The American version of the book doesn't have the final chapter, and was the basis for Kubrick's film. He was aware of the final chapter but never considered using it, as he didn't agree with Burgess and thought it didn't make sense (this was also the opinion of the American editor who had the final chapter removed).
The movie does include the Ludovico technique and all the themes about free will and goodness vs the choice of goodness, it just leaves out the very unrealistic ending where Alex reforms.
I think the film is a masterpiece and the book's original ending is unrealistic nonsense. I hardly think it's the "most important part".
The "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" introduction is from November 1986. It covers the reasoning behind the shortened American edition[0], Kubrick's film, and his own feelings on the 21st chapter[1]. I think the final paragraph summarizes it well "Readers of the twenty-first chapter must decide for themselves whether it enhances the book they presumably know or is really a discardable limb. I meant the book to end in this way, but my aesthetic judgement may have been faulty" (Burgess xv).
[0] "I needed money back in 1962, even the pittance I was being offered as an advance, and if the condition of the book's acceptance was also it's truncation - well, so be it" (Burgess x-xi)
[1] "There is no hint of this change of intention in the twentieth chapter. The boy is conditioned, then deconditioned, and he foresees with glee a resumption of the operation of free and violent will. [...] The twenty-first chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle that human beings change. There is, in fact, not much point in writing a novel unless you can show the possibility of moral transformation [...] The American version or Kubrickian Orange is a fable; the British or world one is a novel" (xii)
I do think people change, but it happens slowly, not quickly. Kubrick's ending still leaves us with the ability to imagine an older, wiser, regretful Alex. But you can't credibly force that into his youth, and the movie is already 2 hours 15 mins.
He just decided at one point that his current lifestyle was boring and he wanted a change. He didn’t turn into a good guy, he just decided to go a different way. Thats the point is that he made the choice himself.
You also hear examples of "suburban father tries to make meth because of Breaking Bad" but those are one-off individuals who are probably not of sound judgment.
> Kubrick himself, in response to a series of murder trials where the defendants explicitly mentioned his work, requested the withdrawal of A Clockwork Orange in the United Kingdom, where it could not be seen again until the director’s death in 1999.
> Arguably the most notorious of all is Peter Foster, who the British press dubbed the ‘Clockwork Orange killer’.
> Foster would beat and torture women and was found guilty of murdering two of his former wives. A court heard how he would dress up as the film's protagonist, Alex, and become violent when he heard the film’s theme song.
[1] https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/a-clockwork-orange-ci...
The problem with demonizing things is that demons are cool.
If you want your condemnation to be effective in fiction you have to make the characters doing it pathetic miserable losers. You can even have the narrative support them, they win in the end, and set it up so they were right and people will still come away with that they're bad.
Having read the book and seen the movie adaptation I have to disagree. Alex is charismatic, popular, a feared leader, independent, and rebellious. The brutal rape scene while singing makes him look like an absolute badass (a la the Joker) existing well beyond the reach of society's rules and importantly, makes him look powerful. Ultraviolence sounds like an achievement in DOOM. When he's caught it's framed as a betrayal not "we finally got the bad guy." Then they make him sympathetic through the torture and weakening him and making him unable to defend himself to the point of being driven to suicide. It's harrowing, not the cathartic comeuppance of a terrible man. And then the police apologize, let him go and arrest the man he brutally beat to near death.
The narrative considers Alex to be horrible but the view as seen by the camera/reader thinks he's hot shit and a tragic victim of a dystopian society.
As another example, when you watch Dexter you're rooting for Dexter and the show makes him cool despite him ya know being a killer.
In a lot of ways I think it's actually a hallmark of media literacy that readers/viewers largely ignore the narrative as a source of moral judgment because it's fiction and we like compelling villains and instead finds it in how the characters are actually portrayed.
And authors gaining editorial control is why so many books later in a popular author's career are worse and worse - no one able to trim them.
As examples I'll pick Neal Stephenson and J.K. Rowling. Even the fans have to notice how their work has gotten bigger and sloppier.
Years later a new print included both endings and staged an essay contest to decide which is the "right" ending.
But I think that has to do with the clear change in his writing style, which has diverged from my personal tastes. So it's not a judgement call on his writing either way -- we've just grown apart.
I wouldn't call those "later writings," he's written quite a few excellent (and better) books since. Anathem, Seveneves, and Fall; or, Dodge in Hell were excellent. Termination Shock was a quick read.
I've since gone back and re-read Cryptonomicon. I don't know know if I'll redo the whole Baroque cycle, (Because it was so long,) but I do have fond memories. I suspect it's the kind of book that's better the 2nd time through.
BTW, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell ends the Baroque Cycle. Enoch Root is in that book and we figure out what he really is.
I think the Baroque Cycle was an outlier. It was long, and boring, and plodded.
Early works were good, later works were good. There wasn't a phase change and later works went downhill starting with Baroque.
Not everyone can bat a thousand.
I think the film is very good, but the book's original ending is is essential to the whole point of the story. The film is inferior to the book because it's missing.
But I'm not sure what you mean by "unrealistic". On one level, neither the book nor movie is very realistic anyway. On a deeper level, they both speak real truths.
I found the movie itself to be very unrealistic. Something in the way it looked (costumes and everything) and the way actors acted and talked made me not believe any of it. It felt more like comic movie then something that attempts to be realistic.
This is all a long way of saying that faithfulness to the source material is overrated in film. Some written works just don't work well when closely adapted to the screen. A few notable movies even manage to twist the original to express a completely different idea or theme (e.g. Starship Troopers). The original author is not some ultimate authority regarding the meaning of a work.
[1] https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-stephen-king-hated-stanley-...
I find that I'm less disappointed if I watch the film before I read the book. Frequently because if I read it first, then I always dislike the director's choice of actors. Or their choice of locations. I'm such an annoying critic.
The problem is that films are not books (shocking, I know) and what works in one medium of storytelling doesn't necessarily work in the other. As in actual translation, there has to be some liberty in how something is adapted from one form into another or else it will be very accurate but not very good.
You haven't seen Maximum Overdrive then. You fortunate, fortunate person.
Stephen King is a filmmaker because he does have one professional credit as a director. [0] The debate remains that Stephen King is probably not a good filmmaker.
amateur versus professional: King was paid so he's a professional filmmaker.
bad/unskilled versus good/talented: King showed himself to be a aesthetically bad/unskilled filmmaker.
You are offering a third axis:
"one-off" versus "career": King so far has not made a career of filmmaking and only made the one film.
In English yeah, we do tend to assume the first axis (amateur versus professional) as the "default" axis. I think this is a very useful axis to use as the default: it's the least gatekeeping and the least subjective. Have you been paid anything to do that job? Congratulations, you are a professional at it. You've done the job. Otherwise, you are an amateur, keep trying you'll get there some day.
"one-off"/"career" is an axis with more subjective judgments. (How many films does it take to call it your career? 2? 14? If you deeply and academically study films your whole life but only make one masterpiece, is that not a career effort?) I shouldn't need to explain how good/bad, skilled/unskilled are deeply subjective.
It was about disaffected youth acting out immorally because they were not given a functioning moral code? And that's what the movie showed.
Those who make progress impossible make revolt inevitable.
The usual complete and utter disregard of the actual victims (the woman raped, for example) and the victimization of the actual criminals (the rapist, for example).
It's always been the signature of intellectuals and I believe it is the reason of many things that are wrong in society.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing"
(encourage by intellectuals, who intellectualize everything, including murder and rape)
Please read my words more carefully.
A Clockwork Orange is not about a happy ending in which a young, violent and brilliant teenager finally decides to get an apartment and a job; it's about that teenager realising that he can channel his violence in a much more productive way. Or to put it more clearly: the minister that spoon-feeds him at the end is a psychopath possibly worse than Alex- but one in a suit, with vast resources and power, because he uses violence in a more covert and clever way. So the growth of the main character that we expect at the end of a good story is there, it's just not a happy ending (for us).
On top of that, it's another piece of art. Directors should be allowed to provide an opinion. Take Verhoeven's adaptation of Starship troopers as an example, which is widely a critic of the source material. They're both different stories in their own right. I enjoy both of them differently, and I'm glad Verhoeven didn't go out of his way to relay the message that militaristic dictature is the way to go.
The “point” of the book is irrelevant; chapter 21 is disconnected from the main text, set at some remove from the events in the previous chapters, and utterly banal. It’s an extended internal monologue of the most boring sort where the author states his moral.
But the best works of literature, in my opinion, transcend simple morality tales and touch something a bit more universal and hard to define in language. If your point can be summarized in a short essay, all you’ve done is illustrate an essay at length. “This novel could’ve been an email.”
What is captivating about _Clockwork_ is precisely its depiction of violence, its almost sympathetic glorification of the id. The protagonist’s unapologetic thirst for violence is what makes the novel (and movie) interesting. It’s reminding us that violence and aggression are part of the human condition, and part of the reader, too: you may recoil, but you also identify with Alex — it’s a first person account so that’s natural.
The last chapter ruins it though with petty moralizing. The voice of Alex the psychopath is far better than that of Burgess the moralist, and the novel is better for having its terminal essay removed.
The book is extremely funny, darkly funny obviously, but still uproariously absurd and filled with set pieces that possess the structure of comedy. The subject of humor is usually Alex’s misfortunes and the consequences he reaps from his terrible choices. He is a sort of George Costanza figure painted in shades of ultraviolence.
Burgess behaves as though he thinks he has written a very serious book. Of course it is possible to create a humorous satire that also has a message, e.g. Veerhoven’s Starship Troopers, but whenever I read Burgess’ commentary on Clockwork I am left with the sense that this isn’t what he was trying to do. Which leaves me thinking that he, like many creators, doesn’t actually understand why his creation was good.
I stopped talking to people about the film because I discovered that most of them didn't see it as satire or think the book (which they read as teens) was proto-fascist.
And the film. He's conditioned one way, but reverts to himself.
Morally, I'd say it's fair to call many of his great works failures: even Full Metal Jacket failed at being an anti-war movie even though it is still referenced as such. But artistically they're interesting and, if you ignore the supposed intentions and the moral implications of his failure, indeed very good.
With the last chapter intact, the story is no longer about Alex. It’s about some hypothetical futuristic society where ultraviolence is the norm and is just considered to be some coming of age rite of passage, that you eventually grow out of. It takes the violence in the story and makes it mundane and pedestrian, to the point where we have to come up with insane torturous methods like the Ludivico Technique, just as we prescribe kids Ritalin or Adderall, only we would do so just to attempt to keep things under control. It’s a story that is, frankly, ridiculous in its hyperbole, to the point that it bears little resemblance to anything but science fiction.
Kubrick and Burgess’s American editor were absolutely right to leave off the last chapter, thereby transforming the novel into the portrait of an irredeemable sociopath. A sociopath who has been enabled to a far greater extent by a simultaneously far more lenient and vindictive society than our own, yes, but therein lies the warning. While we want to redeem those criminals who are victims of circumstance, what happens when we take it too far?
By apologizing for Alex as a victim of society and circumstance, who only owes his psychopathic tendencies to said circumstances, Burgess’s novel falls flat as a criticism of society at Large (get it?)
Don’t get me wrong—I greatly enjoyed the novel, and recommend it to anyone who liked the movie. But I honestly believe the last chapter would have been best left unwritten.
According to the votes, on the one hand it's not pornography, but on the other hand it is. It just isn't when you want to point it out as being soft porn, but if you want to critique the movie vs the book, it's okay to critique it as soft porn... hrrrm
In the book at the very end Alex decides out of his own free will to stop being violent. Which is the entire point of the book: free will vs being forced to do something. It’s so powerful, I don’t think any book affected as much as that did at the time.
Kubrick focused on the violence and the rapes and by leaving out the most important part, it was more soft core porn than anything else and an abject failure in my opinion.