Anthony Burgess (1917-1993)
There
was me, that is Alex, and my three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie, and Dim, Dim
being really Dim, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our rassoodocks
what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The
Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto,
and you may, O my brothers, have forgotten what these mestos were like, things
changing so skorry these days and everybody very quick to
forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no
license for selling liquor, but there was no law yet against prodding some of
the new veshches which they used to put into the
old moloko, so you could peet it with vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which would give
you a nice quick horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog And All His Holy Angels And Saints in your left shoe with
lights bursting all over your mozg. Or you could peet milk with knives in it,
as we used to say, and this would
sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of dirty twenty-to-one, and that
was what we were peeting this evening
I'm starting off the story with.
--from
A Clockwork Orange
Born 25th February 1917. The author who will always be
remembered for his eighth book, The Clockwork
orange, was born Jack Wilson in a small house in Harpurhey,
the son of a bookkeeper and part-time pianist,
and the musician/dancer he met at the Ardwick Empire. When
he was a baby he was found lying in his cot with his mother and sister dead
beside him, both victims of Spanish flu.Burgess went to Bishop Bilsborrow Primary
School, Moss Side, Xavarian College, and Manchester University, spent six years as a war-time soldier,
and then went into education, eventually becoming education officer in Malaya and Brunei. Invalided at home in
1959 with a terminal illness, he became a professional writer in the hope that in his final year he would
provide some security for his wife. The medical diagnosis was wrong, and Burgess stayed with his new carreer,
writing more than 30 novels and other books. This prolific and often controversial writer
once created a storm when he returned to his native city and said:
'As a piece of civic
planning, or rather unplanning, I think it's terrible.'
