CIAmind-control trials revealed assecret inspiration behind A Clockwork Orange
13October 2002
AnthonyBurgess was inspired to write his most famous novel A ClockworkOrangeby his real-life involvement in CIA-run mind-control experiments, a newbiography claims. The revelations, published next month, come as thecontroversial film version gets its first mainstream British televisionscreening. The new biography claims A Clockwork Orange'scentral theme –the use of brainwashing to quell evil impulses in the criminal mind –arosefrom Burgess's involvement with the British secret service and the CIAexperiments.It argues that many of the novel's other trademarks, including Nadsat,thefictional slang in which it is written, stem from the author's dealingswithsecret agents.
Burgess,a curmudgeonly interviewee, always refused to be drawn in any detail onhisinspiration for A Clockwork Orange. When asked about the famousscene inwhich government scientists pump images of torture into the mind of itsdelinquent antihero, Alex, to rid him of violent thoughts, he dismissedit asan idea that came to him in a dream. Now, a decade after Burgess'sdeath,respected biographer Roger Lewis believes he may have uncovered thetruth,thanks to a mysterious retired British intelligence agent.
Accordingto the anonymous source, Burgess became involved with the CIA whileworking asa Colonial Service education officer in Malaya in the 1950s. There hebecame aparty to trials for a mind-control process designed to triggeremotionalresponses in the brain using pain and pleasure – the inspiration, it isclaimed, for the chilling Ludovico Technique in A Clockwork Orange.
Theex-spy's most compelling claim was that a sequence of capital lettersseen onAlex's bedroom wall in Chapter 3 of the novel and supposedly liftedfrom Alex'sschool trophies is actually an encryption for the location of a USmilitarybase where "psychotronic warfare" experiments took place. The codedwording reads: "SOUTH 4; METRO COR-SKOL BLUE DIVISION; THE BOYS OFALPHA." According to the spy, the figure 4 refers to the conjunction offour US states, Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. To the south ofthis isa military reservation, based in a metropolitan location. The base is atraining school (skol in Russian), initially supervised by theUS Navy'sBlue Division, which experimented with the Alpha waves of the humanunconsciousness. Its name was Fort Bliss; the word "bliss" appearsrepeatedly in the chapter.
Anotherclue, Mr Lewis argues in Anthony Burgess, is the novelist's useofAmericanisms in A Clockwork Orange. Amid the Russian-inflectedflow ofNadsat are scattered words like pretzel and liquor, yet Burgess had notvisitedthe US before the novel's publication in 1962. He adds that linguisticanalysisof the writings of Burgess's alleged collaborator, the former CIAofficerHoward Roman, suggests the latter may have even worded large chunks ofthenovel himself. When Mr Lewis asked the CIA for access to filespertaining toBurgess, he was turned down with the words,"By this action, we areneitherconfirming nor denying the existence or nonexistence of such records..."