It is considered a joke within the literary world just how prodigious Anthony Burgess was during his career. His fecundity yielded all manner of novels, reviews, journalism, orchestral scores, stage productions and pretty much anything else you can think of which requires pen, paper and mind. However, of all these works his 1962 text A Clockwork Orange remains his most well known contribution to the world of literature, a fact which gnawed at his conscience up until his death in 1993.Burgess started writing the novel after he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he only had a matter of months to live. Once he was informed of his imminent death he went about writing furiously, the beginning of his vast output of work, owing to his desire to make enough money for his wife to live on once he had died. He ended up living for another thirty years as it turned out, yet no worked defined his life as much as A Clockwork Orange.
The book will always be synonymous with Stanley Kubrick's 1971 film adaptation which lead Burgess to concede that he would be forever known as 'the fountain and origin of a great film', yet he would also dispute the view that Anthony Burgess was a creation of Stanley Kubrick, insisting that the reality was quite the opposite.
The novel, or novella considering its slim size, is often categorised as Science Fiction due to its Dystopian vision but is somehow exempt from this classification when located in bookshops. Sure, the book, like all great Science Fiction, is pertinent to today (gangs, a bumbling Government, a hypocritical Police force) yet one can only imagine that the setting and the bleak vision of the future is merely a foil for the larger themes Burgess presents us. The primary question at the centre of the novel's black heart is asked by the prison chaplain on page 71 and is simply this: 'Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?' Despite its slender appearance this book has got itself some Big Ideas.
One of Burgess' main achievements throughout is his use of language. Alex, the novel's narrator, speaks in a tongue known as Nadsat, a Russian based language which is prevalent amongst the wayward youth of the novel (Burgess wanted readers to have a Russian dictionary at hand when reading). At first challenging, the language is eventually a colourful, playful experience and becomes easier to follow (assuming you get past the first few paragraphs without scrunching your face up with confusion).
Phew. The plot. Alex is a teenager in a broken society in the not-so-distant future. He and his Droogs (his gang) help contribute to this diseased carcass of a society as they rule the night, thieving, fighting and raping their way through the midnight hours. However, Alex is dichotomous at the best of times as he enjoys Beethoven and 'Ultra-violence' in equal measure, leading Burgess to ask the question as to whether High-Art civilizes or not. One beautifully written section sees Alex describing the classical music he is listening to in his room:
And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers.
Alex, as leader of his fellow Droogs, seems to have an existence which satisfies him greatly. Everything he wants is available to him one way or another and he is in a constant cycle of sating his urges. However, one night he is set up by his gang and is taken to jail where he is told the woman they were sexually assaulting has, in fact, died. He is sentenced to jail where he enjoys reading The Bible (for the sex and violence, the good bits) and seems to be 'getting better'. He then hears of a new medical technique which can cure a man forever of his subversive impulses and offers himself to be a guinea pig. It is known as the Ludovico Technique and, sure enough, he is cured of his violent impulses - whenever he feels the need to inflict pain he grows violently sick.
Soon enough he is let back into society where he is rejected by his parents and society in general. He is taken in by a writer whose wife Alex and his Droogs gang-raped (the writer not able to recognise Alex due to the Elvis mask he wore during the attack). The writer is a political revolutionary, trying to oust the oppressive Government, and feels that Alex can be used as an example of the stifling nature of the Government. However, things don't pan out quite like that, and Alex soon becomes a political pawn in a fragile society.
After a failed suicide attempt, Alex is in hospital and is visited by the Interior Minister, offered a stable job as compensation for the Government's failed experiment. He accepts this deal but is soon found back with a new set of Droogs. It is this last chapter which is omitted from Kubrick's film and has caused much debate since the film's release. For this reader the final chapter is beautifully realised with a pathos which, although incongruous with the rest of the book, is both optimistic and pessimistic at the same time. Unfortunately, I'm not going to tell you all that happens in that final chapter - your just going to have to read it for yourself.
One has to accept that the film will always eclipse the novel. One also has to accept that the film is quite sensational. But we're not talking about the film, we're talking about the book. It is both amazing and frightening to think that Burgess produced such an intelligent book in a matter of weeks due to his thinking that he would soon be dead. The true depth of the novel is hidden amongst the scenes of bloody violence and rampant criminality, yet its message of personal choice and freedom resonate with today's societies like a great bolshy trombone. Its the sort of book you go back to when you get bored with fiction and there are always new things to find within. Despite Burgess' disgruntlement that it was his most famous work, it's not a bad one to be remembered by.
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