Clockwork Orange

1962 [Wilson, John Anthony Burgess] (1917-93). Clockwork Orange. By Anthony Burgess [pseud.]. London: Heinemann. U.S. ed. with significant differences. New York: W.W. Norton, 1963; rev. New York: W.W. Norton, 1987, with “Introduction: A Clockwork Orange Resucked” (v-xi) and with an added last chapter that was in the original U.K. edition but not in the U.S. edition or in Stanley Kubrick’s film. Critical ed. based on the Heinemann ed. as A Clockwork Orange: Authoritative Text Backgrounds and Contexts Criticism. Ed. Mark Rawlinson (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), 1-121, with “Notes on the Text” (122) and “A Glossary of Nadsat Terms” (123-27). 50^th anniversary edition with a “restored text.” Ed. Andrew Biswell. New York: W.W. Norton, 2012, with an “Introduction by the editor (vii-xxiii), “Notes” (205-12), “Annotated Pages from Anthony Burgess’s 1961 Typescript (213-20, “The Clockwork Condition” 221-238), and “EPILOGUE: ‘A Malenky Govoreet about the Molodoy’ Anthony Burgess, 1987” (239-46). Rpt. illus. Ben Jones. London: The Folio Society, 2014, with an “Introduction by Irvine Welsh (xi-xix) and “A Note on the Restored Edition” (xxi-xxii), “Notes” (201-10), and “Nadsat Glossary” (211-14) by Andrew Biswell. There was a 1971 film directed and with a screenplay by Stanley Kubrick. A detailed presentation of the film can be found in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Based on the novel by Anthony Burgess. Illus. New York: Abelard Schuman, 1972. On the film, see also, Stuart Mc Dougall, ed. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 2003. In Burgess’s The Clockwork Testament, or, Enderby’s End. London: Hart-David MacGibbon, 1974. U. S. ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975, there is a section that is generally considered to reflect Burgess’s dislike of Kubrick’s film. The novel also has themes that resonate with A Clockwork Orange. See also Burgess, A Clockwork Orange: A Play with music based on his novella of the same name. London: Hutchinson, 1987. Rev. ed. London: Arrow Books, 1990. Another musical version was adapted by Burgess with Bono (Paul David Hewson b. 1960) and the edge (Music) first performed under the title “A Clockwork Orange 2004” by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Barbican Theatre, London, in February 1990. An adaptation by John Godber (b. 1956) as a play was first performed at the Edinburgh Festival in 1980 and London in 1984. An all-male version directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones was staged at the Soho Theatre in London in 2012 and 2013. In 2019, a 200-page manuscript of was discovered, entitled Clockwork Condition (written 1972-73), that is a sequel to A Clockwork Orange. PSt

Dystopia of violence, drugs, and youth gangs who speak Nadsat, an argot based on Russian. One theme that appears throughout Burgess’s works is opposition to state action, here reflected in the state’s attempts to reform the protagonist. The chapter missing from the U.S. edition and left out of the film depicts the redemption of the protagonist.