Too much style and not enough substance
The first aspect of A Clockwork Orange that strikes the reader from page one is that the book is written in its own idiosyncratic language. The novel is narrated by Alex, a juvenile delinquent, who speaks in a futuristic slang invented by Burgess. Alex leads a gang of four who spend their nights wreaking havoc in London—beating, raping, and robbing random targets. There is certainly more to the book than that, but for those who may not have seen the film, I won’t reveal any more of the plot. Burgess injects the book with satirical social commentary on everything from the justice system to the profession of psychiatry to middle class family values.
Many science fiction writers use invented words to denote everything from futuristic technology to alien races in their novels. Books such as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or Frank Herbert’s Dune require the reader to accustom oneself to the terminology of their fictional worlds. In A Clockwork Orange, however, the entire text is written in this slanguage in which every fourth or fifth word is replaced by an invented term, even common words such as “face,” “hand,” or “guy” (“litso,” “rooker,” and “veck,” respectively). At first this hits the reader like a barrage of Mad Libs using nonsense words. After a few chapters, however, one picks up the slang and can understand what Alex is saying with little trouble. It never really comes across as realistic, however, since the slang terms sound anything but natural. Burgess apparently used Slavic words to form many of the new terms, but yet there is never any explanation for this Slavic influence on London. By the end of the book, we find out that not everyone in future London speaks this way, just some teenagers, which makes it seem even more unrealistic and unnecessary.
The slang also has the effect of deadening any emotional impact the book might deliver. Scenes that should be scary, repulsive, or funny are seen through a filter of this slang that blocks out much of their power to shock or move the reader. Much like Kubrick’s film adaptation, Burgess’s novel is notorious for its scenes of violence and rape. The book, however, comes across as tame compared to the movie, likely because of this slang effect. As a dystopian future, A Clockwork Orange isn’t shocking enough, and as a satire, it’s not funny enough.
If you take away this slang, however, what’s left is a pretty simple and predictable plot. Like the Kubrick film, most of the exciting stuff happens in the beginning of the book, while the third act makes for a relatively dull and inevitable conclusion. The film, however, has the benefit of Kubrick’s vision (or his art director’s) in depicting Alex’s future world in far more detail than Burgess describes it. The milk bar, for example, amounts to little more than the phrase “milk bar” in Burgess’s novel, while Kubrick and company crafted it into an innovative and memorable environment. A Clockwork Orange has been hailed by various critics as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, but if you read a lot of dystopian science fiction you would think there are other books in the genre more striking and influential than this one, like Huxley’s Brave New World, Orwell’s 1984, Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We, or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Probably the only people who should read A Clockwork Orange are those obsessed with Kubrick’s movie, but that same demographic is likely to find the book disappointing by comparison.
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