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Juicy Bits: Resources

 

"---the attempt to impose upon man, a creature of growth and capable of sweetness, to ooze juicily at the last round the bearded lips of God, to attempt to impose, I say, laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this, I raise my swordpen---" 

               -F. Alexander, in Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, p. 25

"The Clockwork Condition"

Anthony Burgess

The New Yorker, 1973

 

"The novelist passes the time for you between one useful action and another; he helps to fill the gaps that appear in the serious fabric of living. He is a mere entertainer, a sort of clown. He mimes, he makes grotesque gestures, he is pathetic or comic and sometimes both, he sends words spinning through the air like colored balls."

"A Clockwork Orange & the Aestheticization of Violence"
 
Alexander Cohen
Lecture notes from the "Cinema and Beyond" seminar series at UC-Berkeley, 1993
 
"Alex understands the post-industrial society; he is both a product of it, and a means for its further production. Seeking idle de-contextualized violence as entertainment becomes a means of extremely temporary control, fulfillment, and emancipation from the horrors of a dystopian society in the throes of cancerous emptying of meaning."
 
More on the aestheticization of violence
 
 
 
 
 
 

A CLOCKWORK ORANGE: Burgess and Behavioral Interventions

Bobby Newman

Department of Psychology

Queens College, CUNY

 

"Burgess . . . 'accepts the myth of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man.'  In addition to his Augustinian belief that man has fallen, however, Burgess has a great deal of . . . hope for mankind. Seemingly, each human being must find his/her own way on the basis of free choice and individual experience. If several innocents are slaughtered along the way, so it seems, then so be it: 'It is better to have our streets Infested with murderous young hoodlums than to deny individual freedom of choice.'"

"Slang"

 

1756, "special vocabulary of tramps or thieves," later "jargon of a particular profession" (1801), of uncertain origin, the usual guess being that it is from a Scandinavian source, such as Norwegian slengenamn  "nickname," slengja kjeften "to abuse with words," literally "to sling the jaw," related to Old Norse slyngva "to sling." 

 

"Slang: A History and a Defense"

Jonathon Green

The Huffington Post, 10/1/14

 

"A Defense of Slang"

Gelett Burgess

The Romance of the Commonplace, 1902

 

 

 

 

 

 

JabberwockyBY LEWIS CARROLL

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

      The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

      The frumious Bandersnatch!”

 

He took his vorpal sword in hand;

      Long time the manxome foe he sought—

So rested he by the Tumtum tree

      And stood awhile in thought.

 

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

      The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

      And burbled as it came!

 

One, two! One, two! And through and through

      The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

      He went galumphing back.

 

“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?

      Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”

      He chortled in his joy.

 

’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

      Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

      And the mome raths outgrabe.

 

 

 

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