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"Descending into lava lamps and nonsense." is hardly what I'd call it. Kubrick is all about subtext.

I know I am supposed to find it deep and like it to the bitter end. And boy have I tried.

There'a lot of Kubrick I don't get. I have actually read A Clockwork Orange, the novel, and liked it despite its Burgessian lapsed catholic babble, but I intensely dislike the movie.

And don't get me started on The Shining.

What did you think of the ending difference between the book and the movie in ACO?

Conflicted, actually, as I would have to aggree with the American expurgation of the last chapter from the novel, but I sort of feel I have to take the author's view as canonical - and Burgess famously disliked the redaction.

Anyway, I gave up on deeper meaning in Burgess' work a long, long time ago. I still read him with great pleasure, but that's for the linguistic fireworks and his steamrolling, gutpunching flair for telling a story so you hear the sounds and smell the smells.

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