[interior inferior]

i first published the novella a clockwork orange in 1962, which ought to be far enough in the past for it to be erased from the world's literary memory.
it refuses to be erased, however, and for this the film version of the book made by stanley kubrick may be held chiefly responsible. i should myself be glad to disown it for various reasons, but this is not permitted.

...my new york publisher believed that my twenty-first chapter was a sellout. it was veddy veddy british, don't you know. it was bland and showed a pelagian unwillingness to accept that a human being could be a model of unregenerable evil...my book was kennedyan and accepted the notion of moral progress. what was really wanted was a nixonian book with no shred of optimism in it.
...but i do not think it is a fair picture of human life.
i do not think so because, by definition, a human being is endowed with free will. he can use this to choose between good and evil. if he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange - meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the devil or (since this is increasingly replacing both) the almighty state. it is as inhuman to be totally good as it is to be totally evil. the important thing is moral choice. evil has to exist along with good, in order that moral choice may operate. life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities. this is what the television news is all about.
unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. to devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create. we like to have pants scared off us by visions of cosmic destruction. to sit down in a dull room and compose the missa solennis or the anatomy of melancholy does not make headlines or news flashes. unfortunately my little squib of a book was found attractive to many because it was as odorous as a crateful of bad eggs with the miasma of original sin.

anthony burgess, introduction - a clockwork orange resucked