A Clockwork Orange by Anothony Burgess

Another in the series of books that are not part of the current reading regimen, but one of the classics of the past that influenced or affected me. (I need to come up with an alternate category title for these...)

A Clockwork Orange is a difficult book to read. Unless you are lucky enough to find a copy of the book with a glossary at the back to spell out the definitions of the gangspeak that Alex and his "droogs" (pals, gangmates...) are speaking, you will have to work at and guess some of the words meanings, but some are pretty clear, and if you have a bit of knowledge of Russian, almost all of it will be clear.

But thats not the really difficult part of the book. Whats hard is identifying Alex as a sympathetic character. He has very few scruples, and almost no moral background. In effect, he is a typical hoodlum of today. Which makes the book remarkably prescient, since in the halcyon days of the 60's when this book was written, the gang violence and unrecacitrant sociopathic teenager was probably thought of as a fantastical imagination of the author.

The book is divided into three parts ( and get the British version or the unabridged version of the American publication, I will explain later) If you've seen Stanley Kubrick's movie, the first part pretty much is followed. We see Alex and his "droogs", Pete, Georgie, and Dim doing all sorts of evil little miscreant things, leading up to his betrayal and capture by the authorities.

The second part deals with his rehabilitation, using techniques that would make liberals cringe and conservatives applaud. What is left of Alex is a shell of a man who still has some memories of his past life, but through the Pavlovian style of rehabilitation, finds it repulsive.

The third part deals with how Alex interracts with life outside the prison. Here is where I promised I would explain why to get the British version. If you've seen the movie only, it ends prematurely. The book is divided into three parts, with 7 chapters to each part. But when the American edition was released it left off the deneoument, which puts a whole new perspective on Alex.

I read this first in the American abridged version as a young man. It shaped my thoughts on society and the establishment for 15 years. Maybe it was good that I didn't get a copy of the unabridged version until my own outlook on life had softened. But when I was 30, I happened across a British edition of the book. (How it ended up in a used bookstore in Austin, I leave to you to ponder.) Anyway, I found the ending as the author originally intended even more profound.

I rate this one 7 stars for the abridged version and 8 stars for the original unabridged version.

Winthrop