Subject:

Comments:
: A CLOCKWORK ORANGE AND BLACK : Anthony Burgess has bookshelves which sag under what looks like a story of blistering success: more than thirty novels, many published to international critical acclaim; dozens of non-fiction titles, from a discursive study of beds to a two-volume, 1,200-page history of English literature, written in Italian; the long entry for the Novel in the Encyclopaedia Britannica; librettos and musical scores: symphonies, song settings, sonatas; translations into and out of English; screenplays, commentaries and lectures; and countless reviews, thousands and thousands of them, a sample to be found in two collections, Urgent Copy (1968) and Homage to Qwert Yuiop (1986). Penguin have awarded modern epic status to Earthly Powers (1980) and A Clockwork Orange (1962). The latter owes its fame to Stanley Kubrick's brutal, stylish film. -Ron Price with thanks to Roger Lewis, Anthony Burgess: A Life, 2004. : As I come to my late adulthood : I look back to 1962 : as the year of great beginnings, : not that I knew it at the time. : I did not know much then, at 18 : as the world came close to the edge : of giving it all to the vermin. : Was it Kennedy who saved us in October? : Was Clockwork Orange a wake-up call : to a new anti-utopian world : of violence and state control : emerging, then, as I struggled : to control a embryonically enormous id : that was exercising its own control? : I did not know, then, busy as I was : trying to get through nine grade 13 subjects : in my last months of freedom before : a bi-polar disorder rushed into my life : with its own controlling factor, : its own clockwork orange and black, : its own violence, emotional disarray : and a fear and confusion as deep as : the one you portrayed Anthony/Stanley. : Ron Price : 16 April 2004

Optional Link URL:
Link Title:
Optional Image URL: