Well I may be getting loads of visitors here, but it doesn’t look like my friends are reading. The first post of this morning should’ve inspired some questions and I’m sure it threw some first time landers for a loop if they hadn’t read A Clockwork Orange.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I actually recognized it. I remember that reading CW, Burgess introduced the new slang gradually, so that by the time you were into the book, you knew what many of the terms meant and you could gather the meaning of the others from the context.
I do remember it being a difficult read, though.
Surprisingly I’m finding a previous reader’s notes in the margins on the meanings of some of the words but not until I’m halfway through the book and they’ve been used so many times already that they become normal. Mostly, as you say, you pick it up quickly enough from the context.