‘I Don’t Really Know How to Write This Letter’

Letters of Note:

After adapting Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for the big screen, Kubrick brought Burgess on-board to write a Beethoven-inspired Napoleon novel on which his epic could be based.

In June of 1972, Burgess supplied the filmmaker with the first half of his manuscript; Kubrick rejected it by way of the following letter, thus ending the collaboration.

★ Wednesday, 20 February 2013