The same year he published A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess published another dystopic novel called The Wanting Seed. I loved the language of the more popular novel, but I read this other one over ten years ago, and I’m still talking about it because it was supremely awesome.
So here’s the premise. It’s London in the […]

I remember how my junialeeg grandmother was so disgusted by any “misuse” of the English language. She had perfect penmanship and wrote grammar lessons into her correspondence whenever we misused a word in our letters to her. She thought there was a correct way of saying every word and that we should never stray.
Meanwhile, I […]

Stanley Kubrick helped to immortalize A Clockwork Orange by turning it into a movie. His image of Alex and his droogs in white suits with top hats and canes, bizarre, bulging codpieces and menacing eye makeup is burned into the minds of cult fans everywhere.
The story is disturbing and thought-provoking, a commentary on human nature, […]

Before I got all sidetracked, we were in London, and it’s calling me back now. I’m planning an actual, real life trip to England in the spring, just bought my plane ticket and everything.
So, since I’ll actually be there in the not too distant future, I thought it was time to let Anthony Burgess take […]

He held out through Thanksgiving and Christmas and breathed his last on New Year’s Eve, never to see 2008. And all I could do through all of it was to sing. I’m like that little kid on About a Boy, who starts singing for no apparent reason. It’s a bizarre tic that often gets on […]