MEANING AND ORIGIN OF THE NAME "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE"
From 1985, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, 1978.
The book was called A Clockwork Orange for various reasons. I had always loved the Cockney phrase 'queer as a clockwork orange', that being the queerest thing imaginable, and I had saved up the expression for years, hoping some day to use it as a title. When I began to write the book, I saw that this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness. But I had also served in Malaya, where the word for a human being is orang.
And this, taken from the prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A play with music , Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.
These juveniles were primarily intrigued by the language of the book, which became a genuine teenage argot, and they liked the title. They did not realise that it was an old Cockney expression used to describe anything queer, not necessarily sexually so, and they hit on the secondary meaning of an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton. The youth of Malaysia, where I had lived for nearly six years, saw that orange contained orang, meaning in Malay a human being. In Italy, where the book became Arancia all' Orologeria, it was assumed that the title referred to a grenade, an alternative to the ticking pineapple.
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timeasmymeasure
Ticking Pineapple
Date: 2001-05-26 07:55 pm (UTC)MEANING AND ORIGIN OF THE NAME "A CLOCKWORK ORANGE"
From 1985, Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, London, 1978.
The book was called A Clockwork Orange for various reasons. I had always loved the Cockney phrase 'queer as a clockwork orange', that being the queerest thing imaginable, and I had saved up the expression for years, hoping some day to use it as a title. When I began to write the book, I saw that this title would be appropriate for a story about the application of Pavlovian, or mechanical, laws to an organism which, like a fruit, was capable of colour and sweetness. But I had also served in Malaya, where the word for a human being is orang.
And this, taken from the prefatory note to A Clockwork Orange: A play with music , Century Hutchinson Ltd., 1987.
These juveniles were primarily intrigued by the language of the book, which became a genuine teenage argot, and they liked the title. They did not realise that it was an old Cockney expression used to describe anything queer, not necessarily sexually so, and they hit on the secondary meaning of an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton. The youth of Malaysia, where I had lived for nearly six years, saw that orange contained orang, meaning in Malay a human being. In Italy, where the book became Arancia all' Orologeria, it was assumed that the title referred to a grenade, an alternative to the ticking pineapple.
(taken from:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Corridor/1642/aco.htm)
Re: Ticking Pineapple
Date: 2001-05-26 07:57 pm (UTC)thanks for the info! :)