A Clockwork Orange

Rating:
Summary: A fantastic, horrorshow version of the future
Review: What a brilliant masterpiece Anthony Burgess created here. A Clockwork Orange is a chilling version of what Burgess saw as the not so distant future. He wrote the book during the time when doctors wrongfully diagnosed him with cancer, in 1962. He lived until 1993, and with him died the mystery and the majesty that is A Clockwork Orange.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book but this version is lacking.
Review: A Clockwork Orange is still a classic. However, for librarians like me, THIS paperback version is lacking: it has no glossary of the unusual language Burgess created. I would not have bought this version had I known that. Glossaries are available on the Internet, however.

Rating:
Summary: Powerfull writing,
Review: I enjoyed this book increadibly. The first chapters are difficult to read at first, but once you learn the clockwork talk then the book becomes more real and interesting. But be warned - the practices and attitudes of the characters are immoral, disgusting and very violent. This is not a book for the immature reader. The 21 chapter is Capitol and suits the book fine. Read, enjoy.

Rating:
Summary: 100% CERTIFIED REAL HORRORSHOW!
Review: This book was amazing! It goes well with the movie, in fact I followed the book BETTER than the movie. A modern-day masterpiece, you can catch the dark humor in this book while at the same time its appalling, what Alex and his Droogs do. But I cheered them on just the same. The character of Alex comes to life in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange! VIDDY WELL, oh my brothers! :)

Rating:
Summary: Uncut is better
Review: A Clockwork Orange certainly ranks as one of the last great literary works. The style is incredibly unique, the language is wonderful, and best of all, it shows no age. I would imagine that this book exists outside of time. Even after all these years, there is not even a hint of it being outdated. The most contemporary reference is Beethoven. Burgess has created his own world, with his own language as well. The book, like the movie is graphic, but unlike the movie, it is not explicit, because Nadsat prevents that. And the last chapter? Let it stand. Burgess had his reasons. He was a traditionalist writer, and the numerology had significance. Twenty-one is a number that represents maturity, and as an old-school British writer, Alex was to mature in that final chapter. And besides, what is written cannot be unwritten, and as Burgess has explained, take it or spit it out. He had written twenty one chapters, you will read twenty one chapters, but you don't have to agree with it. The whole point was to show that men are not predestined to be evil. How could you argue about Alex's character? I'd have to assume that Burgess knew Alex's personality far better than any reader, and after all, the story was inspired through his own tragedies. Five stars all the way. And all that cal.

Rating:
Summary: A real, like horrorshow piece of literature
Review: Many people who read this novel flip through it as though it were nothing more than a slick, shocking thriller set in the future. That's fine, if that's all they want to get out of it, but they also miss the fact that this is really a thoughtful masterpiece written by a true literary genius. A true masterpiece is, of course, highly entertaining as well as being a work of art.

As for the 21st chapter, which some believe does not fit in with the rest of the story, this is the way that the author wanted the story to end, and that should be respected. For those who want the story to end the same was as Stanley Kubrick's film version (also a masterpiece, by the way), just stop reading at the end of chapter 20. Either ending works, in my humble opinion.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the effort.
Review: Once you slog through the slang (think of Beowulf) and get into the core of the book you'll find it is worth your time. It asks one main question, "Is it better to have a choice between good and bad and then choose to do good, or to have no choice at all and be forced to do good?"

Regardless of your feelings on the subject Burgess does an remarkable job of showing how young Alex feels about the subject. He says "But what I do I do because I like to do." His choice is obviously to do evil because he enjoys it.

The "controversial" Chapter 21 does not change Alex's view in any way. Although he does change his behavior he doesn't change the way he comes to that behavior. He changes what he does because he wants to change. Alex blames his earlier evil behavior on the ignorance of youth, that he had no choice. This makes perfect sense. Who among us when having made a decision to do good, would want to look back at our evil past and say we also chose that? We would want to blame it on anything we could and Alex does it by saying "Being young is like being one of those malenky machines." That is not a contradiction at all, only a great example of rationalization by a character who is not exactly what I would call rational.

Rating:
Summary: One of the most unique styles I'd ever read.
Review: This is definitely one of the strangest books I've read in my life, but I by far do not regret it. Burgess uses an interesting technique combining the Russian language with the old English to make up the teen language of the future called nadsat. This is a story told from the first person by a teenage boy about his vicious gang times as a kid at 15, his time in jail, and his "new" treatment which made him into a senseless "good person but not by his own choice. "Man ceases to be man when he cannot choose." Read this book, you'll be glad you have.

Rating:
Summary: Great Book & Theme, But 21st Chapter Contradicts the Rest
Review: This book has almost as many reader reviews as The Satanic Bible by Anton LaVey. There is something about the Dar kSide that attracts and tempts us with promises of escape (real or imaginary) from the boredom in everyday life. Burgess, in his introduction to ACO, attributes this attraction to "Original Sin" and says he enjoyed ripping and raping by proxy through his protagonist, Alex. But there was a moral point: "If one can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State." He continues: "It is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. The important thing is moral choice. Evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate."

From the 1st to the 20th chapter, one is (although vaguely) under the assumption that Alex is free to choose good or evil but gets more pleasure out of evil. Alex says he does evil because he likes it just as some people do good because they like it. Alex assumes his own freedom and uses it (and Burgess through him) to mock those who think that evil is not freely chosen but the result of a bad environment, a bad government, or the devil. Then one comes to the 21st chapter. Here, quite abruptly, is an older Alex who associates his youth with a wind-up toy (the opposite of moral freedom)! One is also left wondering if Burgess actually believed at the time he wrote this novel that one INEVITABLY grows out of evil through some maturation process. If he did, then this contradicts the moral idea he presents in his introduction that one is free to choose evil and, I might add, stay evil.

Apart from what I perceive to be a contradictory 21st chapter, the book is excellent for its creative language and emotional presentation on the moral issue of whether conditioning, not just incarceration, can remove moral freedom. Put yourself in the victim's shoes. Would you want Alex to lose his moral freedom to torture, rape or even murder if it meant a safer society, a safer YOU? If you answer "yes," then you are in effect saying that you want your own moral freedom to choose evil removed. This raises the question of why evil (or our moral perception of evil) exists in the first place. A lot to think about here. END

Rating:
Summary: Bizarre voyage into a fantastic world
Review: I have read the book, and have seen the movie. Both were excellent, but I am more fond of the movie which supplies supurb visuals where the book could not. The story is still one of the best in literature. I do not think that the book induces violence. Just as the title suggests, humans are "clockwork oranges," wound up beyond their own ability; we will run our courses no matter what is said or shown to us. Violent people are born violent, there are no defenses. So, if someone wears boots, white pants with suspenders, a bowler hat, and fake eyelashes while they commit violent acts; well, then they were already missing a can or two from their six pack. All in all, the book is great, and don't miss the movie. "Viddy well, my brother, viddy well."