This was required reading in a high school class of mine and surprisingly, it was a lot of fun, they way it’s told, it really takes you on the journey into the abyss of a very very violent mind.
Also, there are a lot of very cool new slang words to pick up from this book, the movie is also well done (Stanley Kubrick) and it’s a quick read.
You know, I love the Kubrick version of this book but could not even finish the novel. I thought it was well nigh impenetrable, made-up slang or not, and a bit full of itself (although I may be reading Burgess’ personality onto the book, to be honest). One of the few instances of literary film adaptations where I find the movie to be better than the book. Oh well!
I have never seen the movie, or read the book, but I should probably check them out as I hear people refer to them frequently.
I loved this book when I read it in high school. I’d love to reread it from an adult perspective. I think this would be a great group read, especially because it deals with a lot of things that seem to be of interest to those who are involved in this forum, especially the concept of free will and the ethics involved in manipulating free will. Plus there is a lot of manipulation of the English language, which is fun for the literary/word geeks out there.
Burgess wrote in introduction to the 1986 edition, titled A Clockwork Orange Resucked, that
"a creature who can only perform good or evil 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 the almighty state.”