Clockwork Orange Influence

Though primarily known for his novel A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess was accomplished in many literary pursuits. Besides being a novelist he was also a poet, composer, playwright, and a critic. With a literary career that spans over three decades he has published dozens of literary pieces and hundreds of musical composition. Much of the influence for these writings came from his early life and his experiences as a young adult. A Clockwork Orange was the first non-school assigned novel I had ever read on my own. It was also where my fascination and then ultimately love for dystopian societies would originate. Being I was only nine when I first read the novel, I'm almost positive I didn't readily comprehend the major themes throughout the book. What I do remember clearly was Burgess' use of language in his book. His creation of Nadsat for the novel is what drew me into this fictional world. When I reread the novel a couple of years later it re-ignited my interest in Burgess and I became curious of some of his other works. The next novel I read was Earthly Powers. Again, Burgess' language is what I became fascinated with, but for an entirely different reason from A Clockwork Orange. Where he utilized a fictional …show more content…
He father also worked as a door-to-door salesman. Though his parents were musically inclined and would later live above a pub where music was prevalent, he didn't care for it much. In his book This Man & Music Burgess details the exact moment he fell in love with music, "...a quite incredible flue solo, sinuous, exotic, erotic. I was spellbound...Eight minutes after the opening flute theme the announcer told me I had been listening to Claude Debussy's L'Après-midi d'un Faune. There is, for everybody, a first time. A psychedelic moment...an instant recognition of verbally inexpressible spiritual realities, a meaning for the term beauty."