I just discovered something more surreal than a 10 day acid trip.
Between the ages of 15 and 24 I read Anthony Burgess’ “A Clockwork Orange” at least 21 times and that was after I started keeping count.
I felt I knew Alex and Pete and Georgie and Dim. I knew them like my own hand!
Tuesday night I stopped at the library and decided to read it again, though it’s been over 20 years, to see what I thought after all this time.
I got to the final chapter where Alex jumps from a building in a suicide attempt but he didn’t “snuff it”. About this time I noticed there were more pages left to go than I remembered but I dismissed it as a glossary and read on.
At the end of this “final” chapter Alex is happily listening to classical music and imagining himself tolchocking every bolshy veck in sight and reveling in the old ultraviolence. Yes Alex was cured.
Yep the same as every other time I read the book.
I turned the page…
THERE WAS A WHOLE NEW CHAPTER!!!
Bewildered I frantically began searching for my lighter and a cigarette and my teddy bear. This was out of my experience!
“What the hell is this?” I asked myself and my teddy bear.
Without regard for calamity, famine or plague I read a chapter of the book I’d never seen before. A chapter that added a whole new dimension to the book and to the character. It even explained the esoteric title of the whole damned book!
I must tell you I almost cried! I literally almost cried when I read this. It was like finding a missing Gospel that answered all my questions. It was like discovering the truth about the Trojan War or the meaning of eternity!
After I finished the “true” final chapter I decided to read the Forward to the book, (which I never do before I read a book).
For some stupid reason the final chapter of “A Clockwork Orange” was dropped from the American version of the book!!! It wasn’t until 1986, (after the last time I read it), that the chapter was re-added.
I’m still overcoming my anxiety attack and hope to be back to normal soon.
