Review: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Horrorshow raskazz with lashings of ultraviolence! 

A Clockwork Orange is a modern classic. Published in 1962, it depicts a frightening dystopian future where youths hopped up on drugs run riot in the streets and terrorise people in their own homes. Alex, our humble narrator, is one of those youths.  Even though it is obvious he knows better, he is determined to continue on his merry way wreaking havoc with his droogs (friends), until they set him up and he is sent to prison. Alex undertakes an unusual and horrifying form of ‘therapy’ which makes him physically unable to perform or even think about acts of violence and is unceremoniously discharged from prison and left to fend for himself.

This novel raises some important questions about the matters of free will and choice. Is it morally ethical to remove a person’s ability to choose their own behaviour? How about when it means they will cease to commit acts of violence against others? Clearly the message this novel conveys is that is unethical to remove a person’s free will. I almost began to feel sorry for Alex when he was first released from prison and was unable to defend himself, but I soon got over that when he went straight back to his old ways as soon as he was able to.

The Final Chapter

My edition does contain the final chapter which is missing from many versions, as well as Stanley Kubrick’s film. I found it to be a bit of let down. I liked the idea of Alex deciding to change his ways, but thought the way he reached his decision was a bit unbelievable. It didn’t gel with anything we’d heard from him previously to just up and decide to be good for no other reason besides he wants a wife and child one day. Of course, I believe anyone can change, but there usually needs to be some kind of motivating event. Like maybe an actual wife and child.

Besides from that, it’s a must read. The made up language, nadsat, can be difficult to get into. I found this nadsat dictionary very useful for the first few chapters, but it is quite easy to get into the hang of it.

EDIT 24/02/16

I forgot to include my David Bowie song to match A Clockwork Orange. Obviously it’s Girl Loves me!

 

Description

“What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence.”

In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him – but at what cost?

Social prophecy? Black comedy? A study of free will? A Clockwork Orange is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates “nadsat”, the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future.

Details

Title: A Clockwork Orange

Author: Anthony Burgess

Published: 1962

ISBN: 0241951445 (ISBN13: 9780241951446)

Genre: Classics, Sci Fi, Dystopia, Literature

Pages: 141

Source: Own Copy

My Rating: 4/5 stars

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This book is part of the David Bowie Reading Challenge #DBowieBooks

Books Read: 4/100

1984

The Great Gatsby

The Gnostic Gospels

A Clockwork Orange

David Bowie Reading Challenge #DBowieBooks

Ok, so I’ve officially decided to take on David Bowie’s top 100 books as a reading challenge and I thought it would be awesome if some people wanted to join me.

This is a very casual reading challenge. I expect it will take me a couple of years to get through myself, so there is no particular order or time limit. Some of these books will need some time to take in, so you will need to take your time!

You can read in any order you like.

You can read as many books from this list as you want, or just choose one or two.

There is no set time limit.

All you need to do to take part is use the hashtag #DBowieBooks when posting about any of the books on this list.

Feel free to tag me! My links are below.

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The Full List

I discovered this list on the New York Public Library website so the links will take you to view the book information there

1. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
3. Room At The Top by John Braine
4. On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
5. Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
7. City Of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10. Iliad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
16. Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyndham Lewis
19. Passing by Nella Larson
20. Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
21. The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
24. The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
30. The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Herzog by Saul Bellow
34. Puckoon by Spike Milligan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
38. Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Norris
41. Money by Martin Amis
42. The Outsider by Colin Wilson
43. Strange People by Frank Edwards
44. English Journey by J.B. Priestley
45. A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
49. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
51. Beano (comic, ’50s)
52. Raw (comic, ’80s)
53. White Noise by Don DeLillo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
55. Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
56. Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
58. Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
62. A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
64. Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
68. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
69. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
70. The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
71. Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
73. Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
74. Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
76. The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
77. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage by Jon Savage
80. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
81. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
83. Viz (comic, early ’80s)
84. Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
85. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
88. Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
89. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
92. Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
95. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thomson
98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
100. Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

 

1984 by George Orwell

I’ve decided to post a review of 1984 by George Orwell to kick off my David Bowie top 100 books reading challenge because it also happen to be one of my own favourites. I have read this novel many times, most recently in November. I wrote an essay about George Orwell’s Why I Write, blogging, and the collapse of the private and public spheres. It was just as heavy as it sounds, but do have a read of Why a Write if you haven’t already!

I have no idea how to write this review without including SPOILERS, so please stop reading immediately if you haven’t read 1984 yet.

1984 was the very distant future at the time it was written in 1948…see what he did there? Obviously the world hasn’t turned out exactly the way Orwell imagined, but I often suspect that he wasn’t too far off the mark either.

Point 1: Orwell claimed that technologies such as TV and radio would be used to spy on and control citizens:

Not TV and radio so much, but the Internet obviously has an enormous amount of privacy concerns. Privacy is certainly a different concept now than it was in 1948.

Point 2: The media will be increasingly used to influence public opinion:

I think that’s obviously pretty accurate these days.

Point 3: The world will constantly be at war, but there will be no world wars or use of atomic bombs:

Spot on.

Point 4: Countries will become allies with former enemies and vice versa.

True again

I’ve heard a lot of people complain that 1984 is too slow paced, but I think this was intentional. Living in a dystopian world such as Winston’s would be a grim and dull existence. I know we’re used to a bit more excitement and action these days, but Orwell wrote this novel with one purpose in mind. To deliver a strong political message and voice his concerns about the way he saw the world heading.

Believe it or not, I can see similarities between Orwell and David Bowie. They both wanted to make the world a better place and used art to deliver their messages. Orwell was obviously much more abrasive and in your face than Bowie though!

As the line in Space Oddity goes:

Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do.

I see this to mean there are some truly awful and horrific things in this world. Make yourself aware of what’s going on around you, but that is often all we can do. Look for the good and the beautiful anyway.

I consider 1984 to be a must read. I have too many favourite books to have one book I would call my favourite, but 1984 is definitely a contender if I had to choose just one. Please don’t ask me to choose though!

Description

The year 1984 has come and gone, but George Orwell’s prophetic, nightmarish vision in 1949 of the world we were becoming is timelier than ever. 1984 is still the great modern classic of “negative utopia” -a startlingly original and haunting novel that creates an imaginary world that is completely convincing, from the first sentence to the last four words. No one can deny the novel’s hold on the imaginations of whole generations, or the power of its admonitions -a power that seems to grow, not lessen, with the passage of time.

Details

Title: 1984

Author: George Orwell

ISBN: 0451524934

Published: 1949

Pages: 268

Genre: Science Fiction, Dystopia, Fantasy

Source: I own my copy

Rating: 5/5 stars

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David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

David Bowie has been an enormous influence in my life. I’m certain I’ve been listening to

Source: Book Riot

his music since before I was even born, thanks to my Mum.

 

I was born in 1983 so Let’s Dance was probably the first Bowie song I ever heard, and it’s always been a favourite of mine. Stan Grant’s article in The Guardian is well worth a read if you would like to find out more about why it was such a big deal that two Indigenous Australian’s starred in its film clip. As Bowie said at the time,

“As much as I love this country, it is probably one of the most racially intolerant in the world, well in line with South Africa.”

Yep, that’s right. Australia’s White Australia Policy was just as horrific and embarrassing as Apartheid. Perhaps Bowie is the reason why I’m so outspoken about Indigenous rights now?

 

And then he became my Goblin King and possibly first crush as Jareth in Labyrinth. I think I must have watched that movie about a million times!

Source: Labyrinth Film

David Bowie was so many things I wish I was. He was confident, creative, self-assured, brave, and kind. I’m going to ask myself ‘What would Bowie do?’ next time I’m in the throes of a creative dilemma!

To celebrate the life of David Bowie, I’d like to share with you all his top 100 books taken from New York Public Library. I’ve only read a few of these, so I’m going to try and get through as many as I can over the next few years.

1. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
3. Room At The Top by John Braine
4. On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
5. Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
7. City Of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10. Iliad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
16. Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyndham Lewis
19. Passing by Nella Larson
20. Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
21. The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
24. The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
30. The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Herzog by Saul Bellow
34. Puckoon by Spike Milligan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
38. Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Norris
41. Money by Martin Amis
42. The Outsider by Colin Wilson
43. Strange People by Frank Edwards
44. English Journey by J.B. Priestley
45. A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
49. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
51. Beano (comic, ’50s)
52. Raw (comic, ’80s)
53. White Noise by Don DeLillo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
55. Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
56. Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
58. Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
62. A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
64. Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
68. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
69. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
70. The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
71. Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
73. Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
74. Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
76. The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
77. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage by Jon Savage
80. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
81. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
83. Viz (comic, early ’80s)
84. Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
85. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
88. Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
89. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
92. Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
95. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thomson
98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
100. Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg