WERMS
28) A Clockwork Orange (Anthony Burgess)
my summary in nadsat: a bezoomy bratchny non-cally piece of literature that will make your rots gape and your litsos contort in krovvy pain and disbelief but you will call Burgess a horrorshow veck and thank Bog for doing that vesch he did best, which is writing a goddamn piece of an opus.
Anthony Burgess was centainly an author in party with the devil here and as much as he wanted to admit it, belonged to the ranks of the menacing by introducing the classic teen anti-hero in all of literatue in the name of Alex, the 15 year old Alex who fancies milk-plus (meaning milk with hallucinnugens and drugs), and frequents the Korova Milkbar with his three droogs to plan out their various exploits of the night there and carry out a plan of ultra-violence around town, which includes but not limited to the following: hitting and beating people till they bleed to death, gang-raping and fucking whoever’s the lucky girl they bump into the night, tresspassing a house and steal properties and kill old woman who owns them, enganging in a cutthroat war with other gangs, and sometimes when Alex is on his own, molesting less than 12 year old girls in his bed whilst Beethoven’s Ninth is on the background and find it pure ecstatic, a different kind of high, alongside Bach’s and Mozart’s too.
unlike other dystopias, this book reaches the height of aggresion and violence. it is very disturbing you will find yourself flinch whilst reading it and sometimes put it down to process the gruesome details. it also perfectly captures a culture, the perfect Youth in Revolt. as i understand it was circa 1962 when this book was published, but the scenes depicted here were as clear as they are happening today. it was deemed prophetic too, like there were punks and skinheads around that period of time.
it’s a challenge reading a book that tries to veil (but failed) its sense of violence and evil through a languange that is not known to many. Alex and his droogs used Nadsat here, which is quite interesting, expressive and rad. that’s why the wiktionary for A Clockwork Orange will come in handy esp. if you have the Penguin Edition which doesn’t have the glossary in it. more than anything, this novel explores the morality of free will. at first it’s hard to find the point amidst the scenes citing towards violence, but entered the opposition authorities Dr. Brodsky et. al. and boila!, an allegory of Christian free will is adressed, made obvious, and debated.
i felt hardly symphatetuc with Alex for he was real mad and strong a character. even J.D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield will fail in comparison because Alex despised the phoniness of his world in a hundrethfolds more than Holden did. a novel prolly made to create shock and outrage, this is not for the faint of heart. and despite its being controversial, there lies the moral growth and ethics of the book.
i enjoyed it. and as was said in the passages, this is ‘gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.’
