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becksephone's review against another edition
3.0
It was... Good, but so difficult. I am so glad that I won't ever have to read anything in Nadsat EVER AGAIN.
I might re-read this in normal English.
I might re-read this in normal English.
joreadsbooks's review against another edition
2.0
This book was recommended to me by several friends. While the story itself was dark and twisted and keeps you on your toes, the narration itself is very tedious and hard. Some of the slang I only understood because Polish is my first language. I still have not seen the movie, but I am open to it.
samisokay's review against another edition
4.0
This was pretty good. The first few pages took some concentration to actually catch the slang, but once you start understanding it the book fits together perfectly. I felt it was a very interesting social commentary on violence and it's treatment in society, as well as social class and the governmental influence/agenda.
bboomerangs's review against another edition
4.0
Picked this up to read it from a linguistic perspective (Burgess writes from his protagonist's POV in a Russian-based dialect called nadsat) but ended up enthralled by the thematic/symbolic and moral parts of the story. My only complaint would be that I would have preferred a more ambiguous ending to allow more of the reader's own interpretation.
retnolaras's review against another edition
2.0
this is the first time i read this book, and it's really tiresome to keep checking the nasdat glossary back and forth but it's too fuzzy to interpret the word by my own.
maybe i'll enjoy it more in the third or forth read
maybe i'll enjoy it more in the third or forth read
ellabf717's review against another edition
3.0
I loved the language and some of the ideas behind the novel, but there are too many loose ends it fails to tie up.
cosmiclattesandbooks's review against another edition
3.0
It took me a while to get the hang of the words used.
bookwyrmknits's review against another edition
2.0
I finished this book, but it felt like an obligation to do so. I did not enjoy it. It feels like the kind of book you're not supposed to enjoy, though. It felt like a morality tale. Yes, I suppose at this point it is a classic. And yes, there is enough action in the book that it's readable for the modern reader, unlike some very slow paced older classics. However, the slang-talk which the narrator uses just grated on my nerves. (Yes, it's more-or-less understandable and very consistent, once you get used to it. I just didn't like it.) I also didn't sympathize with the main character at all, and for me that's a deal breaker when it comes to enjoying a book. If this one had been a longer book, or had taken me longer to finish, I probably would have returned it to the library unfinished.
punkrocknreticence's review against another edition
3.0
Despite having over fifty odd books to his name, Anthony Burgess is still best known for this early novella from 1962, which was pushed into cult territory in 1971 with Stanley Kubrick's big screen adaptation. Burgess hated Kubrick's film for how it truncated his own book and authorial vision, and eventually began to hate the book, too. There's reason enough to justify that — some people may say he simply grew up. However, despite all that and my somewhat 'low' rating, I see reason enough to celebrate it, too.
The Clockwork Orange certainly has enough literary merit to its name. Following the crimes and misdemeanours of 15-year-old delinquent Alex, this book adheres with an ultra-violent alacrity to the "show, don't tell" commandment all writers are judged by, its narrative pouring out from a mind that ticks only to blood and violence. Yet, Burgess accomplishes something in his writing that is verily (and to its own effect) untranslatable on screen: the full effect of all the violence that ensues in this book is tempered by the superb linguistic innovation that has gone into it. For his teenaged narrator writing in a dystopian future decade, Burgess invents the 'Nasdat' (or 'teen') dialect that captures the angst and anger of its users and is also distinct from the adults' way of speaking. The marked Russian influence of the register, when seen in tandem with the violence of those who speak it, may also leave room for certain political association of value being drawn between the Russians and the destructive teens, but it could very well also be me overanalysing Burgess' fun linguistic experiment — either way, it is no longer the violence that makes this book hard to read, explicitness here replaced by guesswork and linguistic association twice removed from action.
A Clockwork Orange really is a bildungsroman, relaying Alex's transformation from a destructive teen to someone who yearns to be a constructive member of society (the latter being a most crucial detail which Kubrick's adaptation omits). While the State tries to condition the criminality out of him through what it calls the "Ludovico Technique," Burgess shows how Alex can only truly transcend his delinquent urges by outgrowing them. This is reinforced through the very structure of the book: As Blake Morrison mentions in his introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics Edition (2000), the book is divided into 21 chapters, 21 being the age associated with classical maturity and the chapter where Alex, albeit still eighteen, shows a weariness of violence and a want for peace and family. These chapters are further divided into three parts of 7 chapters each (perhaps to do with the Shakespearean Seven Ages of Man?), each beginning with the same question: "What's it going to be then, eh?"
A Clockwork Orange also asks, and attempts to address, several other questions. Most prominently, it tries to champion the cause of individual choice, wondering through an association between youth and freedom whether choice — even if it is the choice to be bad — better than being forced to be good. Burgess' answer is an anarchic yes, but by implying that the choice of the adult becomes bourgeoisie ethics and civilisation, he seems to be making an ambiguous point at best, especially concerning that he contextualises the issue within the Christian idea of Free Will. By making explicit Alex's affinity to classical music; prominently as Beethoven's Ninth; as well as to rape, violence and plunder, the author also takes a position vis-a-vis the political debate in the 60s, about using High Art as a civilisational tool. He also attacks authoritarianism and control-measures masked as 'reform', and tries to expose the convoluted politics of dissidents, but his position is somewhat compromised with regards to his ultimate assertion of free will — what with will not being free, after all.
Even in course of its idea of order-through-anarchy, A Clockwork Orange looks at a sexed world, with its vision of male actors and female bodies. Why is that? Burgess even makes a metafictional appearance in the book as F. Alexander, who is also the author of a book named A Clockwork Orange, and whose wife Alex and his 'droogs' gangrape — which is apparently Burgess' way of cathartically purging an incident where his wife was gang-raped by four GIs in his absence. However, while the nameless wife dies from the incident, Burgess' own wife ended up cheating on him — and while I do not attempt to justify her cheating, Burgess seems to prefer it to her having rather curled up and died, even though her cheating would, in his own terms, be an act of individual choice.
All of that being said, I do understand Kubrick's ending more than I get Burgess' (ofcourse, Kubrick did not make the change consciously — he was only following the truncated American Edition), because the latter seems lazy and predictable. While the last chapter does make the structural unity of A Clockwork Orange possible, it is but hasty, almost as if the author, like Alex, simply got bored with the violence and decided to end it (perhaps that is what growing up is about, but I'm very uncertain here) Plus, despite all that talk of Beethoven and Mozart in this book, all I could think of was the song "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance. That's got to mean something.
The Clockwork Orange certainly has enough literary merit to its name. Following the crimes and misdemeanours of 15-year-old delinquent Alex, this book adheres with an ultra-violent alacrity to the "show, don't tell" commandment all writers are judged by, its narrative pouring out from a mind that ticks only to blood and violence. Yet, Burgess accomplishes something in his writing that is verily (and to its own effect) untranslatable on screen: the full effect of all the violence that ensues in this book is tempered by the superb linguistic innovation that has gone into it. For his teenaged narrator writing in a dystopian future decade, Burgess invents the 'Nasdat' (or 'teen') dialect that captures the angst and anger of its users and is also distinct from the adults' way of speaking. The marked Russian influence of the register, when seen in tandem with the violence of those who speak it, may also leave room for certain political association of value being drawn between the Russians and the destructive teens, but it could very well also be me overanalysing Burgess' fun linguistic experiment — either way, it is no longer the violence that makes this book hard to read, explicitness here replaced by guesswork and linguistic association twice removed from action.
A Clockwork Orange really is a bildungsroman, relaying Alex's transformation from a destructive teen to someone who yearns to be a constructive member of society (the latter being a most crucial detail which Kubrick's adaptation omits). While the State tries to condition the criminality out of him through what it calls the "Ludovico Technique," Burgess shows how Alex can only truly transcend his delinquent urges by outgrowing them. This is reinforced through the very structure of the book: As Blake Morrison mentions in his introduction to the Penguin Modern Classics Edition (2000), the book is divided into 21 chapters, 21 being the age associated with classical maturity and the chapter where Alex, albeit still eighteen, shows a weariness of violence and a want for peace and family. These chapters are further divided into three parts of 7 chapters each (perhaps to do with the Shakespearean Seven Ages of Man?), each beginning with the same question: "What's it going to be then, eh?"
A Clockwork Orange also asks, and attempts to address, several other questions. Most prominently, it tries to champion the cause of individual choice, wondering through an association between youth and freedom whether choice — even if it is the choice to be bad — better than being forced to be good. Burgess' answer is an anarchic yes, but by implying that the choice of the adult becomes bourgeoisie ethics and civilisation, he seems to be making an ambiguous point at best, especially concerning that he contextualises the issue within the Christian idea of Free Will. By making explicit Alex's affinity to classical music; prominently as Beethoven's Ninth; as well as to rape, violence and plunder, the author also takes a position vis-a-vis the political debate in the 60s, about using High Art as a civilisational tool. He also attacks authoritarianism and control-measures masked as 'reform', and tries to expose the convoluted politics of dissidents, but his position is somewhat compromised with regards to his ultimate assertion of free will — what with will not being free, after all.
Even in course of its idea of order-through-anarchy, A Clockwork Orange looks at a sexed world, with its vision of male actors and female bodies. Why is that? Burgess even makes a metafictional appearance in the book as F. Alexander, who is also the author of a book named A Clockwork Orange, and whose wife Alex and his 'droogs' gangrape — which is apparently Burgess' way of cathartically purging an incident where his wife was gang-raped by four GIs in his absence. However, while the nameless wife dies from the incident, Burgess' own wife ended up cheating on him — and while I do not attempt to justify her cheating, Burgess seems to prefer it to her having rather curled up and died, even though her cheating would, in his own terms, be an act of individual choice.
All of that being said, I do understand Kubrick's ending more than I get Burgess' (ofcourse, Kubrick did not make the change consciously — he was only following the truncated American Edition), because the latter seems lazy and predictable. While the last chapter does make the structural unity of A Clockwork Orange possible, it is but hasty, almost as if the author, like Alex, simply got bored with the violence and decided to end it (perhaps that is what growing up is about, but I'm very uncertain here) Plus, despite all that talk of Beethoven and Mozart in this book, all I could think of was the song "Teenagers" by My Chemical Romance. That's got to mean something.