Bonus Book! A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Social Criticism (1962 - 141 pp.)

A Clockwork Orange is one of the many 20th-century classics I failed to pounce on as a reader until far too late. In A Clockwork Orange, Alex, the protagonist and narrator, navigates a Sovietized dystopian England in the book's present day (c. 1962), committing murder, rape, assault, and getting into gang wars before being locked up, treated by experimental psychiatry, and then released back into a world he no longer understands. The lack of reform Alex understands is evident in how casually he narrates these jarring events.

Alex's disconnect from any sort of political history, heritage or tradition marks him as clearly living in the now. Despite living in England, he refers to "Victoria flatblock after some victory or other", (43) apparently unaware of Queen Victoria or of any of the United Kingdom's great victories over the centuries. It is not as though Alex is completely uneducated, as he is a budding classical music expert. Crystallography, an unnamed subject of study, is lost to the sands of time due to "a poisonous young swine" destroying all the books. (107) The "F. Alexander" who writes the intra-novel book "A Clockwork Orange" is probably Alex, although this is never confirmed, and Alex refers to a different characters as its author; even so, the book is something that only exists in Alex's recounting of his age 15-19 years.* Alex plainly has no future, even at the end of the book, even after his release from his prison, when the staff list a number of jobs Alex can perform but he shows little interest in them. Equally so, Alex has no past. None of Alex's childhood prior to the start of the book is ever revealed.

The book's locations are bright in my eyes. The Duke of New York is only one word off from a restaurant/pub/bar where I used to attend events in the halcyon pre-COVID days. The Korova milk bar takes a mainstay of communist-era Poland, the milk bar, and transplants it into a dingy, gritty, impoverished England. Alex's frequent returns to these places, inevitably in search of liquid (brandy and milk, respectively - he never orders food), make him see the world through alcohol and milk. In one of Alex's more frightening pre-prison episodes, he serves Scotch to ten-year-old girls (and that's just the beginning). The night before this episode, when Alex returns home to his mother's refreshingly unadulterated glass of milk, Alex recites one of the great one-liners of the whole book: "How wicked, my brothers, innocent milk must always seem to me now." (26) Whether this one-liner is Alex's commentary on the altered state of his life, ominous foreshadowing, or both, the "always" carries forward right to end of Alex's story.

Usually, a 141-page book that flows conversationally and reads as quickly as an airport novel would be a very easy read. In A Clockwork Orange's case, what makes the book difficult to read is part of its charm: Alex's constant use of Anglo-Slavic slang. The first time you read a phrase like "there was no need from the point of view of crasting some more pretty polly to tolchock some old veck in and alley and viddy him swim in his blood while we counted the takings and divided by four, nor to do the ultra-violent on some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till's guts", (3) it is virtually incomprehensible, but Alex's linguistic foibles are quickly absorbed. Alex's countercultural way of speech is subverted near the end of the book, when Georgina says Alex "talks funny" while giggling; Pete informs her that is really how he and Alex used to talk. (138) Similarly, Dim reminds Alex that he "was young", emphasizing the past tense. (110) By the end of the book, Dim is a police officer, Alex is unemployed, and, mysteriously, Alex is also a father. Is all the slang, and by continuation Alex's attitude, swept away by the simple process of growing up?

Ease of Reading: 4

Educational Content: 3

*For another example of an intra-novel book having the same title as the book it's in, see Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, coincidentally also released in 1962.

November's Book: Fire and Blood

Fire & Blood by George R.R. Martin

Fantasy (2018 - 711 pp.)

Finally, after almost nine years, the world of A Game of Thrones comes to this blog.

Fire & Blood is the prequel* to George R.R. Martin's smash hit A Song of Ice and Fire series. Over a roughly 142-year span, an unnamed chronicler** tells a series of roughly chronological stories centering on the Targaryen monarchy. their dragons, their wars, their pinnacles and their nadirs. The chronicler discusses numerous fabricated sources, analogous to The Navidson Record in Mark Danielewski's classic horror novel House of Leaves; from the somber Septon Eustace to the bawdy Mushroom, they make entertaining additions to what otherwise could have been an encyclopedia.

The chronicle format drags the reader right into the action, blazing through Aegon's Conquest and family before listing off the greatest, cruelest and worst kings of the early Targaryens. Aegon I, astride his famed dragon Balerion, flanked by his sister-wives Visenya and Rhaenys, establishes Targaryen dominance over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.^ Maegor the Cruel is a truly formidable character, creating enemies all over Westeros who, nonetheless, never seem able to take him down. Jaehaerys I is arguably the main character of the book, having the longest and most prosperous rule; he is a favourite of mine due to his role as conciliator between various warring parties, a role I play whenever I can. Viserys I oversees the greatest proliferation of dragons in Westerosi Targaryen history, yet is unmotivated to mend the rips sprouting in his family. Prince Aemond is a prodigy-level dragonrider who enters multiple duels on dragonback and wins most of them. Princess Aerea's turn riding Balerion ends far less romantically.

Ancestors of the characters in A Game of Thrones make varying levels of cameo, often in surprising ways. The second most powerful house of Westeros is Velaryon, a house unseen in the sequential books. Starks make brief appearances, Lannisters slightly longer ones. What amazed me, though, was the nearly unbroken hundred-year span of the Baratheons serving the Targaryens as faithful allies. This especially put the events of Robert's Rebellion into greater context for me, as the rebel propagandists of A Game of Thrones make their side out to be a sworn adversary of the Targaryens. Maybe not so much...

As a general rule, the more swashbuckling a character or scene is in Fire & Blood, the more I like it. Although Martin does a great job of introducing characters like Rego Draz, the hated-but-effective Master of Coin, and does well to show how financially strained King's Landing often gets, Martin is at his best when someone is swinging a sword. Less convincing scenes include the various brothels and pleasure gardens, each of which could be any of the others, and the endless proliferation of younger siblings who no doubt end up dying in some gruesome way or another.

Martin's writing is extremely accessible, yet Fire & Blood lags when Martin introduces tidal waves of characters, sometimes to only appear in one paragraph. While it is commendable in-world that the chronicler can relate all this information, it is hopelessly confusing after a while. Worst of all, the reader cannot use Martin's dramatis personae at the back of the book to any real effect, as some of the greatest suspense comes from not knowing who will win the throne during one of many succession crises. Looking up the characters would spoil major plot points. I did double takes whenever characters had suspiciously normal-sounding names; after so many pages of characters like Visenya Targaryen, encountering characters with names like Tyler Hill or Sara Snow was jarring.

Fire & Blood is sold on the cover as showing "300 Years Before A Game of Thrones, Dragons Ruled Westeros". Naively, I assumed Fire & Blood would cover all 300 years. Instead, it covers Westeros from Aegon's Conquest up until the end of the Dance of Dragons, a bloody intra-Targaryen civil war that makes the War of the Five Kings look like a picnic by comparison. I reached the end wanting more. Compounding this shortage is the inconsistent pacing. The first 128 years of the book (1-128) take place from pages 1-390. The next fourteen years (129-142) take places from pages 391-711. What had moved at a fast clip suddenly turned into a book that was effectively about the Dance of Dragons. I liked the faster style of the first half, although the second half was interesting as well, especially the Daemon/Aemond dragon duel.

Fire & Blood is a fun read, but it is for readers who have already read the five sequential books so far. One also has to wonder why all this energy wasn't put into The Winds of Winter.^^

Ease of Reading: 7

Educational Content: 1

*Fire & Blood takes 300-158 years before A Game of Thrones. There could quite easily be a second prequel as well.

**This is the only spoiler I'll give. I thought the revelation of the chronicler's identity would be a major plot point. Whose house was this chronicler's? What motivation did the chronicler have for telling this story? Was the chronicler a Targaryen... or perhaps from a rival house, like a Stark or a Lannister? Sadly, the chronicler's identity is never revealed.

On the topic of spoilers, this is one of my extremely rare entries with essentially no pinpoint citations. Fire & Blood is so plot-packed, almost any citation feels like a spoiler.

^Except Dorne, of course. The book's numerous Dornish Wars are testament's to Dorne's ongoing independence.

^^I've ranted on Quora about the unreasonable delay of The Winds of Winter. Martin had the opportunity of a lifetime to release a new book while the HBO show was still in its run. Other than the basically coincidental release of A Dance with Dragons two months after the show's premiere, Martin did not release a sequential book during the show's run. Opportunity wasted?

Alice in Chains self-titled turns 25!

On November 7, 1995, Alice in Chains released Alice in Chains, their first full-length studio album* to hit #1 on the Billboard charts. They didn't tour for the album, in part due to singer Layne Staley's health issues, but the album flew off the shelves, often into the hands of fans who had purchased their previous albums Facelift (1990, #42) and Dirt (1992, #6). 

Alice in Chains turns 25 today.

You can listen to the full album here:

Singles include "Grind", "Heaven Beside You", and "Again". Other notable tracks include "Sludge Factory", "Head Creeps", "Frogs" and "Over Now". It's a 5-star album.

Recent years have seen a flood of Alice in Chains-related anniversaries. This year is also the 30th anniversary of Facelift, which the band has commemorated by releasing a 30th-anniversary edition, complete with special T-shirts.** There's also a "30 Days of Facelift" preceding this coming Friday's release. Earlier this year, Consequence of Sound noted the 26th anniversary of the band's 1994 EP Jar of Flies. The 2010s saw similar anniversaries, including the 25th anniversary of Dirt in 2017, the 27th anniversary of Dirt in 2019, and, curiously, the 24th anniversary of Alice in Chains last year.

I haven't seen any 25th anniversary tributes for Alice in Chains yet, so let there be at least one, no matter what the music sites of the world say (or fail to say).

Layne Staley performing live in support of Dirt in 1993. Image by Shutterstock. I would have taken a picture and posted it myself, as my photography appears in various places on this blog, but I was either five or six at the time. There was no official Alice in Chains tour, so those pictures don't exist.

*Their 1994 EP Jar of Flies hit #1. Despite its 31-minute run time (longer than Slayer's Reign in Blood, for comparison's sake), Jar of Flies was not considered a full-length album.

**Strange personal anecdote: I only own one Alice in Chains T-shirt. I bought it in Krakow, Poland, of all places. It's an extra large, yet it fits me perfectly despite the fact that I'm a medium. It has the Layne Staley-drawn sun logo from Dirt on it.

The Quilliad Issue 12: containing my horror story "Wound Salter"

The Quilliad, a Toronto-based magazine featuring emerging and established artists, has just released its 12th issue.

Among other great artists, Issue 12 features my short story "Wound Salter", in which a hopelessly doomed young woman enters into a pact with a mysterious being in 1920s Toronto. In a castle keep, the lights shine bright over the darkness outside while the Wound Salter holds his grisly court.

See Issue 12 of The Quilliad