Published 1962 / Length 149 pages
‘We sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks what to do with the evening …’
The first thing the new reader of A Clockwork Orange notices is its striking, idiosyncratic language. The novel is narrated by Alex, a fifteen-year-old gang member, in ‘Nadsat’, which Burgess created by combining words derived from Slavic and Russian with Cockney rhyming slang. Although perplexing at first, this impressively sustained voice soon becomes accessible. The narrative itself is set in a near-future dystopia, where teenage gangs roam the streets committing acts of rape and ‘ultra-violence’. Alex initially boasts of his misdeeds, but his account soon shifts to the attempts of the totalitarian state to rehabilitate him. As it does so, the novel asks whether it’s better to be forced to be good than to choose to be bad. A quintessential cult novel, A Clockwork Orange often divides book clubs into those who find it too violent or obscure and those who are drawn in by its unique inventiveness.
‘Burgess, a composer turned novelist, has an ebullient, musical sense of language, and you pick up the meanings of the strange words as the prose rhythms speed you along.’ – PAULINE KAEL, The New Yorker
• Why do you think Burgess chose to write the book in imaginary slang? What effect does it have on the novel’s depiction of violence?
• At one point, the Prison Chaplain says, ‘When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.’ What is the novel saying about free will?
• Are there any parallels between today’s ‘hoodies’ and the novel’s ‘droogs’? How does the current government’s treatment of young offenders compare with that in the novel?
• The novel was once banned in some parts of the United States. Is it ever right to ban books?
• Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film adaptation was accused of inspiring several copycat attacks. However, it’s a myth that the film was banned in the UK. In fact, Kubrick himself withdrew it from circulation after receiving threats to his safety.
• The novel’s influence on popular culture has been immense, and many pop groups, including Heaven 17 and Moloko, have taken their names from it.
• Although A Clockwork Orange remains Burgess’s most popular novel, the author himself regarded it as one of his lesser works.
• The experiments conducted on Alex parody the ‘behavourist’ work of psychologist B. F. Skinner.
• Riddley Walker by RUSSELL HOBAN – a post-apocalyptic novel written in an imaginary devolved English.
• Brave New World by ALDOUS HUXLEY (see here) – an earlier speculative fiction about the state’s control of the individual.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four by GEORGE ORWELL (see here) – another linguistically inventive novel set in a grim future.
• The Handmaid’s Tale by MARGARET ATWOOD (see here) – a novel about a state that subjugates women.
You may have noticed that these perennial favourites are missing an extended mention in The Book Club Bible. This is by no means a comment on their quality, but rather an expectation that readers may already have encountered these wonderful books – perhaps at school, perhaps on a published survey of the nation’s most popular books – and discussed them with their book group. We urge you to reread them or discover them for the first time.
Pride and Prejudice by JANE AUSTEN
The Adventures of Augie March by SAUL BELLOW
Jane Eyre by CHARLOTTE BRONTË
(you may be interested to read Wide Sargasso Sea by JEAN RHYS, which is something of a ‘prequel’ to Jane Eyre)
Wuthering Heights by EMILY BRONTË
(you may be interested to read Here on Earth by ALICE HOFFMAN, who was inspired by the themes of Wuthering Heights)
Great Expectations by CHARLES DICKENS
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by THOMAS HARDY
A Thousand Acres by JANE SMILEY
The Grapes of Wrath by JOHN STEINBECK
Walden by HENRY DAVID THOREAU
The Age of Innocence by EDITH WHARTON
Dickens and Austen may be regular staples on the curriculum, but non-English-language books don’t always receive such frequent billing or public exposure. Here is a necessarily limited snapshot of some world classics to tempt you and your book club into more exotic literary climes.
The House of the Spirits by ISABEL ALLENDE
The Master and Margarita by MIKHAIL BULGAKOV
The Outsider by ALBERT CAMUS
Chéri by COLETTE
The Leopard by GIUSEPPE TOMASI DI LAMPEDUSA
Crime and Punishment by FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
Madame Bovary by GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow by PETER HØEG
Measuring The World by DANIEL KEHLMANN
My Name Is Red by ORHAN PAMUK