So after posting on The Student Room I was reminded that I haven't really posted about my favourite book on the blog! Now, I do love quite a fair few books, but one that stands out as being really quite special to me is 'A Clockwork Orange' by Anthony Burgess. I know that he ended up disliking it immensely, but I have to say it started my interest in Burgess, leading to 'A Dead Man in Deptford' amongst others, so I'm very thankful for that!
So, why do I love a book about a violent rapist with a taste for ultra-violence and Beethoven so much? Quite simply, it's magical, arresting, intriguing, confusing, questioning. A big old smack in the litso with a great sweaty rooker.
The language is incredible, overwhelmingly delicious, if slightly difficult to start off with when you first encounter the Nadsat element.
Now one of my favourite parts is when Alex describes listening to music - it is astoundingly brilliant and encapsulates the undulations of classical music. I'll just leave you with that quote to ponder over, and hopefully you'll pick up the book - as much as cult legend has it, it isn't totally about violence you know!
'Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sloosh of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss my brothers.'
p.s. I still can't forgive Kubrick for missing out the last chapter in the film, unforgivable.
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