Burgess’s purpose.Īlex’s progress is existentially thrilling. The end of the book one is left with a satisfactory sense of having learned a language and become part of an in-group, which is exactly Mr. The neologisms are provocative, their logic often ironically apparent (cigarettes are called “cancers”), and by Burgess handles it with intelligence and for a purpose. This device could easily have become a bore, but Mr. Fighting a rebellious droog, Alex says, “I had just ticklewickled his fingers with my brava (knife), and there he was looking at the malenky (little) dribble of krovvy (blood) that was reddening out in the lamplight.” It lights up page after page in pin-ball machine fashion, and midway through the book you can understand The “hip” language that Alex and his “droogs” (gangmates) speak is a further development in the lingo of the outsiders. Through Alex’s eyes on the immediate present (like an animal Alex has little sense of past or future), the author suggests the total condition of the strange new world outside a world inimical to and yet favoring Alex and his hoodlum-beatniks. For Alex lives in a world that is all one, that has conquered space, that has no problems except social cancer. Burgess’s approach is that his novel is an intimate memoir from the future. It is a weird little morality tale, told in a taut, telescoped style that gives the effect of a continuous close-up. State, which removes his capacity for choice, turning him into a mass of conditioned reflexes, all wholesome and good. The novel is about this individual versus the Rock.” Alex is vicious, depraved, anarchic, a pure little monster, and the purity of his dedication to evil keeps lighting his deeds like some grotesque halo.Īlex’s choice of evil is total and enthusiastic his aimlessness is electric, like a shark switching around to the nearest scent his intelligence is sharply practical and of a high order. In young Alex, Anthony Burgess has created the most interesting delinquent since Pinky in Graham Green’s “Brighton Books of The Times Special to The New York TimesĬlockwork Orange” is a brilliant novel.
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