Ultraviolence

Speaking of violent books, I recently reread Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange for my tutorial.  And O my brothers, Your Humble Narrator would like to tell you it is a real horrorshow book, the kind thou ought to recommend to all thy droogs.   But, it’s not really all that amazing.  It’s good, to be sure, but not nearly as deserving as the praise it receives would suggest.

(As for the movie—just stay away.  Part of the problem this book has is that it spawned a feverish adolescent fantasy in the mind of Stanley Kubrick.  This is a case where the movie not only isn’t as good as the book, but if one sees the movie before reading the book, then it will be very hard to read the book on its own terms.)

Without a doubt, the prose is the only thing which really gives this book any chance of being worthy of attention.  It is a joy to submerse yourself into the jargon and style of the narrator (the original Your Humble Narrator).  From the inspired coinages to the mock Shakespearean style to the elaborate euphemisms for the ultraviolent acts of a depraved youth, uncovering what Alex means is a treat.  (The first version of the book I read had a glossary in the back to translate—that is the sort of innovation which utterly destroys a book like this.  If you are going to read it, just read it.)

The book is an exploration of the nature of Free Will.  Do we choose to do Evil?  How important is it that we preserve the ability to do Evil?  If we could condition Evil people to do Good deeds by making it so that the very thought of an Evil Act induced overwhelming physical revulsion, would that be a good thing to do?  If people are compelled to Act Properly because we had made it impossible for them to Act Improperly, then have we made society better?

The book tries to isolate why people have a hard time with the idea of determinism and free will.  People like the idea that they choose to do good things.  But, they also like the idea that they do not choose to do bad things, that when people do bad things it was somehow determined by  Forces Beyond Our Control.  What this book does is ask which of those two things is more important—is it more important to preserve the idea that we choose to do good or to alter the deterministic aspects of evil so that nobody will ever choose to do evil?  If we end up doing good because doing so is beyond our control, are we better humans?  But, if we want to preserve the idea that what makes us human is the ability to choose to do good deeds, then doesn’t it necessarily follow that we must celebrate the ability to choose evil (we don’t have to celebrate evil, but don't we have to celebrate the possibility of doing evil?)?

The biggest problem with the book is that it cheats in the end.  The original last chapter is an argument that Free Will triumphs, but since Alex chooses to Be Good in the end for no apparent reason, the book ends up reading like some fairy tale of evil youths maturing and becoming good members of society.  Dropping the last chapter (as was done in the original American publication) isn’t an improvement—then we end with an evil character whose evil is somehow stamped on his soul with no possibility of choice—which would also simply be a cheat.  In the end, it’s not clear that this book is really arguing anything.  Nice prose in the service of a Big Question but providing No Answer, not even a bad answer, just no answer at all. 

So, read it for the prose, which is a real joy.  But, don’t spend too long imagining it is a deep book.