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Happy New Year 1999
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You guys kept voting for books you will never read so no more nice things. We are reading something under 200 pages now.
Set in the near future of a dystopian society, Alex and his band of rascal teenagers tell us about their misadventures in a subculture of extreme violence.
About Anthony Burgess.
Born in 1917, Burgess had a rough childhood. His mother and sister died in 1918 of Spanish Flu and the young boy spent his childhood years during the Great Depression. Burgess believed he was resented by his father for having survived, when his mother and sister did not. Burgess's father died in 1938 from cardiac failure.
Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood "I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored. I was one despised. ... Ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well-dressed like myself." Burgess attended St. Edmund's Elementary School before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, both Catholic schools, in Moss Side. He later reflected "When I went to school I was able to read. At the Manchester elementary school I attended, most of the children could not read, so I was ... a little apart, rather different from the rest."
Burgess originally hoped to study music for university, but because of his poor grades he was rejected and opted for literature.
With his training in English literature, Burgess teached in the the extramural department of Birmingham University (1946–50), worked for the Ministry of Education (1948–50), and was English master at Banbury Grammar School (1950–54). He then served as education officer in Malaya and Borneo (1954–59), where he wrote three novels with a Malayan setting.
Back in England he became a full-time and prolific professional writer. Under the pseudonym Anthony Burgess he wrote the novels The Wanting Seed (1962), an antiutopian view of an overpopulated world, and Honey for the Bears (1963). As Joseph Kell he wrote One Hand Clapping (1961) and Inside Mr. Enderby (1963).
The Stanley Kubrick 1971 adaptation of his novel 1962, A ClockWork Orange, made Burgess's reputation as a novelist of comic and mordant power. Despite this, Burgess considered Kubrick's adaptation to be badly flawed.
Burgess considered himself a staunch Conservative. To avoid 90% of the tax his family would've had to pay because of his high income, he left England and toured Europe on a mobile home, eventually settling down in Rome.
In 1993, with a diagnosis of lung cancer, he returned to England to await death. He died the 22 of November of 1993.
Context for the novel.
When he wrote Clockwork Orange, Burgess had just arrived back in Britain after his stint abroad to see that much had changed. A youth culture had developed, based around coffee bars, pop music and teenage gangs. England was gripped by fears over juvenile delinquency. Burgess stated that the novel's inspiration was his first wife Lynne's beating by a gang of drunk American servicemen stationed in England during World War II. She subsequently miscarried
Controversies about the book. (From wikipedia.)
The first major incident of censorship of A Clockwork Orange took place in 1973, when a bookseller was arrested for selling the novel (although the charges were later dropped). In 1976, A Clockwork Orange was removed from an Aurora, Colorado high school because of "objectionable language". A year later in 1977 it was removed from high school classrooms in Westport, Massachusetts over similar concerns with "objectionable" language. In 1982, it was removed from two Anniston, Alabama libraries, later to be reinstated on a restricted basis. However, each of these instances came after the release of Stanley Kubrick's popular 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, itself the subject of much controversy after exposing a much larger part of the populace to the themes of the novel.
Ironically, the American version of the novel had omitted its final chapter, which fundamentally changed the meaning of the novel.
SPOILERS
In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that US audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost his taste for violence and resolves to turn his life around.
At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed its editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the US version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex becoming his old, ultraviolent self again – an ending which the publisher insisted would be "more realistic" and appealing to a US audience.
END OF SPOILERS.
About Nadsat. (From Wikipedia.)
The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang argot which Burgess invented for the book, called Nadsat. It is a mix of modified Slavic words, Cockney rhyming slang and derived Russian (like baboochka).
One of Alex's doctors explains the language to a colleague as "odd bits of old rhyming slang; a bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav propaganda. Subliminal penetration." Some words are not derived from anything, but merely easy to guess, e.g. "in-out, in-out" or "the old in-out" means sexual intercourse. Cutter, however, means "money", because "cutter" rhymes with "bread-and-butter"; this is rhyming slang, which is intended to be impenetrable to outsiders (especially eavesdropping policemen).
In the first edition of the book, no key was provided, and the reader was left to interpret the meaning from the context. In his appendix to the restored edition, Burgess explained that the slang would keep the book from seeming dated, and served to muffle "the raw response of pornography" from the acts of violence.
Vote for your favorite Book Cover!
Og Edition.
1972 Edition.
Penguin Edition.
Corpo Minimalist Edition.
Czech Edition.
Spanish Edition.
Skull Edition.
Polish Edition.
Romanian Edition.
Norton Edition.
Enjoy!
Set in the near future of a dystopian society, Alex and his band of rascal teenagers tell us about their misadventures in a subculture of extreme violence.
About Anthony Burgess.
Born in 1917, Burgess had a rough childhood. His mother and sister died in 1918 of Spanish Flu and the young boy spent his childhood years during the Great Depression. Burgess believed he was resented by his father for having survived, when his mother and sister did not. Burgess's father died in 1938 from cardiac failure.
Burgess has said of his largely solitary childhood "I was either distractedly persecuted or ignored. I was one despised. ... Ragged boys in gangs would pounce on the well-dressed like myself." Burgess attended St. Edmund's Elementary School before moving on to Bishop Bilsborrow Memorial Elementary School, both Catholic schools, in Moss Side. He later reflected "When I went to school I was able to read. At the Manchester elementary school I attended, most of the children could not read, so I was ... a little apart, rather different from the rest."
Burgess originally hoped to study music for university, but because of his poor grades he was rejected and opted for literature.
With his training in English literature, Burgess teached in the the extramural department of Birmingham University (1946–50), worked for the Ministry of Education (1948–50), and was English master at Banbury Grammar School (1950–54). He then served as education officer in Malaya and Borneo (1954–59), where he wrote three novels with a Malayan setting.
Back in England he became a full-time and prolific professional writer. Under the pseudonym Anthony Burgess he wrote the novels The Wanting Seed (1962), an antiutopian view of an overpopulated world, and Honey for the Bears (1963). As Joseph Kell he wrote One Hand Clapping (1961) and Inside Mr. Enderby (1963).
The Stanley Kubrick 1971 adaptation of his novel 1962, A ClockWork Orange, made Burgess's reputation as a novelist of comic and mordant power. Despite this, Burgess considered Kubrick's adaptation to be badly flawed.
Burgess considered himself a staunch Conservative. To avoid 90% of the tax his family would've had to pay because of his high income, he left England and toured Europe on a mobile home, eventually settling down in Rome.
In 1993, with a diagnosis of lung cancer, he returned to England to await death. He died the 22 of November of 1993.
Context for the novel.
When he wrote Clockwork Orange, Burgess had just arrived back in Britain after his stint abroad to see that much had changed. A youth culture had developed, based around coffee bars, pop music and teenage gangs. England was gripped by fears over juvenile delinquency. Burgess stated that the novel's inspiration was his first wife Lynne's beating by a gang of drunk American servicemen stationed in England during World War II. She subsequently miscarried
Controversies about the book. (From wikipedia.)
The first major incident of censorship of A Clockwork Orange took place in 1973, when a bookseller was arrested for selling the novel (although the charges were later dropped). In 1976, A Clockwork Orange was removed from an Aurora, Colorado high school because of "objectionable language". A year later in 1977 it was removed from high school classrooms in Westport, Massachusetts over similar concerns with "objectionable" language. In 1982, it was removed from two Anniston, Alabama libraries, later to be reinstated on a restricted basis. However, each of these instances came after the release of Stanley Kubrick's popular 1971 film adaptation of A Clockwork Orange, itself the subject of much controversy after exposing a much larger part of the populace to the themes of the novel.
Ironically, the American version of the novel had omitted its final chapter, which fundamentally changed the meaning of the novel.
SPOILERS
In the introduction to the updated American text (these newer editions include the missing 21st chapter), Burgess explains that when he first brought the book to an American publisher, he was told that US audiences would never go for the final chapter, in which Alex sees the error of his ways, decides he has lost his taste for violence and resolves to turn his life around.
At the American publisher's insistence, Burgess allowed its editors to cut the redeeming final chapter from the US version, so that the tale would end on a darker note, with Alex becoming his old, ultraviolent self again – an ending which the publisher insisted would be "more realistic" and appealing to a US audience.
END OF SPOILERS.
About Nadsat. (From Wikipedia.)
The book, narrated by Alex, contains many words in a slang argot which Burgess invented for the book, called Nadsat. It is a mix of modified Slavic words, Cockney rhyming slang and derived Russian (like baboochka).
One of Alex's doctors explains the language to a colleague as "odd bits of old rhyming slang; a bit of gypsy talk, too. But most of the roots are Slav propaganda. Subliminal penetration." Some words are not derived from anything, but merely easy to guess, e.g. "in-out, in-out" or "the old in-out" means sexual intercourse. Cutter, however, means "money", because "cutter" rhymes with "bread-and-butter"; this is rhyming slang, which is intended to be impenetrable to outsiders (especially eavesdropping policemen).
In the first edition of the book, no key was provided, and the reader was left to interpret the meaning from the context. In his appendix to the restored edition, Burgess explained that the slang would keep the book from seeming dated, and served to muffle "the raw response of pornography" from the acts of violence.
Vote for your favorite Book Cover!
Og Edition.
1972 Edition.
Penguin Edition.
Corpo Minimalist Edition.
Czech Edition.
Spanish Edition.
Skull Edition.
Polish Edition.
Romanian Edition.
Norton Edition.
Enjoy!
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