was only off by about 25 years about Big Bro Barack!
Posted on 05/11/2009 3:15:59 PM PDT by FromLori
In 1946 Observer editor David Astor lent George Orwell a remote Scottish farmhouse in which to write his new book, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It became one of the most significant novels of the 20th century. Here, Robert McCrum tells the compelling story of Orwell's torturous stay on the island where the author, close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book
Robert McCrum The Observer, Sunday 10 May 2009 Article history
George Orwell. Photograph: Public Domain
"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."
Sixty years after the publication of Orwell's masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, that crystal first line sounds as natural and compelling as ever. But when you see the original manuscript, you find something else: not so much the ringing clarity, more the obsessive rewriting, in different inks, that betrays the extraordinary turmoil behind its composition.
Probably the definitive novel of the 20th century, a story that remains eternally fresh and contemporary, and whose terms such as "Big Brother", "doublethink" and "newspeak" have become part of everyday currency, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been translated into more than 65 languages and sold millions of copies worldwide, giving George Orwell a unique place in world literature.
"Orwellian" is now a universal shorthand for anything repressive or totalitarian, and the story of Winston Smith, an everyman for his times, continues to resonate for readers whose fears for the future are very different from those of an English writer in the mid-1940s.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
George Orwell is one of my heroes. His fiction and non-fiction work show a man of courage and integrity.
In (late 1960’s) high school, I was taught that “1984” and “Animal House” were about right wing fascism (especially the former book). Wow! These folks really didn’t get it.
Mr. Orwell was a British Socialist, so he must have fooled a lot of brain-dead liberals. I ask people to re-read those books (as well as “Homage to Catalonia” and his essay on “political speech”) and see if they were really focused the right and not the left.
Jonah Goldberg (”Liberal Fascism”) has figured this out and wrote a book that I am hoping to read as soon as I can find the time.
Thanks for posting, it’s an interesting background to “1984” which I’d not read before.
Also interesting is that Orwell’s editor, publishers, and supporters knew instantly and in draft form that it was going to be a great book.
No, its more specific than that. Its shorthand for a regime in which the lie is decreed to be the truth, and the truth may not be spoken.
I think you mean “Animal Farm”.
Now, “Animal House” really IS about fascism.
was only off by about 25 years about Big Bro Barack!
I just re-read “1984” last week; how much Obama’s Thugs are like Big Brother, the Ministry of Love, Victory Gin, etc.
They are focused on perpetual war but reducing average lives by dulling language, culture, sex and keeping a faux patriotism.
Good, but depressing read.
Good thinking Bender!!
For Orwell, freedom of expression was not just about freedom of thought but also linguistic freedom. This term, denoting the narrow and diminishing official vocabulary, has been used ever since to denote jargon currently in vogue with those in power.
I enjoyed it. Thanks for posting.
“close to death and beset by creative demons, was engaged in a feverish race to finish the book “
Same thing to be said about U.S. Grant and his memoirs.
I recommend Orwell’s Essays published by Everyman’s Library, all 1369 pages. His prose is as good as Mencken’s. In fact, he and Mencken wrote the best prose in English in the twentieth century. Hyperbole? Exaggeration? I think not. They’re that good. It’s amazing how harshly Orwell criticized the left. Some of his most vicious and biting comments are directed toward leftists and pacifist. Good stuff, give it a look.
It is one of the great tragedies of literary history that George Orwell died so young. He is by far my favorite author. Don’t just stop at Animal Farm and 1984. Read down and Out in Paris and London and Homage to Catalonia. Just brilliant, gripping, and a pure joy to read. He was perhaps the greatest writer of the past 100 years.
For anyone who doesn't know, the "doodlebug" that killed his wife was a V-1. You could hear them coming and when the buzzing stopped you'd know they were in their terminal dive. Somewhere above you. Yeah, life under that could make you a little...tense.
“right wing fascism”
No such thing. Facists were merely socialists with nationalistic ideas.
” fact, he and Mencken wrote the best prose in English in the twentieth century”
F.Scott Fitzgerald. Wrote stories about boring crap that I read just to see how he wrote it.
Very right about the other works of Orwell. Splendid reading. I would also at the “other” works of Graham Greene.
That should be...I would also recommend the “other” works of Graham Greene.
Morning time here and all that.
Even nationalism itself has leftist origins rooted in the French Revolution.
Really? So Spartans weren’t nationalists? Sumeria wasn’t? The Roman Republic wasn’t? The majority of the Founding Fathers weren’t nationalists? Interesting.
Who knew putting your country first only goes back 200 years. How many nations were conquered/cities were wiped out before they thought to collectively fight back...stupid ancestors.
USA #1, btw. And I mean it.
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