"Lewis is the ideal persuader for the half-convinced, for the good man who would like to be a Christian, but who finds his intellect getting in the way."
"I tend to write from a Catholic point of view--either from the point of view of a believing Catholic or a renegade Catholic, which I think is James Joyce's position. Reading ULYSSES, you are aware of this conflict in a man who knows the Church thoroughly and yet has totally rejected it with a blasphemous kind of vigor."
"The novels are probably all about the same thing--man as sinner, but not sufficiently a sinner to deserve the calamities that are heaped upon him. I suppose I try to make comic novels about man's tragic lot."
Burgess was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson into a Roman Catholic Lancashire family in an English town, the son of a bookkeeper/pianist and a musician/dancer. His mother died of Spanish influenza when he was a baby, and for this and other reasons he gave up his faith when he was 16. Burgess loved music, was an accomplished pianist, and wished to be a composer, but he became interested in writing as a student at the University of Manchester. He joined the army in 1940, and gave concerts to the t more...
Burgess was born John Anthony Burgess Wilson into a Roman Catholic Lancashire family in an English town, the son of a bookkeeper/pianist and a musician/dancer. His mother died of Spanish influenza when he was a baby, and for this and other reasons he gave up his faith when he was 16. Burgess loved music, was an accomplished pianist, and wished to be a composer, but he became interested in writing as a student at the University of Manchester. He joined the army in 1940, and gave concerts to the troops, lectured, taught map reading and languages, and .worked in Army intelligence. In 1942 he married a cousin of Christopher Isherwood whom he met in college--Llewela Isherwood Jones. The brutal assault scene in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE was based on an attack on Burgess's wife in 1943 by American G.I.'s in London, which resulted in a miscarriage; she was never entirely well after the incident. Burgess devoted himself to music after the war--composing, arranging, playing in a jazz combo--but also worked as a teacher, first in England, then in Malaya, Brunei, and Borneo. Eventually, bored and frustrated by teaching and by the English colonials there, Burgess collapsed mysteriously in class one day. He was sent back to England, where he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and given a year to live. His wife took their small savings, invested it in the stock market, and made enough money for them to live on while Burgess wrote novels. He produced five in quick succession, intending to leave the profits from them as a legacy to his wife; at the end of a year, he was still alive, and found that he had become a professional novelist who had to defend his prolific output. He regained his health, but his wife died in 1968. Burgess remarried, to an Italian contessa, a translator of Pynchon's V and Durrell's ALEXANDRIAN QUARTET, and had a son. He lived first in Rome, then in Monaco, where he died in 1993.less...
Hakop wrote a review on A Clockwork Orange (Norton Paperback Fiction)
Don't judge a book by it's movie!
If you're tired of reading the same ol' stories with a goody two-shoes protagonist, who has some sort of dilemma then through a miraculous epiphany he finds his way and everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, then this is the book for you! (Whatever you do, do not read the last chapter!!!!)
This is a very dark and satirical novel with a very fresh dialogue. Burgess uses a language called Nadsat to alienate the main character and his "droogies" from the rest of the world. If you have the capacity to read at a slightly higher level (like Shakespeare or Dante), or are enamored by the challenge, then this story will have you quoting it months after you're finished with it. And if you're IQ is above average you might even recognize the author's sporadic humor and sarcasm.
Alex suffers from some kind of psychopathic disorder, and the society he lives in has incubated all the malice that lives within him. He is very clever, brave, witty, articulate, and not exactly what you would call a delicate flower.
After the government experiments with a highly effective and novel rehabilitation method, Alex becomes an ideal citizen, but he suffers every day and wants to kill himself. His life becomes "Clockwork" and loses its purpose (I don't know where the orange part comes from).
As you read it you will be confused as to how you are cheering on this menace, which kills, robs, and does other horrific activities. However, this is where Burgess' genius becomes apparent and makes the book a classic. You the reader experience what Alex experiences when he goes through the rehabilitation process, he starts feeling and doing things that are contradictory to his natural state of being, and hence becomes mere "clockwork." Even though he is a malevolent character you yourself are in oppression of something greater and can't help liking him and hoping for his reincarnation so to speak.
All of the characters are interesting and the encounters with one another are real. The only folly of the book is its 21st chapter. I don't know hat happened here but the book is pure magic until its last chapter, where it abandons its key premise and succumbs to social pressures and suddenly becomes politically correct. Nonetheless, the book is profound intelectual bliss-you can end with the 20th chapter and it makes complete sense.
The movie has a completely different ambiance and misses the artistic brilliance of the author. The book is probably 5 times more interesting, more entertaining, and much better.
It's a great read, and will have you scratching your head by the end of the book, not because it's confusing, but because you can't put it down and thus have no time to shower.
In My Humble Onion
Don't judge a book by it's movie!
If you're tired of reading the same ol' stories with a goody two-shoes protagonist, who has some sort of dilemma then through a miraculous epiphany he finds his way and everyone holds hands and sings kumbaya, then this is the book for you! (Whatever you do, do not read the last chapter!!!!)
This is a very dark and satirical novel with a very fresh dialogue. Burgess uses a language called Nadsat to alienate the main character and his "droogies" from the rest of the world. If you have the capacity to read at a slightly higher level (like Shakespeare or Dante), or are enamored by the challenge, then this story will have you quoting it months after you're finished with it. And if you're IQ is above average you might even recognize the author's sporadic humor and sarcasm.
Alex suffers from some kind of psychopathic disorder, and the society he lives in has incubated all the malice that lives within him. He is very clever, brave, witty, articulate, and not exactly what you would call a delicate flower.
After the government experiments with a highly effective and novel rehabilitation method, Alex becomes an ideal citizen, but he suffers every day and wants to kill himself. His life becomes "Clockwork" and loses its purpose (I don't know where the orange part comes from).
As you read it you will be confused as to how you are cheering on this menace, which kills, robs, and does other horrific activities. However, this is where Burgess' genius becomes apparent and makes the book a classic. You the reader experience what Alex experiences when he goes through the rehabilitation process, he starts feeling and doing things that are contradictory to his natural state of being, and hence becomes mere "clockwork." Even though he is a malevolent character you yourself are in oppression of something greater and can't help liking him and hoping for his reincarnation so to speak.
All of the characters are interesting and the encounters with one another are real. The only folly of the book is its 21st chapter. I don't know hat happened here but the book is pure magic until its last chapter, where it abandons its key premise and succumbs to social pressures and suddenly becomes politically correct. Nonetheless, the book is profound intelectual bliss-you can end with the 20th chapter and it makes complete sense.
The movie has a completely different ambiance and misses the artistic brilliance of the author. The book is probably 5 times more interesting, more entertaining, and much better.
It's a great read, and will have you scratching your head by the end of the book, not because it's confusing, but because you can't put it down and thus have no time to shower.
In My Humble Onion 
Facebook
MySpace
Orkut
Hi5
Bebo