A CLOCKWORK ORANGE

                                          

I was digging through the crates the other day. I came across a book; it had “A Clockwork Orange” written on the spine.

I did not even try to understand what that title meant there and then but I was curious about its content so I skimmed through it.

I found it near impossible to go through the first few pages. Why? Because the slang in there had an 18th century feel to it. It was either that or the whole text was written in a language remotely similar to English but not really English.

I mean what’s with the pletchoes (shoulders), litso (face), Gulliver (head), rot (mouth), ooko (ear), glazies (eyes) sharries (something really private), yarbles (something really, really private) “the old in-out-in-out” (sex) etc, etc and such and such? And all that is but a tiny fraction of the monstrous glossary of slang Anthony Burgess used all throughout the book.

The wonderful thing, though, is that as I read on, the words seemed to make perfect sense with each passing page. And then there was yet another hurdle – the content proper. The graphic detailing of rape, attempted murder, bribery and GBH within the first 23 pages, for a pretty mild heart, was too much to take. For a second time, I almost gave up on this book.

Yet, like any avid reader, I gave it another go. It was then that I realized I was reading a gem! In fact, the late great Anthony Burgess used humour to describe the indescribable. Pages later, I was laughing at acts that would have induced “sick” if I wasn’t held spellbound by the make-belief magic of Anthony Burgess’ imagination. So good is the narration, that at a point I forgot that what I was reading was a mildly horrific account of a fictional teen’s wretched lifestyle. In fact, the book became more and more like Black Comedy.

It is the type of book that may have you detesting first and then rooting for the bad guy involuntarily. 15-yr old Alex with his 3 droogies (mates) – George, Peter and Dim go on their usual spree of tolchoking (hitting) old vecks (old men) and robbing them off their cutter (money) and pretty polly (money) with no appy polly loggies (apologies).

Alex is sent to prison after committing murder and put into some crazy mechanism that converts him into a “thing” that totally abhors crime – the opposite to what/who he was before. In the end little Alex over-compensates, so to speak for his sins in such proportions that you almost feel bad for him.

Amazing book. So amazing, that none other than the Stanley Kubrick directed an even more controversial movie version, apparently.