KLL

Awhile back I did a literally review for college on "A Clockwork Orange" (since I've been a MAJOR fan of Kubrick's film adaptation of the novel), but I never knew until then the most significant differential (grievous injustice) was....

I never knew in the original 1962 American pressing that the publisher omitted Chapter 21 (which was featured in all of Europes versions)....The publisher claimed then that Anthony Burgess essentially "sold-out" with the actual intended conclusion (which was finally published in the US nearly 2-3 decades later)..... Even Kubrick's version loosely depicted the American version (and for that reason excluded Chapter 21 in the process)....

Personally, I "beg to differ" with the American publisher in his view that Burgess "sold-out".... By "leaving-out" Chapter 21 it prevented the readers to discover that Alex had a "coming to age" without needing some inhumane/radical scientific measures to do so.... That to me essentially detracted away the moral that Burgess was trying to convey..... Which is why Burgess always had great disdain toward what was probably his greatest work.....

So, who here believes that Burgess was a "sell-out" or that Chapter 21 should have remained "intact"?