Conceptual Fiction is a regular feature, contributed by Ted Gioia, focusing on major works of fantasy, science fiction, magical realism and alternate history. These books are celebrated in recognition that literary experimentation with ways of conceptualizing reality has been as important as experimentation with language in creating fiction of lasting value. Dismissing these books as genre or escapist works has created a blind-spot in literary studies that this feature aims, in some small part, to rectify.
I was speaking to an audience in England years ago, when I was asked: “Why are American sports so violent?” To which I mounted a lukewarm defense of the NFL: “Hey, at least our violence is on the field, not in the stands”—a perhaps uncharitable reference to the tradition of soccer hooliganism, which the British have virtually elevated to a lifestyle.
But I might equally have pointed to serious British fiction. And I’m not talking about trashy supermarket novels, rather highbrow classics. Is there a more disturbingly violent novel than Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory, which The Independent picked as one of the top 100 books of the 20th century? Well, J.G. Ballard’s Crash might qualify, which not only fixates on gore and mutilation, but even aims to poeticize it. It made The Telegraph’s list of “100 Books Everyone Should Read.” (My addendum . . . but don’t drive a car for the next week.) And when British authors try their hand at a touching coming-of-age story, it comes out like Lord of the Flies or Never Let Me Go.
But then we arrive at the granddaddy of them all, Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, which took the brutal exploits of nasty punks and transformed them into the main theme for a literary symphony. As late as 1973, a bookdealer in Utah was arrested for selling a copy of this novel. Of course, Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation had created controversies of its own by then. It was condemned by the Catholic bishops in the US, and the movie was withdrawn from the UK cinemas soon after release because of allegations that it was spurring copycat crime. For more than a quarter of a century this movie was almost impossible to see in Burgess’s native country.
Article comments
1 - Rodney Welch
I was either unaware or had forgotten those comments by Burgess, but I thought the ending of the novel was more intellectually honest than the movie. Burgess pointed out in the introduction to my copy that the final chapter indicates that people can, and do, change as they mature, as creation simply seems more interesting than to destroy. To me, that's obvious. Delinquents don't have to stay delinquents. The movie, however, says that Alex's natural violent state is unchangeable, is fated, is his destiny. Burgess said he didn't think it's a true picture of human life, and I'm inclined to agree.