, however, was that an outcome of the experiment would be that he would not have the choice of being a good person, therefore, he would have no morals. 
 As they unleashed poor Alex onto society after being exposed to torturous scenes of violence(as part of the experiment), the mere thought of anything the society would define as "bad" sent him weeping with pain and anguish. At this point, members of the government opposing society had decided to use Alex as an example of how far the government would go to maintain order within the community. Anyways, the main point that they had is that a person who has no choice but to be good, is worse and a person who can, but chooses to be bad. Good needs to come from within. 

This book was real horrorshow.

Sarah Sammis

Not bad; better than I was expecting. It also has to be the most straight up book to film adaptation Kubrick ever made.

I didn't think it did the teen parlance as well as Catcher in the Rye or the numerous Georgia Nicolson books do but it was still entertaining reading Alex's version of things and him not realizing just how stupid he sounded. The plot line is a bit like Flowers for Algernon so the ending didn't really suprise me. I did enjoy Alex running into one of his old droogs and finding him all grown up.

Penguin Essentials a Clockwork Orange

maitha mana

The symphony of mass destruction: the aspired malchick takes us through endless journeys and movements that take place in his very own ultra-violent mind. Alex, the mad genius in my opinion, has been ruthless towards the Nadsats. Only to have the wheels turned around, and forced to have good forced upon him. It is most ironic that a malchick like himself, who is into arts, literacy, and the bible, to be fueled with the need to drat and poison innocent lives for the sake of his own urge. Unfortunately, Alex is a clockwork toy that has been wound up by the devil rather than God (and all that cal)

Still dazzling and transgressive, this groundbreaking novel remains a frightening fable on morality and the meaning of human freedom.

Real horrorshow groodies

As for my opinion on the ending - Americans are whack, the positive rehabilitation of Alex IS believable and utterly preferable. I'm not a fan of retributive violence, as it happens.

Een heel guur en grimmig boek, dusdanig dat ik even gestopt ben om een ander boek te lezen tussendoor. Ik kan de thema's van het boek wel begrijpen en ik snap ze. Maar het voelt oneerlijk aan, de hoofdpersoon heeft geen blijvende straf voor wat hij heeft gedaan en het wordt allemaal heel neutraal neergezet, terwijl het heel wreed is. Het is wel een goed boek daarnaast is het ook vet dat er russische woorden worden gebruikt als straattaal, echter dit maakt het lezen ervan wel moeilijker. 

Bart Veldhuijsen 

Anton

** spoiler alert **
           I would agree with Stanley Kubrick and drop the last chapter from the book.

The book is well written, and the story is captivating. But was is the moral lesson here? What is the metaphor that author tried to convey?

The last chapter makes it into a "growing up" novel, but at the same time reading that chapter was nothing but painful. For 20 chapters we follow a story of someone who is a bully, thief, rapist and murder. But then he just "grows up" and decides to make a family? Grow a child? Because he got bored or beating people on the streets, stealing and raping? I feel like there is a lot missing here.

Janice

I will admit that at first I had a hard time getting into the book, mainly because of the use of Burgess' own invented language. However, after I continued reading I started understanding the idea of the book and felt like the new language really contributed to the story. There is a deep meaning behind the book, it makes one wonder about what free will really is. I believe this book is a true masterpiece. One might need a little bit of internet information to truly grasp its essence though.

salem

"Is it better for a man to have chosen evil than to have good imposed upon him?"

hoooly fucking shit. talk about horrorshow. this book was incredible. i knew absolutely nothing about a clockwork orange going in, nor had i seen the film, so it was like multiple slaps to the face every time i turned the page. at the beginning the language was a bit annoying, but once i was 1/3 of the way in, i soon become obsessed with it. 

our narrator alex is undeniably evil and cruel to those around him. he enjoys beating, raping, and killing people with his friends (at only fifteen years old). obviously alex's endeavors catch up to him, and he is eventually arrested. 

once in prison, he offers himself up to be tested on. he's told they can change him, make him good. so good, that he'll feel physically ill at even the slightest thought of violence. and he laughs, and laughs, and laughs, and gives it a go. 

classical music, which at the beginning, was his god, is soon turned into his worst nightmare, for it's now accompanied by graphic videos of torture, rape, and gang violence that he is forced to watch as part of his "rehabilitation." he is strapped to a chair, eyes pried open, and unable to turn his head away until the graphic films are finished. i mean, what the fuck, right? 

if you're squeamish this book is definitely a hard read, and if you can't get past the language, it's an even harder read. i'm glad i made it past the made up pseudo-slavic slang and pushed through to the end, because this book was worth it. 

it's hard to say if i enjoyed it, per say. it's a vile novella. full of horrible and horrific things, but it was an interesting read, and i'm kind of in awe of burgess' mind.

Apparently sociopathy and murderous impulses are just growing pains. Also, the priest's argument is: the rehab is immoral because it strips Alex of his humanity / 'the choice'  -  the argument made by the mockery of activist author is: the rehab is necessary regardless of its morality. You're saying nothing. And you can't say 'nothing' about the kind of stuff Alex got up to. People rate this diarrhea so high so they can show they understood the slang. 

sydney

Aamna

"What's it going to be then, eh?"

It seemed a bit daunting at first but once I got a hang of all that nadsat I started enjoying the book. The narrative really holds it together. This particular edition I read had an intro which gave the book a context. I suppose I would prefer the American edition which had the last chapter dropped. It feels out of place. But all in all I'm glad, O My Brothers, to have added a colourful bunch of nadsat words to my vocabulary.

Mehul Kar

I haven’t read a book in a long time, so I’m not sure if this was brilliant or if books in general are brilliant. I am still reeling in how deep this book managed to get on a relatively simple plot line.

Elizabeth McInerney 

Michael Springer

This is a dobby story about some young droogs (total prestoopniks), all the time dratsing and doing the ultra-violence. Alex, the leader, gets left oddy knocky after a botched robbery and gets picked up by the millicents, and that's when things get really bezoomny. 

A Clockwork Orange is really less about violence and more about the experience of no longer "being yourself," no longer having a choice in your actions . . or is it about what it means to have freedom, and how dehumanizing it is to give up freedom for the sake of safety? 

*SPOILERS* It's about a lot of things. And, as a reader, you have at least a little empathy for Alex, the murdering rapist who ends up having his free will taken away via Pavlovian conditioning. You see a man who physically CAN'T choose to act badly, and you see what this does to him. 

If the main character were a minor criminal and not fully evil, this book would've been something much less challenging. But Alex is an evil, remorseless sonuvabitch, which forces us to really question whether the things done to him could EVER be considered ethically permissable. 

I suspect this book was inspired in part by electroshock therapy. I could be totally off, but there it is. Umm, guess that's the end of THAT thought. 

AND I HAVEN'T EVEN MENTIONED THE LANGUAGE! Alex speaks with a hella lot of slang, some of it Russian-influenced, most of it simply from the strange, fucked up recesses of Burgess's brain. You read slower than usual so you can decode the language, but it is very much worth it because the slang is hilarious and brilliant. 

Burgess now dismisses this book as something he knocked out in three weeks to pay the bills, but I have a hunch he's just bitter that his other books have never matched the success of this early novel. It was one of my very favorites when I was in high school, but I can't say it's still one of those books I get teary-eyed as I ponder. It is terrific, though. If you haven't read it, and you don't get nauseous easily, and you don't mind sticking with it long enough to figure out what the crap is going on with the language, this book is totally horrorshow.

Sabanar

Recommended by Milligan and Oksana

This book is really interesting and frustrating and sad.
The end chapters tho, it’s not fair.

The books talks about if the treatment Alex undertakes is moral.
I think for cases like Alex, it’s punishment that is deserved. What annoys me is he doesn’t fully grasp or care to understand why the things he did were wrong. He gives an answer to the priest guy explaining why the crimes he committed were wrong, but it just seems like he said it cause that’s what the priest wanted to hear.
He doesn’t care to understand the pain he causes, and although there is a change in him towards the end, this part of him doesn’t change.

Anyway gg it’s a good read.

A Clockwork Orange CD

Kelly

I understand the literary value of this book

And I’m glad I listened to the edition with the final chapter. I did really like that ending. 

However - the language killed me. I was almost a third of the way through the book before I had any idea what was going on. Thank goodness for the Sparknotes dictionary. 

This was very dystopian and almost a sociological/psychological kind of book, but it was just too violent for me personally.

Gillian Rose

Absolutely LOVED this book to death - my only major gripe (and I guarantee this is a common sentiment) is that the made up slang makes this book so much more of a headache to read. 

Maya

Absolutely LOVED this book to death - my only major gripe (and I guarantee this is a common sentiment) is that the made up slang makes this book so much more of a headache to read. 



— lae

so very fun !!!! love reading ab rowdy teenage boys

aynur

Without last chapter this book deserves 5 stars.

lily

absolutely the worst book i’ve ever read i don’t even want to expend my energy on writing a review for it. it baffles me that everyone seems to revere this thing. i’m not even going to get into my complaints about the plot but the absolute worst feature of this book is the pretentious english/russian slang that makes this already insufferable book nearly unintelligible. perhaps i would have found myself expending more brain power to use context clues and knowledge i’ve already gained in life to understand the dialogue but as this book already made me want to throw myself off a roof that was out of the question.

Emelie

Alejandro AR

I (sadly) saw the movie before reading the book, and I fought to avoid picturing the actors from the movie in the book. I really liked the style, there are a couple of chapters that the movie did not integrate but once you're done with this book, you can acknowledge the great work the writers did for the movie. The book itself is awesome, and liked every bit of it.

Kirsten Simkiss

** spoiler alert **
           2.5 stars out of 5, leaning toward three stars.

I have to say, this book really doesn't put in any events that are purely fluff. From the very start of this novel, they get right down to the important events. Everything you see is necessary to drive the plot forward - nothing is really pointless.

I'm definitely not a fan of the violence, or of the main character Alex. But I don't think you're really supposed to be as a reader, even though you're referred to as his "Brother" the entire book. It kind of irks me that Alex never learns that doing these terrible things is wrong on his own. He decides that he wants to get a girl, and to do that he has to stop being an absolute piece of shit. It's not because he's physically harming people. He just gets tired of it and wants something more than being a horrible person. I just don't quite buy it, to be really honest with you, that someone would decide to turn on a dime from beating the life out of people and loving it to wanting to get hitched and have a baby before they even had someone they had an interest in.

The discussion of taking the choice of morality away from the convict is, obviously, an interesting one - though obviously they hadn't thought through all the smaller repercussions of the thing. Morality isn't exactly a black and white thing, unfortunately. That was something they hadn't counted on, which was a silly oversight. I don't buy that nobody said that there was going to be a problem when it came to a moral dilemma. For instance, if violence makes them sick, what happens if they themselves are assaulted. They can't protect themselves effectively if they can't move offensively. It just seems like they didn't really think things through well enough. Perhaps it was desperation. Who knows.

And, finally, it could have done without all the unnecessary slang. It really didn't have that much of a purpose other than to make you feel like you're in a brand new society. But I would have just preferred to read it in our slang. I don't think it was necessary to the story line.

Gulshan Hasanzada

Hi, hi, hi there...
Nadsat language - deyə təsniflənən danışıq tərzində oxuduğum ilk kitabdır, filmi də bildiyim qədər birə-bir kitabla səsləşir, tək fərq 14 yaşlı əsas qəhrəman Aleksi əməlli bir day-dayın oynamasıdır. Yəqin film də kitab qədər möhkəm səbr və iradə tələb edir, yoxsa o şiddəti asanlıqla oxumaq gücünə sahib deyildim) amma niyəsə çox həzz aldım.

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A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

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