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A Clockwork Orange
June 2016 - A Clockwork Orange
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Reading discussion - Part I
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The Reading Bibliophile
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May 31, 2016 12:48AM
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Hi everyone.....I hope you've all managed to find a copy of A Clockwork Orange. I'm reading The Penguin Modern Classics version on Kindle. I've also downloaded a copy of the Nadsat Dictionary from the link below.....without it Chapter One would have been a hard slog. I hope you enjoy the book and if nothing else you will have more of an insight into the lyrics of Girl Loves Me from David's Blackstar album. http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/do...
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So, I am already done with Part I, and I have to say... Whatta struggle!
Again, A Clockwork Orange is a reread for me. I first read it when I was 15 years old, and I think that being a teenager and reading such a complicated and violent book made me feel a bit as a transgressor, which is incredibly amusing during our teens, right?
So, now that I am reading it without the blinding euphoria of a person 15 years younger, I feel intensely disturbed and overwhelmed with all that happens in the story.
I don't know if I am too sensitive right now with some of the current events that have happened in my country (many horrific rape cases have been reported by the media since last week when someone leaked a video online of a 16 year old girl being raped by 30 guys), I just know that this reading has affected me in more ways than I expected.
I read somewhere that Burgess created Nadsat as a way of smoothing the violent atmosphere of the plot, setting it in a dystopic environment and allowing the reader to distance reality from fiction... It hasn't worked for me. In fact, the specificity of the language and the way it is constructed seems to increase the tension, especially in the first part.
Despite all my complains, I am really looking forward to discussing this masterpiece with all of you! :)
And sorry for the long comment, but since I couldn't read Billy Liar, I had a jumped straight into ACO!
Cynthia wrote: "Thank you, Jenny! I was quite desperate at finding a good glossary."So glad you've found it useful Cynthia.....I would have had great difficulty without it too.
Lidiana wrote: "Thank you so much, Jenny... The dictionary is useful indeed...So, I am already done with Part I, and I have to say... Whatta struggle!
Again, A Clockwork Orange is a reread for me. I first read ..."
Lidiana wrote: "Thank you so much, Jenny... The dictionary is useful indeed...
So, I am already done with Part I, and I have to say... Whatta struggle!
Again, A Clockwork Orange is a reread for me. I first read ..."
Hi Lidiana.....I'm glad you're finding the dictionary/glossary useful.....I would have had a hard time without it.
Well ACO is still a struggle for me too.....the overall atmosphere in Chapter One (and I've only read ten pages so far) is so darn sinister.....no redeeming characters so far to lighten the blow. As a veteran of many gruesome detective novels and murder mysteries I thought this would be something of a pushover.....how wrong could I have been. Oh well onwards and upwards.....page 11 here we go. Looking forward to hearing how everyone else feels about this book.....love it or hate it it would be hard to dismiss it as anything but groundbreaking at the time of its publication I imagine.
I also read this book the first time at a relatively young age - I was 13 or 14, younger then Alex and his droogs. It became my absolute favourite book for many years. I was desperate to see the Kubrick movie - which was banned in Eastern Europe at the time, so I bought a copy in Paris at a school trip for half a year's worth of pocket money. And it was a great influence on me for turning to movies as a life's obsession. I even had a huge Clockwork Orange poster on my wall in my teenage years. So you can imagine that I dreaded this reread. It doesn't affect me the way it does some of you, somehow, despite the decades gone I still can't feel it real, neither its world nor its violence. But for the life of me I cannot recall why it made such a huge impression on my life. So I hope the rest of the book and some deep thinking will give me some answers about that. It might prove therapeutic, who knows. Maybe it's not a bad idea after all to reread the great books of one's childhood to recapture who we were and who we became:)
Peter wrote: "I also read this book the first time at a relatively young age - I was 13 or 14, younger then Alex and his droogs. It became my absolute favourite book for many years. I was desperate to see the Ku..."Thank you so much for sharing your experience Peter. It's a first time read for me and I have the DVD on the shelf for when I turn the last page. I can imagine how this book would become an obsession especially to a young teenager.....the Nadsat language is both brutish and elegant and the environment otherworldly. If I'd read the novel as a teenager I believe the violence would have pretty much gone over my head and I would have seen it as a pretty cool dystopian essay. However the world I knew as a teenager is turned upside down and violence and terrorism are the stuff of every news report and the world portrayed in ACO no longer feels otherworldly to me. Not a comfortable book to read by any stretch but a powerful piece of writing I'm so glad I've got round to reading at last. Thanks again for your insight.....fascinating.
Also doing a reread here, and one of my favourite books. As an avid film lover, I unfortunatelly saw the movie before I read the book, however, that didn't bothered me much, with the slight differences, both of the versions are really good! I think, as Peter, that the violence doesn't shock me much.. the way I see it, it is burgess criticizing society and human violence towards each other. Even though we (in some spaces) don't see that much physical violence, the pscicological one remains really strong.
I think, that as 1984, the clockwork orange still gotten a day old and can also be a good critic until present days
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Well, now he is preparing himself for his PhD and one of the topics he plans on researching is the reception that stories such as ACO and others that have a great amount of violence are interpreted by different publics. He was telling me this in order to calm me down hehehehe. According to his theory, and that is what I want your opinion about, a story of this sort tends to have more impact on a negative way in women because the violence is practiced by a male group and the victims in a vast extent tend to be women.
I thought his theory was very interesting. Do you think that gender has anything to do with the way we interpret a plot like the one of A Clockwork?
Oh, I definitely think gender has a lot to do with it; female readers are going to be predisposed to project themselves into the narrative as being the targets of the violence being depicted, in a way that I think most male readers simply will not, because it parallels the heightened risk of violence (particularly sexual violence) that women face in real life. This is absolutely the way I reacted to A Clockwork Orange the first time I saw it (I saw the movie before I read the book) at about the age of 17. I seriously freaked out so badly as a result of the rape scene that my boyfriend and I had to leave the theater where it was showing as a midnight movie. He "got" that the violence was upsetting, but he wasn't viscerally traumatized the way I was.
Sara wrote: "I seriously freaked out so badly as a result of the rape scene..."I saw the movie at a sleepover at a friend's house when I was 15 or 16, and remember being so disturbed by violence (not just the rape) that I had to mentally tune it out and go to my happy place. It was one of the strongest reactions I've ever had to anything, and as a result I had some serious reservations about reading the book, but I'm muddling through. I'm finding translating the jargon used is slowing me down considerably.
Maybe it's because I'm older and have seen more of life, or maybe because the imagery is not visual and in your face, but I'm finding reading it to be easier than watching it.
Yes me too.....I definitely agree that women are more likely to be affected and 'terrorised' by the violence in ACO.....I'm not sure if I would feel less sensitive if it were a gang of female droogs.....in fact I don't think I would. To me it is the 'no place to hide' that presents the greatest fear.....and it is a world that both many men and women inhabit today in war-torn countries or overtly male dominated cultures. I'm going to have more trouble watching the film than reading the book I think.....
I found this here….Violence and instances of criminality are ubiquitous in this book. In just a few chapters, Alex and his entourage have performed every trick in the criminal's Bible: boozing, doing drugs, mugging, robbing, gang fighting, grand theft auto, gang rape, reckless driving, vandalism, arson, and murder. What is more, there's also plenty of discussion of probation officers, juvenile delinquents, prison life, police brutality, and even a forced suicide.
Questions About Violence.....
Of all the acts of violence Alex and his gang perpetrate on their victims, which is/are the worst? What criteria do you use to assess this, the amount of perceived pain (whether it results in death or not), or something else?
What role does violence or criminality play in this novel? Could the book have done without all that brutality?
Alex commits crimes for the sheer joy of it. Do you think Dim and Georgie operate similarly? What motivates Dim to act violently? What motivates Georgie? Are either of them any different from Alex?
How do you suppose the "modern youth" have become so violent? Is it due to lack of parenting, authority, sense of morality, or something else?
I'm reading this for the first time. I've haven't seen the movie either. I find the amount of violence disturbing, but somehow not surprising for a dystopian story. I was a bit shocked with the gang-rape scene. All their transgressions before that one just seemed typical for stupid self-centered boys, that they just didn't impress me, but I was taken aback with that one. I did think they were a bit older, so I was surprised when Alex mentioned going to school. I'm proud to say I do not need a dictionary for this, because the made up words are all of Slavic origin, and I understand them perfectly. I don't know how or why Burgess made these up, because I haven't read anything on him or the book, but it doesn't present a problem for me. The whole story in general is a bit of a slow read, since Alex is not really a grammar genius. :)
Hi Samanta.....that is so interesting that you don't need a dictionary to understand this story.....I felt the same about Billy Liar as I'm from Yorkshire and grew up with with the dialect (although it does differ in the four ridings). It was like coming home to me to read Billy Liar after so many years as I now live in Scotland. I wonder if you see the story from a different perspective as the language seems so familiar to you. Although I find the story quite disturbing I do find the Nadsat language that Burgess invented quite elegant horrifying and even Shakespearean in part.
It does sound a bit Shakespearean in some parts. I'm still on Part One (since it's not a story you read fast....at least I can't read it as fast as I would want to), so I can't say that I can already see it from different perspective. It's just that I can understand the meaning of the majority of Nadsat words (although I think he derived them from Russian mostly, which is not my native language - this is just a guess), and I don't loose the train of thought, looking at the dictionary every few seconds. I do wonder what influenced Burgess to invent Nadsat in that form.
The style of writing reminds me a bit of Faulkner, whose books I never managed to finish, because of the "stream of consciousness" technique. It's like I'm reading Alex's thoughts, that are a jumbled mess to start with;the punctuation is horrible, sentences too long and then there is the Nadsat plus the dialect, My head aches.
Yes that's interesting.....I believe Burgess had a connection with Russia and he lived there for a while so he would become familiar with the language. Using Nadsat is quite clever as the language will never become dated as it only exists in the confines of this story whereas if he'd used Cockney rhyming slang say it would suggest Alex and his droogs were working class from a defined area of London. This novel seems almost like science fiction to me.....it has it's claws in the future and the past simultaneously.....
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http://www.anthonyburgess.org/about-a...
Very interesting, Lidiana. It gives me a bit of a backstory. I found this qupte from Burgess very interesting:"The novel was to be an exercise in linguistic programming, with the exoticisms gradually clarified by context: I would resist to the limit any publisher’s demand that a glossary be provided. A glossary would disrupt the programme and nullify the brainwashing".
So we are not supposed to lament the lack of glossary in our editions. Burgess says so. :)
Just finished Part One. I have to say that I don't like Alex, as he has no redeeming qualities (at least for now). I wonder how Alex's world came to be. It's a world where youngsters can do what ever they want, and adults can't say anything. I've noticed Alex's parents are wary of him, afraid. They do not have any authority over him, and he can do pretty much whatever he wants ((view spoiler)). If we look at our world today, Burgess might have been on point. Today, kids do whatever they want, and parents, instead of punishing them, defend their actions, failing to teach their children responsibility (I'm sure you've all heard that despicable "20 minutes of action" story from the U.S.). Even worse scenario is leaving them on their own, and buying them all sorts of material things just to get them of the back. I think Alex and his droogs are a product of that kind of point of view (or one very similar).The one thing that struck me as odd, though, is Alex's partiality towards classical music. The younger generation rarely listens to that kind of music and finds it boring. Alex, on the other hand, finds it soothing and exhilarating. Funny how, in many popular culture movies, the bad guys always prefer classical music as a way of finding their inner peace/strenght or whatever.
On the question of whether or not to provide a glossary as was the wish of Burgess.....my personal preference has been to read through the glossary two or three times and then put it aside.....the language does flow beautifully then and the meaning of many Nadsat words are self-evident within the context of the sentence. Alex's preference for classical music is very interesting and not the norm as you say.....he is definitely the alpha male in the gang and a deep thinker needing to stand out from the crowd.
