Chapter 3 Introduction to Suck a Clockwork Orange

My novella was first published in 1962, long enough now that it has been forgotten by world literature.Yet it refuses to be forgotten, largely thanks to Stanley Kubrick's film of the same name.I myself would be more than happy to disassociate myself from it, for many reasons, but unfortunately I cannot.I've had letters from students about writing papers on it, and requests from the theater world in Japan to adapt it into a Noh play.This work seems to last forever, while other works I hold dear are gathering dust.For an artist, this is not an unusual experience.Rachmaninoff often complained that his fame was mainly due to the Prelude in C-sharp Minor he wrote as a child, while his mature works never entered the program list.Beethoven wrote the Minuet in G to despise it, but children use it for their first piano lessons.The circulation that I have had to live with means that I have some sort of authorship responsibility for the book.In America I have a special responsibility for it, which I will describe here.

Let's cut to the chase, it has never been published in full in the United States.The original book is divided into three parts, each with seven chapters.Take out the calculator and do the math, there are a total of twenty-one chapters, and twenty-one is a sign of human maturity, at least in the past, because people have the right to vote at the age of twenty-one and begin to assume the responsibilities of adults, regardless of twenty-one What kind of symbolic meaning, I used this number at first.Fiction writers like me are interested in what is called arithmetic, which is the manipulation of numbers to make them meaningful to humans.The number of chapters is never completely arbitrary.Just as a composer has a vague notion of totality and duration when he writes a score, so a novelist has a notion of length expressed in the number of chapters the work is divided into, so twenty-one chapters are important to me.

But to New York publishers, they are irrelevant.His published novel has only twenty chapters, and he insists on cutting off the twenty-first chapter.Of course, I can protest and get the manuscript published elsewhere, but considering that he has shown charity in accepting the book, other publishers in New York and Boston may kick the manuscript out.I was short of money in 1961, and even a small advance payment was given to me. If the condition of publishing this book is to abridge, then delete it.Therefore, the British book and the American book of the same name are far from each other. What's more, the rest of the world ordered the book from England, so most foreign editions, including of course French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Russian, Hebrew, Romanian, The German editions, both have the original twenty-one chapters.When Stanley Kubrick made the film, it was based on the American version, even though it was shot in England; for audiences in other countries, it seemed that the story ended prematurely.Audiences weren't clamoring for refunds, just wondering why Kubrick left The Reunion out of the movie, and people wrote to me, and I did spend a lot of the rest of my life photocopying statements about creative intent and frustrating intentions, And Kubrick and the New York publishers shamelessly enjoyed the rewards of wanton misrepresentation.Of course, life is unhappy.

What happened in chapter twenty-one?Readers now have a chance to see what it really looks like.In short, my villainous young hero grows up and tires of violence, acknowledging that human energy is used to create more than to destroy.Senseless violence is the prerogative of youth, which has plenty of energy but no talent for constructive activity.Its energies must be vented by smashing telephone booths, prying down train tracks, stealing and wrecking cars, and, of course, destroying human life is a far more satisfying activity.There will come a time, however, when violence will be seen as the product of youthful exuberance, repulsive, and the quick wit of ignorant prophets.The little hooligan in the novel suddenly realizes that he should do something in life—marry and have children, make the sweet orange of the world turn in the hands of God, and even accomplish something—such as composing music.After all, Mozart and Mendelssohn wrote immortal compositions in the teenage nachach, i.e., teenage years, while all my characters had fun punching and pumping.Ashamed to recall his destructive past, the grown-up youth needs a very different future.

There is no hint of this change of intention in Chapter 20.The child's psychological condition is hard-adjusted, then re-adjusted, and he also happily foresees the restoration of free violent will. "I'm really healed," he said, and the American version ended like this.That's how the movie ends.Chapter twenty-one gives the book the quality of a true fiction, an art founded on the principle of life's vicissitudes.Unless it can show that the protagonist or character has the possibility of moral transformation and intellectual growth, there is actually little point in creating a novel.Even trash bestsellers can show that people change.If the novel cannot show change, but only shows that the character of the characters is fixed, rigid, and irreversible, then it leaves the field of fiction and enters the field of allegory or allegory.The American or film versions are fables, while the British or cosmopolitan versions are fiction.

The New York publishers thought my twenty-first chapter was a sham.It's the very British way, you know that?It is bland and dull, like the Pelagianism of inherent goodness and free will, unwilling to admit that man can be a model for assessing evil and not being good.What he meant was that the Americans were tougher and more able to face reality than the British.They soon face reality in Vietnam.My book is Kennedyian, embracing the notion of moral progress; what is actually needed is a Nixonian book, with no room for optimism.Let us let the wickedness come alive in every line; until the last line, mocking all traditional beliefs, Judah, Christian, Moslem, and Shaw, and talking about how anyone can improve himself.This kind of book will be a sensation in the world, and it is.But I don't think that's a fair picture of life.

I think so because man is endowed with free will by definition, and can choose good and evil accordingly.A person who can do only good, or only evil, is a clockwork orange—that is to say, he is organic in appearance, seems to have lovely colors and juices, but is actually a mere clockwork toy, by God, The devil or the omnipotent state (which has increasingly replaced the former two) is playing tricks. Being completely good is as inhuman as being completely evil. The important thing is the right to choose morally.Evil must coexist with good in order to exercise moral choice, and human life is maintained by the sharp opposition of moral entities.That's all the TV news says, and unfortunately, we're so guilty of original sin that we think evil is alluring, that destruction is easier and more spectacular than creation.We like to watch the illusion of the universe falling apart, even if it makes our pants drag on the floor.Sitting down in a boring room to compose "The Solemn Mass" and "The Anatomy of Depression" won't make headlines, won't make it into a TV spot.Unfortunately, my little book of satire has attracted many people, because it reeks of original sin like a basket of villains.

It might seem pretentious or Pollyanna to deny that the book was written with the intention of stimulating the reader's voyeurism.My own inherited original sin is healthy, which is reflected in the book. I like to watch others burn, kill and rape. Because of the inherent cowardice of the novelist, he fakes the crimes he dare not commit on fictional characters.But the book also has a moral lesson in it, the feeble traditional notion of emphasizing the fundamental importance of moral choice.This lesson appears out of place, and for this reason I am inclined to belittle the impossibility of art in such a didactic work.The task of the novelist is not to preach, but to show.I have shown enough, but the barrier of newly created foreign words is very obstructive, which is another sign of cowardice, and I use Russian-tinged English-Nachach to moderate the explicit response that pornographic descriptions may cause, It turns the book into a linguistic adventure.People prefer to watch movies because they are intimidated by the language of novels, which is normal.

I don't think it is necessary to remind readers what the meaning of the title is.A clockwork orange itself does not exist, but old Londoners use it as a metaphor.Its meaning is rather weird, and it is always used to describe strange things. "He's as queer as a clockwork orange" means that he is so weird.Although the word queer had a homosexual connotation in English before the introduction of restrictive legislation, it is not mainly referred to here. It is translated as Aranciaa Orologeria (clock orange) in Italian and Orange Mecanique (mechanical orange) in French, so continental Europeans would Understanding the possible resonance in Cockney, I thought it was a timed grenade, a cheap coconut grenade.I meant it to signify the application of mechanistic morality to succulent living organisms.

Readers of chapter twenty-one must decide for themselves whether it enhances the appeal of a novel they may be familiar with, or is a limb that can be amputated. This is my intention for the book to end, but my aesthetic judgment may not be correct, writer Few get their work right, but so do critics.When Pilate appointed Jesus as the king of the Jews, he said, "What I have written cannot be changed." We can destroy what has been written, but we cannot overturn and rewrite.I indifferently (a tactic adopted by British author Dr. Johnson) leave what I write to be judged by the 1/10000000th of the American population who cares about it, eat this sweet orange, or spit it out Well.As you wish.