A favourite of my late teens, still a favourite now. The brutality of male blooming and the private patois of our teenhood . . . splattered across this brilliant moral satire, abundant in vibrant, bursting language and a structural perfection: Shakespearean, dammit. Goddamn Shakespearean! nadsat is second only to the language in Riddley Walker for a perfectly rendered invented language that is consistent within the novel’s own internal logic. This book is musical! This book sings, swings, cries and rages! Oh this book, this book! My first encounter with unbridled creativity, intelligence, elegance, thematic unity, this book made me weep for the future of poor sadistic Alex. Oh, he must grow up, he must! But he doesn’t Oh Humble Skimmer, he doesn’t! His nadsat is in place up until his story ends, and all that cal, so Alex remains a perpetual teen, like the boring little shit in Salinger’s unambitious literary haemorrhage (I forget the title). This book, this book! Oh my droogies, oh my Bog . . . nothing hurts so much on your stomachs and your heads and your hearts as this book . . . except maybe having Earthly Powers dropped on your tootsies . . . !!! [collapse into gibberish] !!!

“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”

I started reading the book without any idea what’s it about, apart from the knowledge there is a movie version. I don’t want to sound too harsh, but this book is a complete waste of time. I couldn’t adjust to the writing style, it was painfully hard for me to understand the plot and it bored me to death.

While the plot does raise some intellectual questions about freedom of thought, speech, and actions, especially when analyzing the motives for the behavior of the main character Alex, it ultimately lets him get away without any consequences. The author barely scratched the surface within his psyche. All the horrible things he’s done, it’s like the author wants us to feel sorry for Alex because he was finally caught. And that’s the whole plot.

I have to admit, I didn’t like the book because simply I don't understand it. The plot revolves around people who blindly believe in anything that is presented as public opinion, with a note of rebellion, moral ambiguity, and an autocratic government that’s experimenting with a new and extreme way of dealing with violence. The question is can they make society better? The answer is obviously no, it’s even the conclusion of the plot - so what’s the point of it all?

This is a book full of abstract motives that make no sense with one-dimensional characters who serve no purpose. Furthermore, the ending of this book feels rushed and lazy. It would’ve made more sense if Alex simply had to work AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT for his redemption. One last note - why would I want to read Russian in every line and every sentence when the book is in English? It made it incredibly harder for me to read it. I hated slang. I hated the way the author invented the colloquial language simply by using words from a foreign language, even though I understood 90% of them. It seemed fake and was completely pointless.

Bloody beatings, murder, robbery, gang-rape - all of these are Alex’s proud achievements and they were described as if it was just a cup of tea. Almost half of the book, he commits despicable violent acts just because he feels like it. The government tried to rectify him using cruel methods, but he soon returns back to his old ways, without any regret. He never once had a thought that he might’ve been doing something wrong. By the end, he just OUTGREW his old behavior, like he was playing with dolls. That ending makes the whole book look even more pointless.

This book is incredible. The themes of the story are still as relevant as they were then. Ethics, morality, choice, are still important topics that are discussed regularly throughout life. I'm aware of the controversial nature of this book due to the violence that takes place but after reading it, I can't help but wonder if part of the reason it was banned was due to the probably (sadly and worryingly) quite accurate depiction of governments. This is a very thought-provoking read.

The character of Alex is an incredibly interesting one. I hated him. I genuinely hated him but I was still intrigued and fascinated by him. The crimes he's committed are horrific and terrible but then he gets put through a torture of his own. Now, at this point, some people would probably be cheering for this and glad that he's suffering but some people (myself included) wouldn't agree with it, even though we'd still hate him for what he did. This is where the ethics and personal beliefs and morals come into it. The whole story makes you question your own thoughts, your own views, but ultimately you end up finding out more about yourself while reading it.

This was very nearly a 5 star read for me. The only thing that let it down was the ending. I actually got angry at the ending because it felt like such a lazy cop out way of trying to end the story. It tries to redeem a character that I believe to be unredeemable. Alex is still a terrible human being. Yes, by the end of it, he has been through a lot of horrible and torturous things himself but he remained a vile person throughout it all anyway so by making the ending that  he just decides he's too old and is now bored of the violence so won't do it anymore and will instead get married and have kids  is, in my opinion, a load of crap. That wouldn't happen. Also, to blame the violence on  youth and being young  is a massive pile of BS. The story had strong, interesting, thought-provoking points throughout the story and then it was ruined with a rushed, lazy ending. Now, if the excuse used, is supposed to be making a satirical point about  how the media, the government, and adults view youth and the young  then fine, it's a clever point to make. However, if that was the point, it still wasn't executed well and therefore I felt that it fell flat.

Nope, sorry, I cannot go on. DNF after the 1st chapter. I read and enjoyed books in Patois and with different accents but I give up trying to understand this book. The invented words were so annoying that I wanted to throw my Kindle out of the window.

Such "masterpieces" are the reason why I sometimes doubt that humanity has a chance to survive another thousand years. Nah, make it hundred. Such books makes me doubt that humanity will survive another hundred years.
This was just. Just. I am speechless.
Such a fucking waste of paper.

Take the propaganda-fed people of the 50's and 60's, now add some anxiety about right-winged radicals, religious lunatics, moral degeneracy and a totalitarian government with extreme way of dealing with violence while not actually making it any better. This is what this book is about. A flawed extremist system set in an alternative universe with a ultra-violent youth through which all of the government's shortcomings are attacked with a bit of negativistic usage of a foreign language.

I tend to agree with the reviews that mention how intellectual questions about good and evil, freedom of choice, morality are raised. However, I think that they were mentioned but very briefly in some short excerpts if not phrases that one can easily overlook while reading and that they drown in the extreme violence and absolutely unacceptable joy that the said violence causes. Was it intended by the author? The questionable morality? The lack of principles? A hint at how callous society is becoming? Or was it a way of coping with something personal? Or maybe it was something else entirely - namely a way to get attention through something scandalous?
Honestly, I neither know nor care.
Beatings, murder, robbery, rapes (including gang-rapes) are told from Alex' POV as if they are something enjoyable, something fun. Detailed and over and over and over again. It was revolting.

If the author pursued the goal of drawing attention towards society's faults - well, he could have done it in some non-fictional essays because I think that fiction sometimes leaves too much room for interpretation and you should say straight-out what you mean. Besides, in the end you get more from non-fiction than fiction that you discuss in your litarature class and that some people don't even read. That is just my own humble opinion.
Also, I feel like I belong to the minority here with my shocked reaction to the violence. Most people don't mind it at all nowadays, funnily enough. Take Game of Thrones as an example. I managed to watch only five episodes from the beginning to the end, the rest was on fast-forward whenever something abhorrent happened (which was often). Because I think that the more violence we see depicted as something normal, natural and to be expected the more callous and insensitive we become.

But it's not only about that. The narrator, Alex got away with everything without a punishment. None, yeah, the system tried to "correct" him in an awful manner, but soon after that he reverted back to his despicable self, not regretting anything, not feeling remorse, not thinking about it as something wrong. By the end he got tired of it, outgrew it so to say, but was anything done? A turning point? Anything?
No. I think his story was poorly executed and whatever the author implied by the end, or rather the second half of the book, got lost. It is absolutely not retraceable.
You get a happy ending if you just adapt, you don't need to work for it, you don't need to try hard and change yourself, just the way you act outwardly. This is how I perceived the ending. As something hopeless and something that honestly bothered me.



This is a book of abstract concepts and symbolical, one-dimensional characters that are nothing but devices, means to achieve a certain goal. But what the said goal is? I do not know. Generally, the purpose, the message of this book? Is there even one?
It was awful. Partially even a waste of time because most of my opinions regarding society, government, morality, etc. have already been formed and I came to my own conclusions. So I didn't need this book to confirm my views regarding certain topics.

Oh, and before I forget: I HATED the slang. I hated the way he "invented" the colloquial language simply by using words from my native language. The slang served no purpose, it was pointless, it was annoying and it felt off, vulgar and stupid. Authenticity? Yeah, not really. None. It seemed kind of offensive to me. Take your own language, dear author, and do with it whatever you want, mulitate it however you please, but leave other languages be...Though I would have probably been as pissed off if he had used any language, even English, for the purpose of creating such garbage. The linguist in me is very protective.



Recommended? Yes. Although I hated it I would still recommend it because I think everyone has to form his/her own opinion about it.

A short rant in my native language:
Какого чёрта опять русский? Почему нужно издеваться всегда именно над русским? Ну за что? Разве нельзя было использовать слэнг из собственного языка. Бери и деградируй свой язык, хотя бы обидно людям не будет. А так - не, чужое нужно взять и поиздеваться над ним. Хотя, честно говоря я бы ему такое чудовищное обращение с английским тоже не простила. Вообще, какого хрена это делать? Это что-то принесло? Нет. Добавило фактор аутентичности? Нет. Просто мешало читать, а то что молодые люди ведут себя как моральные уроды и без пыток над чужим языком понятно.
И потом как пик этого наслаждения - литературный гений нашего времени. ЧТО? ЧТО? Мать моя женщина, да чтож это за напасть такая, а?
Короче обиделась я на автора. Обиделась. Нестоило так с моим родным языком обращаться.
Был бы жив я бы даже не поленилась автору написать, так что ему даже повезло.
Вообще обидно что как злодей - русский. А не русский так азиат, а не азиат так мусульманин. Что ж мы западу не угодили так? Как будто у них своих уродов не хватает. Как меня достала эта система которая берет и деградирует другие народы и культуры только потому что они другие. Неправильно это.
Rant over.

So yeah. Not exactly a book I will come back to. I hated it, but still not as passionately as Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea or Kafka's Metamorphosis.

The Clockwork Wars!

I read this book a long time ago, but I still remember the chaos and horror of the game.

Being able to play the game without a script gets you out of danger of getting squashed like a bug. The problem with the script is that the characters are all very similar in their predilection for violence.

Thanks for reading.

Four stars.

O fratelli e sorelline, è il Vostro Amico e Umile Lettore che vi racconta di tutte le trucche e le sguanate che questo libro cinebrivido ti sbatte sulla biffa e con tutto il truglio tipo salsa rosso rosso rosso, cercherò di ciangottare altisuono, le sue prodezze da farvi rovellare il cardine.
Ero lì che mi glutavo un ottimo cià con tanto mommo e locchiavo la TV e cosa c'era se non quel film cinebrivido di quel martino genio bigio di Stanley Kubrick? Allora che si fa, eh? E che si fa, O fratellini miei, se non riglutarmelo tutto, questo libro cinebrivido.
Non ho mai riletto un libro in vita mia, ma questo sosto cinebrivido, come si fa a non leggerlo e rileggerlo all'infinito?
Il planetario mi gira e rigira tanto, perchè questo libro ha tante di quelle trucche e altre robette che nemmeno ve lo immaginate, O fratelli, perchè ti rende sviccio alla Nostra Amata Ultra-Conoscenza... Benben, è giunta l'ora dell'audizione, venite!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz8Ns...

I understand that this is a revolutionary and deeply influential work.

I hated it anyway.

I'm honestly not certain what theme the author actually intended here. Alex is a reprehensible, completely valueless excuse for a human being. His brainwashing makes him incapable of choosing to continue his crimes. This is declared to be fundamentally wrong, as it leaves him less than human (and incapable of enjoying music, his one higher passion). The brainwashing is undone.

It's clear that Burgess is ridiculing the activist author whose wife died after Alex raped her who nonetheless is against the brainwashing treatment. What I'm not clear on is whether Burgess fundamentally believes that brainwashing is morally abhorrent because it removes choice and thus humanity, or that the people who would make this argument are fools. If he believes the former--well, honestly, I can't agree. Alex is so horrific an excuse for a human being that I think he's voluntarily waived his rights to continue to be human. We're not talking about someone who is led astray by a bad environment and matures in jail to regret his actions and long to be a productive citizen--he stops only because he's forced to.

If it's the latter--well, I can't help but feel that the author failed. The impression I'd gotten before reading this is that the general cultural reception of the book is to consider Alex something of an anti-hero and the brainwashers antagonists. If Burgess was trying to argue in favor of doing what's necessary to end crime (or at least, against those who argue against it), I think he missed his mark. It feels more like a glorification of violence than anything else.

The prose is difficult--it's in a mixed of Cockney and made-up slang. It is rewarding, in a way--Alex's voice is repugnant, but intelligent and surprisingly lyrical, in a brutal way. Some of the passages try very hard to soar. If I wasn't hating Alex the entire time, maybe they would have.

The forward in my edition contains a very public, barely restrained spat between the author and the publisher, in which he claims that the first American edition (which Kubrick based his movie on) was missing the last chapter, as a condition of publication. He's now insisted they put it back. The publisher stiffly replies in his own forward that the omission was merely an artistic suggestion the author accepted at the time. I'll admit that the sheer nastiness of Burgess' tone prejudiced me against him from the very beginning--he comes off as self-righteous, petty, pretentious, and arrogant.

I will go ahead and spoil that last chapter, since Burgess does so in his forward anyway. Burgess claims that Alex grows up and that omitting the chapter removes any shred of hope. I see no such shred. Alex doesn't regret what he's done--he mostly just seems to age out of the need to do it all the time. He realizes that his own son will perpetuate the cycle and he won't be able to do anything about it. He wants people to remember his glory days even though he's now starting to slow down and not have enough energy for beating/robbing/raping/murdering several people a night.

Basically, I hated this book. Not for the difficult-to-parse half-real, half-made-up slang--I thought it was clever, if worn a little thin. Not for the violence--I can handle violence with a point. But for its nihilism and for its incredibly unclear, incredibly important muddle of a message. This is a polemic. The fact I can't tell how tongue-in-cheek it is meant to be feels like a failure. Clearly, others have disagreed. But I don't actually see much point in staring into the void just for the sake of the void staring back.

Hmmm... This is going to be a challenge because I find A Clockwork Orange a tricky book.

I'll start by saying that last week I read Prince of Thorns, a book about a 14 years old boy (Jorg) who kills, rapes and does pretty much everything he wants. This book is about a 15 years old boy (Alex) who rapes, kills and does pretty much everything he wants. And to think people found Jorg disturbing. Jorg has a reason and a goal. Alex is just... heck if I know what he's about. I guess he's just enjoying himself (until he's caught and sent to prison).



In prison, he finds out about the Ludovico technique, an experimental behavior-modification treatment. Alex submits to it in exchange for his sentence being reduced. Problem is, once he's free, the simple thought of violence makes him very ill.



So... I didn't particularly like this one because I don't really understand it. What happened to society that parents became so uninterested in their children's education? I mean a boy doesn't get like Alex if he has loving and caring parents. And from what I got in the book, the youth violence problem was pretty much general. Where were all the adults? Something doesn't add up right. I don't mean that I cannot believe a 15-year-old could be that vicious, I just don't understand why.

Nope. Not my thing.

Pues al final me ha gustado más de de que esperaba. El gran problema que he tenido con este libro (aparte del glosario) es que odio la violencia y más si es gratuita.

n  Freude, schöner Götterfunken,
Tochter aus Elysium,n

A Clockwork Orange. That title has stuck to my mind for a big part of my life, without ever making sense to me. The only image I had in association with these words, not having seen the movie but only some references to it, was a guy forced to keep his eyes open, forced to watch horrible images of extreme violence accompanied with music so loud it made his ears bleed. I could not make sense of that title, oh no. I was afraid of that title and of the question as to what it meant. The image of that guy strapped into a chair seemed too scary, the title too absurd to merit further thought. In my mind, it was probably just some artistic take on absurdity, and the image the result of a quest for art trying to cover up a primitive need for showing and seeing violence, for being shocked. I could understand this being in the height of fashion at some point, but that point was long gone. I didn't need such a thing in my life, not Your Humble Reviewer, oh no. I've tried dismissing its existence from my thoughts, but the orange, tic-tac-tocking in my brain, kept gnawing and nagging and I caved. And so it is that I decided to enter Nightmare Theatre. *

Wir betreten feuertrunken,
Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!

The first thing one notices when reading this book, or even reviews on this book, is the language. Nadsat, slang used by British youth in this hypothetical future, is influenced by English, Russian (this being a dystopian British novel written in the sixties, after all) and teenagers in search of identity through the appropriation of language. Our narrator, Alex, being a molodoy malchick with his em's moloko still dripping from his rot, uses it consistently when addressing the reader, making this language inescapable. The first page may seem utterly daunting because of this, but put your mind at ease. It's not a coincidence that so many reviews chose to assimilate its words. It's very easy to catch on, with a lot of the words being sufficiently repeated (I don't think there's many novels using the word "mouth" as much as this one uses "rot") in a context that makes their meaning clear. And if you like puns, you'll find plenty in this book. My favorite one was a "symphony" being called a "seemfunnah". Well, it seemed funny to me at least.

Most of the nadsat words pertain to the body and verbs of the five senses, making the image of zoobies being pulled out of one's krovvy rot a little easier to digest. This way the subject is very fleshy, violent and bloody up-close and personal, while keeping the tone surprisingly light and distant. Anyone up for a little ultra-violent in-out-in-out?

n  Deine Zauber binden wieder,
Was die Mode streng geteilt;n

The theme of this book is a lot deeper than I had given it credit earlier on, and surprisingly easy to find. First consider the following key passage showing the badness of the narrator, in his own words:

"This biting of their toe-nails over what is the cause of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don't go into the cause of goodness, so why 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. And I was patronizing the other shop. More, badness is of the self, the one, the you or me on our oddy knockies, and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty. But the not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the school cannot allow bad because they cannot allow the self. And is not our modern history, my brothers, the story of brave malenky selves fighting these big machines? I am serious with you, brothers, over this. But what I do I do because I like to do."

So here we have a guy who enjoys being the bad guy, considers it part and parcel of his identity.

On the other hand, as he himself puts it, we have a government who doesn't want all this theft, rape and murder in its streets. Upon seeing that incarceration doesn't work, they figured out a way to brainwash criminals into being good people, or rather, good citizens, stripping them from their identity. Their method consists of some chemical treatment and also the exercise of forcing someone to look at evil without the luxury of turning away. Without the luxury of blinking even. A punishment that even the best among the good could learn from, I would think.

Now consider the following statements and questions raised by the prison chaplain:

"Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man."

"It may not be nice to be good. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"

This discussion was then poured into the metaphor of the "Clockwork Orange", and it's then that all my doubts and wonderings over the title of this book finally clicked into place:

n  "The attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen."n

Begging the question to the reader: where do you stand in all of this?

n  Alle Menschen werden Brüder,
Wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.n

If those questions aren't enough for you, oh my brothers, to sit and think hard on your own value systems, Anthony Burgess uses this amazing protagonist as a mirror for your mind, inescapable and uncomfortable. We're talking about a teenager, shown in his worst possible light. He steals, he rapes, he murders. Mercy and remorse are unknown to him. But he likes you, the Reader. He trusts you with his innermost thoughts and feelings. In the beginning of the book I thoroughly hated the guy and couldn't wait for him to go sit in that chair. But then the questions came. If we decide to kill his mind, why not just decide to kill him whole? And how good does that make us, the good people asking themselves these horrible questions?

I don't know if it is because he went through that brainwashing treatment, meaning I would agree with it in the end, or because of the trusting, innocent tone he uses when telling his tale, but the bastard did grow on me. The raping, murdering rascall won me over and made me shed a tear of sympathy at the close of this book. Watch out, my brothers, for he's good with words. His tongue is sharp but his heart is twisted. Twisted and juicy and beating with life and wih a purity I can't help but admire and love.

I have no answers here. It's all about good and evil and many men before me have pointed to the skies in exasperation, in search for an answer to these things. I'm just another guy, thankful for the questions raised, questions heard by the tic-tac-tocking orange in my chest, tic-tac-tocking without knowing a single thing but tic-tac-tocking none the less and all the more.

________________________

Note by Your Humble Reviewer:

This review was written on the tunes of Beethoven's 9th (on repeat), the anarchist-protagonist's favorite song, an ode to joy and currently the anthem causing some European government bratchies to put their rookers over their chest. Believe me or kiss my sharries, oh my brothers, but that's what truly happened here.
________________________

* Some shameless° self-promotion in spoiler: I'm probably not the first one to notice, but I think I have discovered a direct link between this book and Alfred Bester's book "The Stars My Destination", published a couple of years prior to "A Clockwork Orange". In that book, a Nightmare Theatre is mentioned in which a person is confronted with his worst nightmares without a chance of escape. When Alex is wheeled out of the movie room, one of the nurses tells him: "Come on then, little tiger.", this being a reference to Bester's original title: Tiger! Tiger!, I think. I felt pretty pleased with myself for having found that connection all on my oddy knocky, figment of my imagination or not.

° Well, not really that shameless, I did put it in spoiler-tags.

________________________

And now for that movie! Here I itty to viddy that sinny.