A Clockwork Orange??

It's a challenging read.

See also: "Trainspotting"

The movie is one of my favorite ever. I checked the book out a year or two ago and found I had the same problem with it. I think I made it about as far as you have before I gave up and called good enough good enough.

The book I checked out had a whole section in the back with definitions of all the slang. Maybe the copy you have has one too?

It is a challenging read. I managed it in 10th grade though, so i'm sure you can do it. You could always cheat and use the glossary if you aren't up for figuring it out on your own.

no glossary in mine. I've put it on hold while I read Rant.

i'm sure you can find it on the internet.

and screw Rant, Clockwork is way better.

It can be a challenge, what I did was read the sentence and just sorta fill in the blanks, based on the context of what was being said. Worst comes to worst you can always just see the movie and claim you read the book, the book and movie are very close. As well, after seeing the movie maybe you'd understand the language abit easier.

did you really just suggest he watch the movie and claim he read the book? wow.

I heard the movie left out the last chapter of the book.

it did. the book was originally published without the last chapter and the movie was made before it was republished with the final chapter. That chapter changes A LOT.

I think a clockwork orange is a pretty cool guy. he drinks milk and doesnt afraid of anything.

The milk is one part of the first few chapters i understood. I hate milk. Is there any other animal that drinks another animals milk? It's sick.

no other animal has the ability to milk another animal.

cats do.

drink it that is, not milk other animals.

I think I read somewhere that ants breed a special kind of little insect and drink the milk!

well there you go. I've always hated that statement as some sort of proof that drinking milk is bad. Milk rules.

Do insects even produce milk? I feel like only mammals make milk.

I feel like a cheeseburger, man, but that don't mean a cheeseburger is just going to appear in front of me.

Definitely only mammals make milk.

Go be a fuckin lizard then, you freak!

what about soy milk?

I like chocolate soy milk.

Vanilla!

YUCK!!! soy milk?? i dont really care for regular milk but if i'm gonna have soy its not going to be in milk form.

and i love the clockwork orange movie i have yet to read the book and im sure its way better.

As far as the language goes, he should just hang in there. Most of the time, the context sorta explains what the meaning is. Just keep reading it.

Keep going! Reading this thread has made me want to read Clockwork Orange again. I read it about 5 years ago, remember finding it odd at first but you do get used to the language.

I thought figuring out the language was one of the best things about it. After a couple chapters it seemed pretty clear what he was referring to.
Of course, I'd seen the movie multiple times before that.

The 21st chapter was only left out of the American version. I'm glad Kubrick didn't put it in, it's a ridiculous cop-out. It seems like Burgess lost his nerve to tell a totally bleak story and felt the need to try to "redeem" the character even though it doesn't fit the rest of the book whatsoever and reads like something a publisher would force to be put in.

In the copy I got, there is an intro by Burgess that said the publisher insisted on removing the last chapter for pretty much the same reason you said. Burgess wanted the last chapter because he said that without change in the character, it's like not even a story. He said his character "grew up" in the last chapter.

"When a fictional work fails to show change, when it merely indicates that human character is set, stony, unregenerable, then you are out of the field of the novel and into that of the fable or the allegory. The American or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel."

I don't know if I agree with this. I'd say I prefer what he sees as a fable. Sappy endings are boring.

GREEDO SHOOTS FIRST!!1!

I think that's the same one I have. He claims that his ending is Kennedy-esque in its optimism in humanity while the shorter version is Nixonian in its cynicism. Because there's nothing cynical about a sleazy bootlegger using his mob ties to rig a presidential election for his kid...but I digress.
Between him and King, Kubrick sure had a knack for pissing off authors he adapted. They never realized what Arthur C. Clarke did - that even when it takes liberties the movie works as the best promotion possible for the book.

Yeah that's the same thing mine says.

And I don't know of one adaptation that got the book completely right. No matter how loyal it is, the movie is always changed in some way to make sense to a more stupid or to appeal to a wider audience. Watchmen was almost perfect. But they had to change the ending(which, if you examine it pretty much at all, made no sense). They did the same thing with Fight Club. These movies obviously made the books a million times more popular, but it is still annoying to me to see a changed ending. I wish authors knew how to direct movies.

The novel is almost word for word as the movie Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick changed it by adding all the rape scenes.

The book I read had an extra chapter at the end where he meets up with one of his old friends whom now has a wife and kids.

You learn that the man who's house they broke into and took him in later in the movie was writing a lecture "CLockwork Orange" haveing to do with children and comparing them to oranges and how predictable they are like clockwork.

Did you just spoil the last chapter?

yup. GET HIM!

Yeah. I really enjoyed the challenge the language presented. Whenever anyone asks me about the book I always tell them that the first chapter or two was possibly one of the most difficult things I've ever read, fiction wise, but its worth it.

Thanks. I'll definitely read it after I'm done with Rant.

Can't I be both?

I guess you can. You dick. You funny, funny dick.

My dick really is funny. You should hear the laughs I get when I de-pants.

Ah-cha-cha!

you know, dogs arent supposed to drink a lot of milk. for some reason. unlike cats, it's not very good for them. but that's weird, because cats drink milk and dogs eat cats. so, cats arent healthy for dogs either. dogs are dumb. as dumb as it gets. as dumb as i was the first few attempts i made at clockwork. they went the same as the first three or four attempts i made at sound and the fury. i didnt get it. wtf? i had to enhance my comprehension. just had to keep going back to line one after a month or more of a break each time. eventually, i got it. i was a stupid, stupid chicken (aH, a baer quote and chickens dont drink milk!) eventually, though tough, it all came together and was a powerful experience. both clockwork and fury. Long is the way and hard that out of hell leads up to the light.

Most dogs and cats are lactose intolerant.

yeah, now that i'm sober

The difference with Fury for me was that you just have to accept that it doesn't make any damn sense and keep on trucking, just hoping it will all come together and explain itself at some point. What's really hard is that doesn't happen until 3/4 through the book. So, if you don't have a lot of faith in Faulkner, which I do, you might not make it that far. With Clockwork you really have to try to figure out what the hell he's saying before you can move one. But yeah, I see the parallel.

I just watched the movie a few times.
When I got around to reading the book, it was easy as pie.

The unique diction is explained through actions. Just keep reading.

The real reason Kubrick really perverted Clockwork Orange is because the novel is a definitive "FUCK YOU" to B. F. Skinner, the psychologist who promoted the idea of operant conditioning. Skinner believed that we could train people like dogs so that all crime and conflict could be eliminated. In Clockwork, Burgess claims that even if such a claim were true, doing so would be immoral and dehumanizing. That people must discover goodness for themselves and that an act isn't truly good unless executed with good intentions. In Kubrick's version the claim is that people are intrinsically evil. That sin is what makes us human, not choice. Alex must choose to do good in the end or the entire meaning of the novel is thrown out the window, along with the best attack on psychology's golden child. Kubrick's version could even be used to defend Skinner because the only time Alex isn't a menace to society is when he is conditioned not to be. Burgess wanted to show that we are moral beings who make moral choices, and that's what makes us human, as illustrated in the final chapter where Alex realizes the folly of his ways.

We read the book at school (best book choice ever to force kids to read?) and by the end of it, everyone could speak the language. I don't remember using a glossary but there peobably was one. Also, you can use the terms in everyday life which is either funny or lame depending on the situation.