[Malesherbes]

The most compelling thing about "A Clockwork Orange" is how closely today's yobbish culture in Britain has come to resemble that exemplified by Burgess' Alex.

[Pontiac]

When Mr Lewis asked the CIA for access to files pertaining to Burgess, he was turned down with the words,"By this action, we are neither confirming nor denying the existence or nonexistence of such records ..."

Boiler plate. The CIA will answer any request for information with these words, unless the info is declassified. If the records don’t exist you get the standard reply. But of course it is sexier to suggest as the author does that the CIA is hiding information to protect a dirty secret.

[Tomalak]

The irony of "Clockwork Orange" is that it was meant to be a novel showing what was wrong with good behaviour enforced by the state upon its criminal fringe, yet I came away from the book and the film convinced it was a really good idea.

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[backhoe]

Mind Control-- Myth? Or is there more to it than meets the eye?

[lelio]

Thanks for the post. Pretty nifty:
According to the spy, the figure 4 refers to the conjunction of four US states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. To the south of this is a military reservation, based in a metropolitan location. The base is a training school (skol in Russian), initially supervised by the US Navy's Blue Division, which experimented with the Alpha waves of the human unconsciousness. Its name was Fort Bliss; the word "bliss" appears repeatedly in the chapter.

[Red Jones]

bump

[Ditto]

According to the spy, the figure 4 refers to the conjunction of four US states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. To the south of this is a military reservation, based in a metropolitan location. The base is a training school (skol in Russian), initially supervised by the US Navy's Blue Division, which experimented with the Alpha waves of the human unconsciousness. Its name was Fort Bliss; the word "bliss" appears repeatedly in the chapter.

Fort Bliss is a US Army base in Texas --- not exactly 'south" of the 4-corners area. It's more like 500 miles southeast.

[longshadow]

Another clue, Mr Lewis argues in Anthony Burgess, is the novelist's use of Americanisms in A Clockwork Orange. Amid the Russian-inflected flow of Nadsat are scattered words like pretzel and liquor, yet Burgess had not visited the US before the novel's publication in 1962.

And I'm sure that no AMERICAN BOOKS, MOVIES, MAGAZINES,or NEWSPAPERS ever got to Britian before 1962, where Burgess might have seen or read them and picked up on "Americanisms."

</sarcasm mode>