A Clockwork Orange [Paperback]

Anthony Burgess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 17, 1995

The only American edition of the cult classic novel.

A vicious fifteen-year-old "droog" is the central character of this 1963 classic, whose stark terror was captured in Stanley Kubrick's magnificent film of the same title. In Anthony Burgess's nightmare vision of the future, where criminals take over after dark, the story is told by the central character, Alex, who talks in a brutal invented slang that brilliantly renders his and his friends' social pathology. A Clockwork Orange is a frightening fable about good and evil, and the meaning of human freedom. When the state undertakes to reform Alex—to "redeem" him—the novel asks, "At what cost?" This edition includes the controversial last chapter not published in the first edition and Burgess's introduction "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."

Editorial Reviews

Review

I do not know of any other writer who has done as much with language as Mr. Burgess has done here-the fact that this is also a very funny book may pass unnoticed. -- William S. Burroughs

Novel by Anthony Burgess, published in 1962. Set in a dismal dystopia, it is the first-person account of a juvenile delinquent who undergoes state-sponsored psychological rehabilitation for his aberrant behavior. The novel satirizes extreme political systems that are based on opposing models of the perfectibility or incorrigibility of humanity. Written in a futuristic slang vocabulary invented by Burgess, in part by adaptation of Russian words, it was his most original and best-known work. Alex, the protagonist, has a passion for classical music and is a member of a vicious teenage gang that commits random acts of brutality. Captured and imprisoned, he is transformed through behavioral conditioning into a model citizen, but his taming also leaves him defenseless. He ultimately reverts to his former behavior. The final chapter of the original British edition, in which Alex renounces his amoral past, was removed when the novel was first published in the United States. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

About the Author

Anthony Burgess is the author of many works, including The Wanting Seed, Nothing Like the Sun, The Doctor Is Sick, The Long Day Wanes, Honey for the Bears, and ReJoyce. He died in 1993.

Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (April 17, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393312836
• ISBN-13: 978-0393312836
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.6 x 8.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (770 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,418 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #14 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

More About the Author

Anthony Burgess (25th February 1917-22nd November 1993) was one of the UK's leading academics and most respected literary figures. A prolific author, during his writing career Burgess found success as a novelist, critic, composer, playwright, screenwriter, travel writer, essayist, poet and librettist, as well as working as a translator, broadcaster, linguist and educationalist. His fiction also includes NOTHING LIKE THE SUN, a recreation of Shakespeare's love-life, but he is perhaps most famous for the complex and controversial novel A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, exploring the nature of evil. Born in Manchester, he spent time living in Southeast Asia, the USA and Mediterranean Europe as well as in England, until his death in 1993.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

345 of 365 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Clockwork Orange November 27, 2001

By M. Smitherman

Format:Paperback

After reading the many reviews that have been posted here, I'm afraid mine will not be as eloquent, nor will it be a long and detailed description of the book. However, I might be able to express the importance of this book, and perhaps you'll even want to read it when you've finished my review.

I may have started out reading A Clockwork Orange because my friend told me how good it was. And then I continued to read it because it was engaging, disturbing, and thought provoking. Even though the book was written over 30 years ago, I believe it is still as powerful today as it was back then; perhaps even more so. Alex, the protagonist, is almost innocently committing violent crimes with his friends; for he isn't -trying- to be bad, he just is. He likes violence, and that's the way he is.

When Alex's friends gang up on him and leave him to be arrested by the police, Alex is sentenced to 14 years in prison. But then the opportunity to change presents itself to Alex, and he can't help but take the offer. Without ruining the story as so many previous reviewers have already done, I can say that when everything is said and done, important questions arise: is being good truly good if it is not by choice? Is it good to be bad, if that is what one chooses?

The book first came out in the 60s, and the American version lacked the last and 21st chapter from the original story. When it was republished, the book had the 21st chapter. Depending on which copy you read, with the last chapter or without it, the book will have an entirely different feel to it. The old copy represents the horrible realization that bad minds are always bad; the newer version leaves the reader with hope. Hope for Alex, and hope for oneself. Change is possible, the book says, no matter what sort of person you are....

A Clockwork Orange is truly a great work, one that will appeal to people for different reasons; and affect them in completely different ways. But it will affect them. Read more ›

31 of 36 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Darkly funny and satirical masterpiece July 25, 2002

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have tried to write a review of this book at least ten times, but I can never seem to find the right way to describe it. This is mainly because I consider A Clockwork Orange to be one of the most painful, brilliant, and disturbing stories ever to be put down on paper. The invented slang used by Alex and his "droogs" is one of the best parts of the book. You'd think that the slang would make it confusing to read, but it doesn't! In fact, it's strangely catchy. They call it "nadsat" and it's a kind of Russified English. And I don't even speak Russian. (Burgess later invented "caveman speak" in Quest For Fire.)

The basic plot follows Alex and his gang of sadistic young punks as they run amok, beating, raping, and murdering with gleeful abandon in the London of the near-future. They then retire to a bar to drink drug-enhanced milk and plot their next crime. Eventually, Alex gets caught and is subjected to the will of the State. He's forcibly deprogrammed with the "Ludovico Technique" in which he's strapped to a chair, his eyelids held open by metal clamps, and forced to watch a long movie of non-stop murder, rape, torture, and other horrible violence until he gets physically ill at the mere thought of such acts. Then he is thrown back on the streets, a declawed kitten at the mercy of his former victims. The American re-edition is published with the controversial twenty-first chapter not included in Kubrick's film, plus an introduction by the author called "A Clockwork Orange Resucked."

Unfortunately, it's a sad reflection on society in that Alex was shunned because of his violence, and when caught, had violence inflicted on him in order to make him stop. This extremely graphic novel received mixed reactions, either hailed as genius or dismissed as violent pornography.... I would recommend the movie as well; it's visually inventive and a must-see from one of the world's greatest directors. Read more ›

27 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars And all that cal May 27, 2004

By Cameron Ruatta

Format:Paperback

A Clockwork Orange is the story of good and evil and the value of choice. The main character, is a 15 year old lad named Alex whose life consists of crime, cruelty, and recklessness. After being betrayed by an accomplice, he is sentenced to prison where he volunteers for a program that corrects the seemingly uncorrectable. Only then does he being to suffer the consequences of his crash and burn lifestyle.

A Clockwork Orange is what I believe to be a fabulous novel. It may confuse a reader at the start because of the language, but its not that hard to understand the slang dialect if you have a firm grasp on English and are a few pages into the book. Also, one must be patient when reading it because the main ideas aren't revealed until later in the novel. There is a lot of building up the characters before hand, which is valuable information but may bore those who are already have a distaste for the book's violent nature. I also highly recommend that you read the British version because the last or 21st chapter is quite important.

Anyways, the book is more oriented those who can see past the gore and sex and can grasp the main ideas the author is trying to convey through a clockwork orange.

34 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A real tolchock in the yarbles, O my brothers March 30, 2001

By John S. Ryan

Format:Paperback

Fans of Ayn Rand's ATLAS SHRUGGED will no doubt disagree with me here, but _A Clockwork Orange_ may be the most remarkable man-against-the-State story ever published. Anthony Burgess's approach is in one significant sense the opposite of Rand's: where she tried to project a hero (and in my opinion failed; John Galt seems to be little more than a one-dimensional abstraction), Burgess projects a thoroughly depraved teenager and forces us to root for him anyway. It's not every author who can make you watch a bunch of gratuitous sex'n'violence and _then_ conclude that even great moral depravity trumps behavioristic psychology and mechanistic determinism.

What "protagonist" (or Your Humble Narrator, at any rate) Alex does in the first half of the novel will make you ill. But what the State does to him to "cure" him makes his nadsat gang violence seem almost . . . well, "innocent" isn't quite the right word, but the fact that I'm even thinking of that word is an indication of Anthony Burgess's power.

For Burgess, the important thing is moral choice, and the possibility of choice entails the possibility of evil. Once Alex has been "reformed" by the very latest techniques of behavioristic science, it's no longer even _possible_ for him to be moral -- and that's somehow more horrible than any of his own horrible acts.

But Burgess stops short of making volition an object of idolatry. In the first place, he doesn't make any argument that Alex's actions were somehow "good" merely because he had _chosen_ them; quite the contrary. In the second place, even though Alex bears the full blame for all his depraved actions, there are hints scattered throughout the book that if he weren't living in a "socialist paradise," he just wouldn't have been acting this way in the first place.... (For example, both his parents are required by law to work full-time. They also seem curiously unwilling to discipline their son, or even inquire what it is he does when he goes out at night.)

I read this book twenty years ago in an edition that had something this one lacked: a glossary. I thought I was going to miss it, but I didn't; Burgess is a fine writer and anticipates his readers' needs very nicely. If the meaning of one of his Russian-import slang terms isn't obvious from context, he works in a definition. (And there are a few glossaries available online anyway.)

The earlier edition also lacked something this one has: a twenty-first chapter. I hadn't read this before -- it was left out of the American edition of the book and therefore out of Stanley Kubrick's film adaptation as well -- but to my mind it makes a better ending for the book.

Sure, as Burgess himself admits, it's a little crude; we never actually _see_ Alex develop into an adult, we just suddenly learn at the end that he's growing up and becoming ashamed of his past actions. But the novel wouldn't be complete if Burgess hadn't introduced that final bit of irony: after all the State's torturous efforts to "reform" the poor misguided youth, in the end he just sort of, well, gets over it.

Other readers may have different opinions -- and according to Burgess's delightfully snarky introduction of 1986, that's okay with him. And he almost sounds resigned to the fact (for it probably is a fact) that of all his thirty-two novels -- not to mention his nonfiction (including a fine exposition of James Joyce released in the UK as _Here Comes Everybody_ and in the US as _Re Joyce_) and a whole bunch of music -- in the end it's this book for which he will be universally remembered.

He may be right that it isn't his best work, and he's undoubtedly right that it's a bit preachy. But it's undoubtedly the book for which I myself will remember him. And I'll make no appy polly loggies for that, O my brothers, for it's a horrorshow book with the impact of an oozy across the glazzies, and no mistake. This malchick and his droogs deserve a place in literary history. Read more ›