Episode 56: A Clockwork Orange

Wrench those eyeballs wide open for our discussion of Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), a novel about a teenage droog and his rehabilitation by a dystopian police state. We have a very hard time with the politics of this one, given that they’re wildly incoherent, but we discuss the language games, ultraviolence, the police state, and the conditions of Kids These Days. We get into the “angry young man” genre and how this novel does a pretty shitty job with what is actually a cool moment in British class politics.

We read the Norton edition, edited by Mark Rawlinson. We do not recommend Burgess’s own introduction to the book, because it ruins what remains of the novel’s fun qualities. We discuss Dick Hebdige’s germinal Subculture: The Meaning of Style (1979) and recommend it for anyone interested in cultural studies and youthful rebellion.

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