Nineteen Eighty-Four sucks
praguestepchild
I don't understand this obsession with dystopian didactic novels. Do
any of these pretentious idiots who list 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and
'Fahrenheit 451' as some of the greatest books ever written actually read?
'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is the worst book Orwell wrote, and 'Fahrenheit
451' is the worst book that Bradbury ever wrote.
Make a list of *classic* dystopian didactic novels and you've got a list
of some of the shittiest novels ever written. 'Atlas Shrugged', dross,
'The Handmaid's Tale', bilge, 'Player Piano', double dross, 'Brave New
World', ... uhm, well hold on a minute.
Now 'Brave New World' isn't exactly the greatest book written, but it is
the best didactic dystopian book ever written. Firstly, because it is
actually pretty well written, and doesn't quite hammer the reader over
the proverbial head with its didactic point. This probably explains why
it is always listed much further down than 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'. But
the more important reason is that it was by far the most prescient.
Literature is not being destroyed by burning books or doublespeak, but
by short attention spans.
The irony is, these intellectual midgets who go around listing 'Nineteen
Eighty-Four' as the best book ever written do so because they've grown
up in A Brave New World.
Not all dystopian books are awful, of course. When a book is an
extension of the authors world view such as Phillip K. Dick's paranoia
and belief in the questionable nature of reality, some very interesting
dystopias can emerge. But when an author sets out in a grim way to
teach the reader as if they were a recalcitrant 5-year-old (Ayn Rand
especially springs to mind), that author and everyone else who lauds
this crap as classic literature can go fuck themselves.
--
\\\\sean////
Kent Paul Dolan
> Do any of these pretentious idiots who list
> 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'Fahrenheit 451' as
> some of the greatest books ever written actually
> read?
Yes we do. More importantly, we read with
understanding, something you should really try
before criticizing them.
_1984_ is an object lesson in the limitlessness of
the behaviors justifiable to evil mated with power,
being replayed in current events.
_Farenheit 451_ is a novel of the "trends already
evident" near future and of "fundamentalist
bookburnings in the square" current events.
Now go read _1984_ again, and think -- offshore war
prisoner torture facilities where none of the
civilized rules of engagement of international law
are allowed to be considered, where horrific means
are entirely and fulsomely justified by purportedly
attainable good ends -- and perhaps you will gain
some grasshopper-scale enlightenment on the lesson
the book conveys, and see just how prescient George
Orwell has eventuated to be.
Now go read _Farenheit 451_ again, and see as well
how prescient Bradbury has turned ou to be in his
morality tale of the dangers of permitting the habit
of censorship and the habit of intolerance of
conflicting ideas to invade a society.
xanthian, who read both novels for the first time
long, long ago, and has watched their predictions
unfold unflaggingly over the intervening decades.
Strangely enuogh, it is less than two months since
the announcement of a wall sized TV monitor capable
of depicting an elephant at full scale.
Strangely enough, my cable TV supplier already
furnishes "push button interactive" TV, and equally
strange beelzebub is one of many using voice input
technology that would make even that button push
unnecessary.
Strangely enough, "interactive limited selection
story lines" have existed in print novels for
decades, and in computer games since "Adventure" in
the early 1980s.
Strangely enough, Tivo-scale local video storage
sufficient for limitedly interactive movies has
existed for years.
Put those all together, a "mere matter of
engineering" , and you have Bradbury's limitedly
interactive video walls available constructed
entirely from current technology.
Funny how successful his predictions look when
analyzed in detail.
praguestepchild
> praguestepchild <praguestepchild @ volny.cz> wrote:
>
>> Do any of these pretentious idiots who list
>> 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'Fahrenheit 451' as
>> some of the greatest books ever written actually
>> read?
>
> Yes we do. More importantly, we read with
> understanding, something you should really try
> before criticizing them.
Yes, I see your point, I should try and understand the subtle points
these books are trying to make.
Let me guess, the fact that they are ham-handedly overdone, my original
point, the fact that they routinely appear at the top of great
literature lists despite the fact that they are boring books written by
extremely talented authors, this is all moot, because they are somehow
relevant to our society, nay relevant, but extremely prescient.
>
> _1984_ is an object lesson in the limitlessness of
> the behaviors justifiable to evil mated with power,
> being replayed in current events.
>
> _Farenheit 451_ is a novel of the "trends already
> evident" near future and of "fundamentalist
> bookburnings in the square" current events.
'1984' is an object lesson? Thanks for the news flash, that's why I
described it as a didactic novel. Interested readers might want to
consult the original post, of which Ken felt it necessary to delete any
material which doesn't prop up his soap box.
I also mentioned the irony of an ADD generation growing up in A Brave
New World then saying that '1984' is the greatest novel ever written.
>
> Now go read _1984_ again, and think -- offshore war
> prisoner torture facilities where none of the
> civilized rules of engagement of international law
> are allowed to be considered, where horrific means
> are entirely and fulsomely justified by purportedly
> attainable good ends -- and perhaps you will gain
> some grasshopper-scale enlightenment on the lesson
> the book conveys, and see just how prescient George
> Orwell has eventuated to be.
I read a lot. More than most people I've met. I suppose it is possible
that you've read more than me, but I doubt it.
Why not dip into a bit of history before you decide that the world has
descended into some sort of Orwellian chaos (and that Orwell was some
sort of prescient genius?) You seem fixated on US transgresses of Human
Rights so I would recommend starting out with Gore Vidal's books on
American History, especially focusing on Lincoln.
>
> Now go read _Farenheit 451_ again, and see as well
> how prescient Bradbury has turned ou to be in his
> morality tale of the dangers of permitting the habit
> of censorship and the habit of intolerance of
> conflicting ideas to invade a society.
Again, you might want to check your history especially re: Lincon and
Jefferson. You are defending a badly written book (and condescending to
tell me to read it again) for being prescient of censorship.
But let's forget about Jefferson's fascist tendencies for a moment.
You haven't the faintest notion of what censorship is. I live in a
country (the Czech Republic) where censorship is a reality. No, there
is no burning of books as in Bradbury's simplistic novel. Instead there
is a weak press that is a beholden to the political establishment.
This is the reality of modern censorship, and there is no simplistic
burning of books involved.
--
\\\\sean/////
Kent Paul Dolan
prior article is done here only because Sean
pretended that following Usenettiquette to snip parts
not being answered is somehow invidious behavior.]
praguestepchild <praguestepchild @ volny.cz> wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> praguestepchild <praguestepchild @ volny.cz> wrote:
>>> Do any of these pretentious idiots who list
>>> 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and 'Fahrenheit 451' as
>>> some of the greatest books ever written actually
>>> read?
>> Yes we do. More importantly, we read with
>> understanding, something you should really try
>> before criticizing them.
> Yes, I see your point, I should try and understand
> the subtle points these books are trying to make.
> Let me guess, the fact that they are ham-handedly
> overdone, my original point, the fact that they
> routinely appear at the top of great literature
> lists despite the fact that they are boring books
> written by extremely talented authors, this is all
> moot, because they are somehow relevant to our
> society, nay relevant, but extremely prescient.
"Great literature" is not exempt from being
tediously boring by onsies to later generations, or,
for example, _The Great Gatsby_ would never qualify
as "great literature". That novel is so tedious that
in half a dozen tries I could never get even half
way though it.
"Not boring" is hardly a major criterion for being
adjudged "great literature", since "boring" is
entirely subjective to the individual reader.
>> _1984_ is an object lesson in the limitlessness
>> of the behaviors justifiable to evil mated with
>> power, being replayed in current events.
>> _Farenheit 451_ is a novel of the "trends already
>> evident" near future and of "fundamentalist
>> bookburnings in the square" current events.
> '1984' is an object lesson? Thanks for the news
> flash, that's why I described it as a didactic
> novel. Interested readers might want to consult
> the original post, of which Ken(sic) felt it
> necessary to delete any material which doesn't
> prop up his soap box.
Not much acquainted with Usenet posting guidelines
then, are you?
* Do not include the entire article that you are
replying to. Cut down the part that you
include to the absolute minimum needed to
provide context to your reply.
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers/Hints_on_writing_style_for_Usenet
Read that again: ABSOLUTE MINIMUM.
Funny how you found it entirely convenient in your
response unblushingly to remove all the voluminous
evidence I provide on behalf of both _1984_ and
_Fahrenheit 451_ being precient, yet found the time
to whine that I had not included every precious word
of your OP despite that Usenet convention for the
two dozen years I have been a participant here
directly forbids doing so. Apparently to you
morality is a steeply sloped concept, useful only
when it slides things your way, otherwise not to be
employed or even noticed.
> I also mentioned the irony of an ADD generation
Well, no, you didn't. Those same readers can scan
your OP for any mention of "an ADD generation".
http://groups.google.com/group/talk.bizarre/msg/d4fe382580169fe8?dmode=source
> growing up in A Brave New World then saying that
> '1984' is the greatest novel ever written.
I suspect that "the greatest novel ever written" is
entirely a matter of dispute in the eyes of every
list maker. _1984_ is surely _among_ the great
novels ever written, in any language, but I could
put, for example _War and Peace_ considerably
higher on my personal list.
>> Now go read _1984_ again, and think -- offshore war
>> prisoner torture facilities where none of the
>> civilized rules of engagement of international law
>> are allowed to be considered, where horrific means
>> are entirely and fulsomely justified by purportedly
>> attainable good ends -- and perhaps you will gain
>> some grasshopper-scale enlightenment on the lesson
>> the book conveys, and see just how prescient George
>> Orwell has eventuated to be.
> I read a lot. More than most people I've met. I
> suppose it is possible that you've read more than
> me, but I doubt it.
Well, I used to read several novels or textbooks _a
day_, but my reading has slowed down a bit with the
onset of some of the inconveniences of advanced age,
though a recent three day span did find me reading
2600 pages of light fiction.
> Why not dip into a bit of history before you
> decide that the world has descended into some sort
> of Orwellian chaos (and that Orwell was some sort
> of prescient genius?)
I'm not contending that the world has somehow
recently descended into chaos. I fully believe that
it never has _emerged_ from chaos. I am contending
that Orwell's prediction of mind control by direct,
government mediated torture, aimed primarily at his
own government's likely future, is spot on for the
current behavior of the US government.
> You seem fixated on US transgresses of Human
> Rights
No, I'm just contending that such trangressions meet
the criterion of being in consonance with Orwell's
prediction of the future behavior of a major world
power.
I'm well aware that however egregious US violations
of treaties on human rights may be, there are many
other nations that make the US look positively
_civilized_ compared to their much worse such
behavior, "civilized" being something that the US is
not at all now, and may never have been.
I felt more that we in the US were a bastion of
civilized behavior back in the 1950s. That feeling
by me that things were better some time ago may
indeed reflect reality, or may be merely the usual
current-dystopia past-utopia view so typical of the
aged views of the prevailing situation during their
own youth.
> so I would recommend starting out with Gore
> Vidal's books on American History, especially
> focusing on Lincoln.
No thanks. While he is a respected historian, Vidal
is turgidly unreadable _to me_, and predicting the
past isn't really the current subject matter in any
case.
>> Now go read _Farenheit 451_ again, and see as well
>> how prescient Bradbury has turned ou to be in his
>> morality tale of the dangers of permitting the habit
>> of censorship and the habit of intolerance of
>> conflicting ideas to invade a society.
> Again, you might want to check your history
> especially re: Lincon and Jefferson.
This red herring is pertnent to the current
discussion _how_, exactly? "Go away and waste your
time doing something completely orthogonal to the
current discussion, where I feel I am losing ground
and would rather distract you from the discussion"
is a frequent Usenet intellectually dishonest debate
tactic, but that doesn't make me want to buy into it
just because _you_ use it.
> You are defending a badly written book (and
> condescending to tell me to read it again) for
> being prescient of censorship.
I dispute that it is badly written, and suggest that
you read it until you understand yourself why others
find it such a powerful foretelling. You are
obviously within your rights to tell me in response
to go to hell, but that doesn't make your original
contentions any less narrow-minded and parochial,
nor does it make your comparatively (to the list
makers) uneducated evaluation of these books
correct for any audience outside its author.
And again, reading books of history that document
some kinds of past misbehaviors of governments is
_not_ the same thing as reading books of real
predictive power that documented _before the fact_
what have become current frequent misbehaviors of
governments or behaviors of societies.
> But let's forget about Jefferson's fascist
> tendencies for a moment.
Especially as they are red herrings dragged in by
you to bolster your tottering arguments, having zip
point zero to do with this discussion.
> You haven't the faintest notion of what censorship
> is.
I am always bemused by those who think they can
strengthen their positions by claims that they can
read my mind. Making yourself look an utter public
fool is _not_ EVER supportive to your positions in
an open Usenet discussion, so you might want to
abandon that tactic in future confrontations.
> I live in a country (the Czech Republic) where
> censorship is a reality. No, there is no burning
> of books as in Bradbury's simplistic novel.
> Instead there is a weak press that is a beholden
> to the political establishment.
Which same contention of self-censorship is daily
bruited, especially by foreign media, and correctly,
as true about the US media. Do you really think the
truckling of your press to the monied interests is
somehow unique to the Czech Republic? It is instead
an inevitable, deeply entrenched, and utterly
worldwide phenomenon.
> This is the reality of modern censorship, and
> there is no simplistic burning of books involved.
Perhaps not where you live, but here in the US,
literal book burnings are an ongoing, usually
"somewhere inside the US borders several times a
year", phenomenon of our system wherever gross
intolerance to opposing viewpoints is actively
encouraged and strengthened by those who stand to
profit by such intolerance, and where book burnings
are the ritual celebration of such intolerance by
its practitioners.
And by the way, censorship by self-censorship is the
"simplistic" one about which to worry, it is an
unavoidable outcome of pure economics winning out
over idealism, an unequal battle.
Book burnings are the more important symptom,
because they, like cross-burnings and church
bombings, are a highly visible piece of evidence
that intolerance has become both entrenched and
accepted.
It is actually an indication that the US is ever so
slightly _improving_ in the area of some kinds of
institutionalized intolerance, that the perpetrator
of the Birmingham Alabama church bombing that killed
four black girl choir members was finally brought to
some kind of accountability by the legal system, albeit
only decades later when the original cachet of his
murderous behavior had evaporated away.
xanthian.
nikolai kingsley
>> Yes we do. More importantly, we read with
>> understanding, something you should really try
>> before criticizing them.
>
> Yes, I see your point, I should try and understand the subtle points
> these books are trying to make.
right. and ending the novel with the main character hanging himself is
subtle. whoo boy, didn't see that one coming!
Ace Lightning
>Put those all together, a "mere matter of
>engineering" , and you have Bradbury's limitedly
>interactive video walls available constructed
>entirely from current technology.
>Funny how successful his predictions look when
>analyzed in detail.
well, Bradbury's imagined interactive-life-size-TV rooms
were only tangentially related to the book-burnings of
_Fahrenheit 451_ (which was supposedly the temperature at
which book paper catches fire, but there are all different
kinds of "book paper", and, besides, 451 F. is just one
degree hotter than the temperature for baking certain kinds
of pastry).
presumably, the suppression of reading led people to use
the interactive-TV things for entertainment instead. but,
even without book burnings and bannings (in this era,
when a book is banned by some group, it immediately starts
flying off the store shelves), people have been turning
to TV for entertainment instead for fifty years already.
and now that i think about it, the concept is an awful lot
like the Star Trek holodeck...
Ken Johnson
that it made a good couple of points. The faking of events and news
stories to fit the demands of the television service is an accurate
prediction, but dystopic novels aren't meant to make predictions.
They're meant to comment on current events, personalities and the
stupid, wicked things they get up to when they think we aren't making
notes.
I have read Nineteen Eighty Four, and I think it is an excellent
pastiche of the way the Labour Party was behaving at the time. It is,
without doubt, one of the most influential books ever written, and it
is written in the clearest and most limpid style anyone has ever
achieved. If you haven't read George Orwell's other journalism, you
miss most of what he is saying in Nineteen Eighty Four. You can
classify Nineteen Eighty Four as a dystopic novel if you want, but for
George Orwell it is clear that the life led by the proletariat at the
time _was_ a dystopia already. "The Road to Wigan Pier" is much
underrated and probably the most important precursor of Nineteen
Eighty Four.
I never understood the point of Brave New World.
Ken Johnson
Kent Paul Dolan
> I never understood the point of Brave New World.
"Hedonism will win."
HTH
xanthian.
Kent Paul Dolan
> presumably, the suppression of reading led people
> to use the interactive-TV things for entertainment
> instead. but, even without book burnings and
> bannings..., people have been turning to TV for
> entertainment instead for fifty years already.
That is certainly true.
I was a bit horrified to see, in the currently
replaying TV "human footprint" offering, presumably,
from the things consumed, really "the American human
footprint", that the expected "books read in a
lifetime" was 462. I read far more novels than that
before I was a teenager and before I learned speed
reading.
Of course, that was a squinch over 50 years ago, too.
Literacy: use it or lose it.
xanthian.
praguestepchild
> [twit level nettiquette-violating full quote of the
> prior article is done here only because Sean
> pretended that following Usenettiquette to snip parts
> not being answered is somehow invidious behavior.]
Yes, well when you delete then crosspost to three other groups, I do
consider that rather cheap.
>
> praguestepchild <praguestepchild @ volny.cz> wrote:
>> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>>> praguestepchild <praguestepchild @ volny.cz> wrote:
>
>
>> Yes, I see your point, I should try and understand
>> the subtle points these books are trying to make.
>
>> Let me guess, the fact that they are ham-handedly
>> overdone, my original point, the fact that they
>> routinely appear at the top of great literature
>> lists despite the fact that they are boring books
>> written by extremely talented authors, this is all
>> moot, because they are somehow relevant to our
>> society, nay relevant, but extremely prescient.
>
> "Great literature" is not exempt from being
> tediously boring by onsies to later generations, or,
> for example, _The Great Gatsby_ would never qualify
> as "great literature". That novel is so tedious that
> in half a dozen tries I could never get even half
> way though it.
>
> "Not boring" is hardly a major criterion for being
> adjudged "great literature", since "boring" is
> entirely subjective to the individual reader.
It's all relative, blah blah blah, one man's meat is another's poison,
yes, thanks for that. Here's my point: *all* didactic dystopian
literature sucks. Is that my opinion? Obviously.
But anyone I've ever met who has claimed 1984 is their favorite book was
an intellectual snob who didn't actually read books. And it's not just
1984, there's a whole genre of this crappy literature that is somehow
considered classic, merely because it beats us over the head with it
point, rather like a Saturday Night Live skit.
Want to read a good book by Orwell? 'Down and Out in Paris in London'.
His essays are fantastic also, but 1984 sucks.
> Not much acquainted with Usenet posting guidelines
> then, are you?
>
> * Do not include the entire article that you are
> replying to. Cut down the part that you
> include to the absolute minimum needed to
> provide context to your reply.
>
> ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/news.announce.newusers/Hints_on_writing_style_for_Usenet
>
> Read that again: ABSOLUTE MINIMUM.
I get the feeling you used to get beaten up a lot as a child for being a
tattle-tail.
>
> Funny how you found it entirely convenient in your
> response unblushingly to remove all the voluminous
> evidence I provide on behalf of both _1984_ and
> _Fahrenheit 451_ being precient, yet found the time
> to whine that I had not included every precious word
> of your OP despite that Usenet convention for the
> two dozen years I have been a participant here
> directly forbids doing so. Apparently to you
> morality is a steeply sloped concept, useful only
> when it slides things your way, otherwise not to be
> employed or even noticed.
Oh Christ, OK, you are the expert on USENET, and I am immoral. There,
are you happy?
>
>> Why not dip into a bit of history before you
>> decide that the world has descended into some sort
>> of Orwellian chaos (and that Orwell was some sort
>> of prescient genius?)
>
> I'm not contending that the world has somehow
> recently descended into chaos. I fully believe that
> it never has _emerged_ from chaos. I am contending
> that Orwell's prediction of mind control by direct,
> government mediated torture, aimed primarily at his
> own government's likely future, is spot on for the
> current behavior of the US government.
Yes, well there's the gist of it. You suffer from paranoid delusions.
I don't. You think 1984 was fantastic because it was prescient, I think
it sucks. Ditto for both of us for Fahrenheit 451.
I'm not going to convince you that they aren't all out to get us, and
you aren't going to convince me they are.
So let me just say that out of all these dystopian books with a
heavy-handed lesson, the one that comes closest to today's society is 'A
Brave New World'.
Example:
Western college kids use their parents credit cards to buy masks from a
comic book to protest against Scientology, a silly little religion most
famously promulgated by a few bad (albeit popular) actors. They then
post these pictures of themselves protesting to all their little blogs
so they can show the world how political they are. Then they go off to
a rave where they can take ecstasy and dance to really awful repetitive
music and congratulate each other.
What part of this resembles '1984' or 'Fahrenheit 451'? Is their free
speech being trampled? Are they beaten down by a totalitarian government?
No, the only fascism they experience is the strict code of political
correctness. Instead of hiding their thoughts from Big Brother, they
are actively trying to post every inane thought they ever had to their
tedious blogs.
The death of Literature, should it come, which I seriously doubt, will
come from frivolity, not from an evil totalitarian government.
Does that make 'Brave New World' the best book ever written?
Naw.
>
>> Again, you might want to check your history
>> especially re: Lincon and Jefferson.
>
> This red herring is pertnent to the current
> discussion _how_, exactly? "Go away and waste your
> time doing something completely orthogonal to the
> current discussion, where I feel I am losing ground
> and would rather distract you from the discussion"
> is a frequent Usenet intellectually dishonest debate
> tactic, but that doesn't make me want to buy into it
> just because _you_ use it.
No, it's not a red herring. People are constantly acting as if they
live in exceptional times. This tends to reinforce their belief that
things are teetering on calamity. A knowledge of the violations of free
speech committed by these icons adds perspective.
This is why I don't see the US as teetering on the edge of some sort of
'Fahrenheit 451' dystopia. Free Speech is really, really important,
that is without a doubt. It is a big problem in Russia at the moment,
and is a problem here in Eastern Europe.
>> You are defending a badly written book (and
>> condescending to tell me to read it again) for
>> being prescient of censorship.
>
> I dispute that it is badly written, and suggest that
> you read it until you understand yourself why others
> find it such a powerful foretelling. You are
> obviously within your rights to tell me in response
> to go to hell, but that doesn't make your original
> contentions any less narrow-minded and parochial,
> nor does it make your comparatively (to the list
> makers) uneducated evaluation of these books
> correct for any audience outside its author.
I've read almost everything Orwell ever wrote, with a special love of
his essays and I've read most everything Bradbury wrote before say,
1990, and I find both of these 'classics' to be the worst of their oeuvre.
Making iconoclastic contentions is neither narrow-minded nor parochial.
Saying that 1984 is your favorite book because it is one of these
books that all intellectuals supposed to like, is.
>
> And again, reading books of history that document
> some kinds of past misbehaviors of governments is
> _not_ the same thing as reading books of real
> predictive power that documented _before the fact_
> what have become current frequent misbehaviors of
> governments or behaviors of societies.
And again, being aware of history grants one perspective, helping to
dispel paranoid notions that one's current government is exceptionally
stupid, corrupt, divisive, etc.
Besides, 1984 was published in 1949. It more closely described the rash
of totalitarian governments behind the newly formed Iron Curtain than
anything today.(with the obvious exception of North Korea)
>
>> But let's forget about Jefferson's fascist
>> tendencies for a moment.
>
> Especially as they are red herrings dragged in by
> you to bolster your tottering arguments, having zip
> point zero to do with this discussion.
>
It seems to be de rigour for people who drag in logical fallacies
nowadays when they aren't really appropriate. Straw dog is the one most
abused, I believe. I made it quite clear why historical precedents are
not a red herring.
>> You haven't the faintest notion of what censorship
>> is.
>
> I am always bemused by those who think they can
> strengthen their positions by claims that they can
> read my mind. Making yourself look an utter public
> fool is _not_ EVER supportive to your positions in
> an open Usenet discussion, so you might want to
> abandon that tactic in future confrontations.
If you want to make an ad hominem attack, just do it, don't call someone
an utter fool and then try and couch it as patronizing advice.
Seriously, it makes you look like a whiny bitch.
I'm going to leave the rest of it because I have to feed my kid and I
don't see the point. You think the press is beholden to special
interests, I don't. Yes, they are somewhat, they are far from perfect
that's for sure but I don't see them as teetering on a 1984 precipice.
The recent explosion of the blogosphere has certainly made the old style
press sit up and take notice. I don't think either one of us is going
to change their mind harping about it on Usenet.
--
\\\\sean////
praguestepchild
>
> I have read Nineteen Eighty Four, and I think it is an excellent
> pastiche of the way the Labour Party was behaving at the time. It is,
> without doubt, one of the most influential books ever written, and it
> is written in the clearest and most limpid style anyone has ever
> achieved. If you haven't read George Orwell's other journalism, you
> miss most of what he is saying in Nineteen Eighty Four. You can
> classify Nineteen Eighty Four as a dystopic novel if you want, but for
> George Orwell it is clear that the life led by the proletariat at the
> time _was_ a dystopia already. "The Road to Wigan Pier" is much
> underrated and probably the most important precursor of Nineteen
> Eighty Four.
True, it was hugely influential, but that's not always a good thing. If
people use such a dystopian vision as a crutch, a shortcut for not
evaluating the complexities of what's wrong with their world it becomes
a bad thing.
Besides, if a book should be judged as Literature, merely by it's
influence then 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' ought to be given pride of place.
It seems like a lot of people list '1984' as their favorite book for the
same reason they might list 'Citizen Kane' as their favorite movie or at
least as the greatest movie ever made.
I do consider Orwell to be one of the great writers of the 20'th
century, just not one of the great fiction writers of the 20'th century.
--
\\\\sean////
Mikhail Teterin
> You haven't the faintest notion of what censorship is.
He does not. Kent's idea of the worst government abuse is "torturing" of a
few miscreants by various means -- raging from waterboarding (which all CIA
agents have to undergo, supposedly, when they join the agency) to people
having sex in front of the victims.
He grew up in a blessed country -- the second-worst government abuse in his
opinion is the government suspecting a few dozens of people of links to
Communists. "McCarthy" is still a dirty word...
That's all. Know, who you are dealing with, and envy the empire, where the
above-listed are considered the worst of the worst in recent memory...
Kent being a retired machinist (or something) gives him a lot of time to
spend on Usenet, so we have to see him a lot... Be sure to killfile the
"Found Art.*" subject -- your tastes certainly disagree with his...
-mi
Kent Paul Dolan
> Kent's idea of the worst government abuse ...
Another moron who thinks claiming to be able to
read my mind will give him street cred, and
rolls from that lie into a plethora more.
xanthian.
nikolai kingsley
> I never understood the point of Brave New World.
social control through cloning, biochemical manipulation and drugs.
applying the assembly-line metaphor to biology. he wasn't allowed to
imply that this system might be better than the one that existed at the
time, so the savage had to commit suicide at the end.
Ace Lightning
>I was a bit horrified to see, in the currently
>replaying TV "human footprint" offering, presumably,
>from the things consumed, really "the American human
>footprint", that the expected "books read in a
>lifetime" was 462. I read far more novels than that
>before I was a teenager and before I learned speed
>reading.
>Of course, that was a squinch over 50 years ago, too.
depending on how you define "book", i may well have read
462 of them (including a lot of YA science fiction, which
was where i found Heinlein, Asimov, Andre Norton...)
before fifty years ago myself.
rickthecockroach
would be like, taken to an extreme which given North Korea is fairly
spot on, and especially to free wheeling Americans who are use to a
fairly lax system.
Yes, people who read the book are sometimes guilty of screaming and
quoting the novel's concepts and use them as a blunt instrument
whenever power goes to people's heads and their judgement goes awry.
But poorly written it is not. More terrifying. There is no hero that
fights and overturns the system.
Certainly knocked around some of the 'yay Communism!' Ideals I had in
my head when I was 17 (required reading for many US high school
students, along with Catcher In The Rye and Brave New World).