"When the last movement had gone round for the second time with all the banging and creeching about Joy Joy Joy Joy, then these two young ptitsas were not acting the big lady sophisto no more. They were like waking up what was being done to their malenky persons and saying that they wanted to go home and like I was a wild beast. They looked like they had been in some big bitva, as indeed they had, and were all bruised and pouty. Well, if they would not go to school they must still have their education. And education they had had. They were creching and going ow ow ow as they put their platties on, and they were like punchipunching me with their teeny fists as I lay there dirty an nagoy and fair shagged and fagged on the bed. This young Sonietta was creeching. 'Beast and hateful animal. Filthy horror.' So I let them get their things together and should be got on me and all that cal. Then they were going down the stairs and I dropped off to sleep. still with the old Joy Joy Joy Joy crashing and howling away" (Burgess).
The main character, Alex, is what we, in our society, would most likely call a barbarian or something of the sort, but he doesn't realize that he's doing anything wrong. For Alex, dinner and raping and mugging someone fall under the same category, they are amatory acts of like. Alex is completely evil, or so he seems at this point in the book. Which I find kind of intriguing, because I know that in the last chapter he will become 'good'.
I don't understand how someone, who has lived with such a bloodcurdling society, can just change. I can understand that over time a person can look at everything their life has culminated into and realize that they don't like what they see, and I know Alex does that, but he does it so suddenly. I want to know how, when and why this change arouses in his life. Because I just don't understand how it can happen so abruptly.
But, there are a few clues that can show that this climax is going to happen. He like Beethoven. Which does not exactly fit into his rebel-esk like style.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
A Clockwork Orange Resucked
I really like this Author. I can't really judge his writing because I haven't gotten far enough into the book to really judge the quality of it, but yesterday I was flipping threw the about author section and then I started reading his introduction. Not only has he written novels, verses, nonfiction and plays, he's also created symphonies, opera's and jazz. I wish I could do that. It was also interesting to know that he wasn't so into this book, he said he felt sort of trapped in it. He felt like a one hit wonder, in novel terms. A Clockwork Orange is such a famous book it over shadowed (and still does) all his other works.
The twenty-first chapter was taken out of the American version and movie, which he really didn't like. The number twenty-one symbolized something for him, about human maturity. He split it up into seven parts for a reason and he didn't want it to be changed. Yet he was broke and needed to book to be published.
It seems like Burgess knows how real people are but he also understands that fiction is called fiction for a reason. I mean its literal definition is; the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration. He knew that this piggish, destructive character had to change. It what characters do.
My favorite part of his introduction was how he ended it. Lately I've realized that I cannot end anything I ever start writing. And his ending seemed like a good ending. It wasn't cheesy, not too 'hard', it was good.
"Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end this way, but my aesthetic judgment may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their own best critics, now are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the Kind of the Jews. 'What i have written I have written'. We can destroy what we have written but we cannot rewrite it. I leave what i have wrote with what Dr. Johnson called frigis indifference tot he judgement of that .00000001 of the American population which cares about suchs things. Eat this swetish segment or spit it out. You are free.
November 1986" (Introduction, pg. xv).
The twenty-first chapter was taken out of the American version and movie, which he really didn't like. The number twenty-one symbolized something for him, about human maturity. He split it up into seven parts for a reason and he didn't want it to be changed. Yet he was broke and needed to book to be published.
It seems like Burgess knows how real people are but he also understands that fiction is called fiction for a reason. I mean its literal definition is; the class of literature comprising works of imaginative narration. He knew that this piggish, destructive character had to change. It what characters do.
My favorite part of his introduction was how he ended it. Lately I've realized that I cannot end anything I ever start writing. And his ending seemed like a good ending. It wasn't cheesy, not too 'hard', it was good.
"Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end this way, but my aesthetic judgment may have been faulty. Writers are rarely their own best critics, now are critics. 'Quod scripsi scripsi' said Pontius Pilate when he made Jesus Christ the Kind of the Jews. 'What i have written I have written'. We can destroy what we have written but we cannot rewrite it. I leave what i have wrote with what Dr. Johnson called frigis indifference tot he judgement of that .00000001 of the American population which cares about suchs things. Eat this swetish segment or spit it out. You are free.
November 1986" (Introduction, pg. xv).
Monday, September 15, 2008
A Clockwork Orange
"Whats is going to be then, eh?'
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold these was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemsc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with (Burgess pg. 3).
So I haven't read much into this book yet, just a little further then this, but I have to stop every few sentences to ask myself what Burgess is actually trying to tell me. Either I have an even smaller vocabulary then I thought or he is making up words. By all means what the hell is 'peeting'? And also, I don't see what he finds appealing in milk and liquor but...to each their own.
Other then that I do find the dialect interesting and I figure that once I get used to it the book will be quiet enjoyable... Well as enjoyable as it can be. I am aware that these 'droogs' rape at will and kill for pleasure. From what I've heard, this book will be haunting, which is a bit intriguing.
I am a little excited to be inside the head of a ruthless...person
There was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim being really dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto, and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold these was milk plus something else. They had no license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemsc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it, as we used to say, and this would sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that was what we were peeting this evening I'm starting off the story with (Burgess pg. 3).
So I haven't read much into this book yet, just a little further then this, but I have to stop every few sentences to ask myself what Burgess is actually trying to tell me. Either I have an even smaller vocabulary then I thought or he is making up words. By all means what the hell is 'peeting'? And also, I don't see what he finds appealing in milk and liquor but...to each their own.
Other then that I do find the dialect interesting and I figure that once I get used to it the book will be quiet enjoyable... Well as enjoyable as it can be. I am aware that these 'droogs' rape at will and kill for pleasure. From what I've heard, this book will be haunting, which is a bit intriguing.
I am a little excited to be inside the head of a ruthless...person
Monday, September 8, 2008
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