![]() ![]() 21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at 21 you got the vote and assumed adult responsibility. Take out your pocket calculator and you will find that these add up to a total of twenty-one chapters. The book I wrote is divided into three sections of seven chapters each. A Clockwork Orange has never been published entire in America. I have a very special duty to it in the United States, and I had better now explain what this duty is. I have to go on living with A Clockwork Orange, and this means I have a sort of authorial duty to it. Kids cut their pianistic teeth on a Minuet in G which Beethoven composed only so that he could detest it. Rachmaninoff used to groan because people he was known mainly for a Prelude in C Sharp Minor which he wrote as a boy, while he works of his maturity never got into programmes. This is not an unusual experience for an artist. It seems likely to survive, while other works of mine that I value more bite the dust. ![]() ![]() I receive mail from students who try to write theses about it, or requests from Japanese dramaturges to turn it into a sort of Noh play. ![]() I should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons, but this is not permitted. It refuses to be erased, however, and for this film version of the book by Stanley Kubrick may be held chiefly responsible. I first published the novella A Clockwork Orange in 1962, which ought to be far enough in the past for it to be erased form the world's literary memory. ![]()
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