[shimman]

Yeah, this is definitely a massive slight. If it was any other book I'd buy it, but when you read terms like "horrorshow," or "platty", or "droogs" in the first few paragraphs it's not hard to see why one would look up words.

Also who describes "A Clockwork Orange" as old english?

There has to be a phrase for journalists that a conclusion ready in hand but their work is just finding scant/nonexistent evidence proving such a conclusion.

Something like "parallel construction" for law enforcement.

[Jtsummers]

> Also who describes "A Clockwork Orange" as old english?

Presumably the confused student who sought out a translation.

[Brian_K_White]

The whole point of the line is to show that it was not in fact old english. That's why they wrote the line that way.

You were supposed to read that final disclosure part as a punchline which puts the students complaint into it's proper context of being ridiculous.

Instead you took it at face value and agree with the flummoxed student that it is totally unreasonable to be expected to deduce what droog meant from context.

No one ever needed those words to be translated. I promise I am no genius. I am here wasting time with comments like this on HN instead of literally anything better.

[dag100]

Could the student really not infer the meanings of those words from context? I don't think Burgess expected his readers to have a working knowledge of Russian.

[shimman]

Granted I don't know the age of the student, but I had a friend that read "A Clockwork Orange" in 8th grade. They shared the book with me and I had an extremely hard time reading it, it wasn't until I started college that I could appreciate + understand the story better. Definitely lucked out in reading an edition that had a glossary in the front.

I can totally see how a modern student today would struggle with reading complicated books.