“You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.”
Work
Fully restored edition of Anthony Burgess' original text of <i>A Clockwork Orange</i>, with a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews<br><br>Edited by Andrew Biswell With a Foreword by Martin Amis<br><br><b>'It is a horrorshow story ...'</b><br><br>Fifteen-year-old Alex likes lashings of ultraviolence. He and his gang of friends rob, kill and rape their way through a nightmarish future, until the State puts a stop to his riotous excesses. But what will his re-education mean?<br><br>A dystopian horror, a black comedy, an exploration of choice, <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> is also a work of exuberant invention which created a new language for its characters. This critical edition restores the text of the novel as Anthony Burgess originally wrote it, and includes a glossary of the teen slang 'Nadsat', explanatory notes, pages from the original typescript, interviews, articles and reviews, shedding light on the enduring fascination of the novel's 'sweet and juicy criminality'.<br><br>Anthony Burgess was born in Manchester in 1917 and educated at Xaverian College and Manchester University. He spent six years in the British Army before becoming a schoolmaster and colonial education officer in Malaya and Brunei. After the success of his <i>Malayan Trilogy</i>, he became a full-time writer in 1959. His books have been published all over the world, and they include <i>The Complete Enderby</i>, <i>Nothing Like the Sun</i>, <i>Napoleon Symphony</i>, <i>Tremor of Intent</i>, <i>Earthly Powers </i>and <i>A Dead Man in Deptford</i>. Anthony Burgess died in London in 1993.<br><br>Andrew Biswell is the Professor of Modern Literature at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation. His publications include a biography, <i>The Real Life of Anthony Burgess</i>, which won the Portico Prize in 2006. He is currently editing the letters and short stories of Anthony Burgess.
Quotes
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Anthony Burgess
Canonical work source
“You got shook and shook till there was nothing left. You lost your name and your body and your self and you just didn't care.”
“When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.”
“The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all...”
“Well, everything's a lesson, isn't it? Learning all the time, as you could say.”
“And now, talking of praying, I realise sadly that there will be little point in praying for you. You are passing now to a region where you will be beyond the reach of the power of prayer.”
“We can destroy what we have written, but we cannot unwrite it.”
“You can viddy that everything in this wicked world counts. You can pony that one thing always leads to another. Right right right.”
“The thrill of theft, of violence, the urge to live easy - is it worth it when we have undeniable proof, yes, yes, incontrovertible evidence that hell exists?”
“What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?”
“When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.”
“And yet, in a sense, in choosing to be deprived of the ability to make an ethical choice, you have in a sense really chosen the good.”
“The intention to act violently is accompanied by strong feelings of physical distress.”
“You have no cause to grumble boy. You made your choice and all this is a consequence of your choice. Whatever now ensues is what you yourself have chosen.”