The Most Banned Ebook of the 2024-25 Faculty 12 months: A Clockwork Orange

If you happen to hap­pen to be a highschool stu­dent in Flori­da who’s desirous to learn A Clock­work Orange, that urge could become laborious­er to sat­is­fy than you imag­ine. Antho­ny Burgess’ har­row­ing, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly inven­tive nov­el of a grim close to future has come out on prime in PEN Amer­i­ca’s lat­est rank­ing of banned books: that’s, books eliminated or pre­vent­ed even from enter­ing pub­lic college libraries, most com­mon­ly within the state of Flori­da, with Texas and Ten­nessee as run­ners-up. Fur­ther down the checklist seems anoth­er large­ly recognized dystopi­an saga, Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Story; Toni Mor­rison’s story of Depres­sion-era race rela­tions The Bluest Eye; and even such long-pop­u­lar “younger grownup” stan­dards as Judy Blume’s For­ev­er… and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wall­flower.

Since its pub­li­ca­tion in 1962, “A Clock­work Orange has confronted mul­ti­ple e book ban­ning makes an attempt as a result of intercourse­u­al vio­lence it depicts,” says Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty’s Banned Books Venture. “In 1973, a e book­vendor in Orem, Utah, was arrest­ed for promote­ing the nov­el together with two oth­er ‘obscene’ books.”

Bans fol­lowed “in 1976 in Auro­ra, Col­orado, in 1977 in West­port, Con­necti­reduce, and in 1982 in Annis­ton, Alaba­ma. As current­ly as 2019, mem­bers of the Flori­da Cit­i­zens Alliance” — in but anoth­er examination­ple of the sur­pris­ing ten­den­cy towards cul­tur­al creator­i­tar­i­an­ism within the Solar­shine State — “have lob­bied to ban the e book together with nearly one hun­dred oth­er ‘porno­graph­ic’ nov­els.”

The noto­ri­ety of A Clock­work Orange on this regard prob­a­bly owes some­factor to the steely lurid­ness of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s movie adap­ta­tion, which was banned in Eng­land by Kubrick him­self. It makes, in any case, for an iron­ic object of a e book ban, giv­en its themes. Burgess was impressed to put in writing this nov­el of juve­nile ultra-delin­quen­cy, as he explains in the inter­view clip above, by “speak within the 9­teen-six­ties of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting these younger thugs and never placing them in jail, as a result of jail is want­ed for professional­fes­sion­al crim­i­nals, however reasonably placing them via a course of con­di­tion­ing” to make them behave much less like organ­isms than machines: the “clock­work oranges” of the title. The state, it appeared, “was all too able to take over our brains and switch us into good lit­tle cit­i­zens with­out the pow­er of selection” — a course of that plau­si­bly begins by prohibit­ing the selection of learn­ing mate­r­i­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Clock­work Orange Creator Antho­ny Burgess Lists His 5 Favourite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & Extra

Antho­ny Burgess Names the 99 Finest Nov­els in Eng­lish Between 1939 & 1983: Orwell, Nabokov, Hux­ley & Extra

Why Maya Angelou’s Mem­oir I Know Why The Caged Fowl Sings Grew to become One of many Most Banned Books of All Time

The Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library Provides Each Teenag­er within the U.S. Free Entry to Cen­sored Books

America’s First Banned Ebook: Dis­cov­er the 1637 Ebook That Mocked the Puri­tans

The New York Pub­lic Library Professional­vides Free On-line Entry to Banned Books: Catch­er within the Rye, Stamped & Extra

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His tasks embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll via Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social web­work for­mer­ly often called Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.