Editing A Clockwork Orange (novel) (section)

===Writer's appraisal===
Burgess dismissed ''A Clockwork Orange'' as "too didactic to be artistic".<ref>''A Clockwork Orange'' (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback) by Anthony Burgess, Blake Morrison xxii</ref> He said that the violent content of the novel "nauseated" him.<ref>Calder,, John Mackenzie, and Anthony Burgess. "Ugh". ''The Times Literary Supplement'', 2 January 1964, p. 9.</ref>

In 1985, Burgess published ''Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence'' and while discussing ''[[Lady Chatterley's Lover]]'' in his biography, Burgess compared the notoriety of [[D. H. Lawrence]]'s novel with ''A Clockwork Orange'': "We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a ''jeu d'esprit'' knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me until I die. I should not have written the book because of this danger of misinterpretation, and the same may be said of Lawrence and ''Lady Chatterley's Lover''."<ref>''Flame into Being: The Life and Work of D. H. Lawrence'' (Heinemann, London 1985) Anthony Burgess, p 205</ref>