A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Author: Anthony Burgess

Title: A Clockwork Orange

Publisher: Penguin 

Published: 1962

Pages: 352

Genre: Science Fiction / Crime ]

     Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?

     It is not too often that I choose to pick up a book that has been marked out as a classic. This is not for some snobbish reason more a case of they don't tend to cross my mind. I find myself for the most part too preoccupied with what is coming out now. This however is an exception and a book I have been meaning to read for a great many years. In fact ever since I saw the film version of it. And to give some context to that. When I first saw the film it was on an imported copy from the U.S as it was still banned at that point in England. I think I was probably still too young at that point what with the rating system and all but hey what are jet-setting friends for after all. Both a book and a film that became infamous it's kind of a hard combo to turn down. Although it has taken me a strong minute to get there. 

      It's a funny thing that first took me by surprise when reading this, This sort of half language Burgess created for his hero.  Obviously, I was aware of it from the film. But it definitely took me a little getting used to in the written form. And I'm not really sure why I guess maybe my dyslexic brain was trying to turn them back into the words they had been. It s always a fun experience when that happens and ends up slowing my reading down a whole lot. But that after all is more of a me thing than a mark against the author. But any way onwards and upwards as they say. As for his hero Alex, he definitely ranks up there with some of the more dislikable creations in fiction. Although I guess that's the point. Burgess created this nightmare goblin of a teenager. Someone who stalks the dimly lit night whit his fellow cohorts looking for their next victim. 

     Even though written in the nineteen sixties you can still see parallels to how the press portrays teenagers to this day. Picking out the worst aspect in an attempt to scare the middle classes into locking their doors and barring their windows. It is the thing that fuels fear in the older generations. Is there in fact a point where people start crossing the street when they see groups of teenagers banded together? But in the case of dear old Alex, you would kind of have good reason to do so. Every action at the start of this book is designed to make us hate everything he is. So why then would we care about what comes next? After all, he is convicted of a heinous crime that he did commit. Because in Burgess's ravaged dystopian future there are things much worse than the monster Alex has become. The government played out as some giant predatory organization. One that aims to take the wildest and most dangerous of people and turn them into placid week willed beings. 

     I think there is a reason why A Clockwork Orange still lines the bookshelves of a great many people. The author did a great job of capturing this nightmare that haunts us to this day. That there is this unruly and wild subsection of society out to tear the whole world down, just for their own kicks. There is an inherent understanding is that if we just follow the rules we will all be fine. But this is however rarely the case too often falling victim to things outside of our influence. But it's also about state control and how far is too far, in the hunt for punishment can we overstep our own moral line and leave people completely defenseless against a world that is no less dangerous for having neutered them.  At the end of the day, this is a book that is entirely up to the reader how much they want to dive into their own moral compass. For some, it's this barking tale of uncontrolled youth spilling out into the chaos. For others more so at the time of writing it's a scathing indictment of the British government and its treatment not only of its own people but also a reflection of empire and all the horrors that entailed.

     This was kind of a funny one for me. I honestly thought I was going to enjoy it a lot more than I did. Maybe I had just built it up far too much in my own head. It's not a bad book by any means and I think you can find whatever you want tumbling through its fabled pages.  But for me, I think I set the bar a little too high.