1984 and the other dystopias
Billy Pilgrim
people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
"Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
I've read all three of those and pretty much anything by those authors I can
get my hands on, but what other books would you recommend in the same genre?
charles
Alan Allport
Revelation?
I suppose what separates a dystopian novel from pulpy catastrophic
worlds is that it's written with a serious political purpose, it
attempts to construct an internally logical philosophy for its regime,
and it usually ends unhappily. (ie. Mongo under Ming might be considered
fairly dystopian, but that doesn't mean that we can lump Flash Gordon
together with Winston Smith). A few novels by Burgess, eg. _The Wanting
Seed_, come to mind, though I imagine good authors try to avoid black &
white representations of societies for the stylistic reason that
unrelenting wickedness can become dull (unrelenting goodness is even
worse, of course, hence the lack of many accompanying eutopias -
Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ is the only one I can immediately think
of). Incidentally, I'm not sure that Huxley would have considered BNW a
dystopia in the sense that Orwell's book is (I'm not an Aldous
aficionado by any means, so feel free to jump in here anyone).
Recommendation? _Gulliver's Travels_ in unexpurgated form, if you
haven't been there already.
Alan.
Alex Ball
<ol...@oakharbor.net> wrote:
>What books do you all consider to be in the same vein as 1984? A lot of
>people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
>opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
>"Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
Jack London's _The Iron Heel_
Various Kafka - esp _The Trial_ for authoritarian government.
Arthur Koestler's _Darkness At Noon_
--
Alex Ball
alex...@clara.net
ICQ:17821675
MN1st
>What books do you all consider to be in the same vein as 1984? A lot of
>people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
>opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
>"Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
Martha Bridegam
>
> What books do you all consider to be in the same vein as 1984? A lot of
> people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
> opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
> "Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
>
> get my hands on, but what other books would you recommend in the same genre?
What about Samuel Butler? I haven't read him but think Orwell took him
fairly seriously.
BTW, isn't "Billy Pilgrim" a Pynchon character, & do we think Orwell was
an influence on Pynchon?
/MAB
Billy Pilgrim
meaningless affection.
charles
Martha Bridegam wrote in message <3790D5...@sirius.com>...
Michael Valdivielso
: What books do you all consider to be in the same vein as 1984? A lot of
: people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
: opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
: "Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
: I've read all three of those and pretty much anything by those authors I can
: get my hands on, but what other books would you recommend in the same genre?
: charles
"Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury.
--
I am not religious, I am neither a war hawk or
a peace dove, and Aristotle's logic is too limited.
Just call me a Fuzzy Individualistic Owl.
|-]=======> bar...@netcom.com <=======[-|
Martha Bridegam
>
> billy pilgrim is kurt vonnegut's alter-ego in slaughterhouse-five. it's a
> meaningless affection.
Silly me. Had Billy Pilgrim mixed up with Benny Profane, I think.
Wouldn't call an affection for Kurt Vonnegut meaningless. He's a good
guy. Takes guts to quote Eugene Debs and mean it these days.
/MAB
Billy Pilgrim
oops. i think i mixed up words. i meant that using "billy pilgrim" as my
name for the newsgroup was soemthing that i affected (effected). it isn't
meant to mean anything.
i love kurt vonnegut, and don't consider my enjoyment of his books
meaningless at all. anyone who can write a book which has the entire point
of conveying the message: "god damn it, you've got to be kind" is all right
in my book.
charles
Tom Deveson
>Takes guts to quote Eugene Debs and mean it these days.
Writing in the Cleveland *Plain Dealer* in 1895 on "The New Woman, the
Bicycle and Bloomers" Debs wrote: For myself, I confess to a liking for
bloomers. They seem cool and comfortable and there is something about
the air of the girl who wears them that reminds me of the Declaration of
Independence."
Debs visiting Chaplin in 1924. Debs recalls life in prison and his voice
begins to shake. Chaplin cuts him a rosebud, saying, "Maybe this will
help you to forget." Debs: "It's almost like murder to cut the stem of a
beautiful thing like that. Why didn't you let it live?"
[BTW, with no relevance -- From the hall window of the school who did
the play about Babbage on Thursday, you look out onto East Street where
Chaplin was born.]
Debs in 1925, a year before his death: "When I go, I shall be going, not
stopping. I shall welcome my new adventure with open arms, shall take
old Father Time by the arm with a smile and make a socialist out of
him."
Debs talked and wrote about much more than the class struggle.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Eugine/Ashley
> Billy Pilgrim <ol...@oakharbor.net> wrote:
> : What books do you all consider to be in the same vein as 1984? A lot of
> : people I've read have narrowed the "dystopia" category to the 3 books that
> : opened up the category in the early part of this century, "1984", Huxley's
> : "Brave New World," and Zamiatin's "We."
>
> : I've read all three of those and pretty much anything by those authors I can
> : get my hands on, but what other books would you recommend in the same genre?
>
> : charles
>
> "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury.
If you're into watching dystopia films, I've always found "Logan's run" to be a
good film and it displays the point that most people could be happy and
in bliss but the world is still a 'dystopia'. Personally, I don't like the world
'dystopia'. I think someone in here recommended 'cacatopia' from one of Burgess'
books. Ah, thats another book - Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. Its kinda like
how todays world can go into a cacatopia, very easily. Its like we have the
makings of a world painted by Huxley or GO and if we go too far in trying
to solve the problems, then our 'free thinking' world has gone.
> --
> I am not religious, I am neither a war hawk or
> a peace dove, and Aristotle's logic is too limited.
> Just call me a Fuzzy Individualistic Owl.
> |-]=======> bar...@netcom.com <=======[-|
>
Ashley Moore <Eugine> %-)
"When freedom exists there will be no state."
Chris Cook
London is "trendy" now, (I think its one of his anniversaries (birth, death
etc.)) so expect a good few new crits. on it.
> Various Kafka - esp _The Trial_ for authoritarian government.
Be VERY careful with "The Trial". If you speak German, read it in German.
If not, then don't go for a populist "literary" translation (ie- Penguin
etc.) but for a literal translation, because in making the book read nicely
in English, the text has a totally different tone. The thoughts, ideas and
presumptions that go behind German are soooo different from English, that
I'd reccomend the Oxford University Press (Annotated) Edition. The notes are
a bit condescending, but its very good. I bought a literary "nice"
translation in New York (...it was cheap...I needed one...) and it was
bloody awful. (If you want it in German, try "Die Verwandlung". Kafka gave
it another name, but I don't remember it...)
Joseph C Fineman
>(unrelenting goodness is even worse, of course, hence the lack of
>many accompanying eutopias -Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ is the only
>one I can immediately think of).
Skinner's _Walden Two_ is perhaps an exception that proves the rule --
his unrelenting goodness is rendered interesting partly by the fact
that so many think it wicked.
There is also an admittedly small genre of as-good-as-we-can-
reasonably-hope-for utopias:
...Somehow for a century we've achieved...for almost everybody the
civil liberties, peace of mind and living standards that were
enjoyed by the middle classes before 1914 -- plus longer life,
better health, a more generous morality, increased command over
nature, and minus the servant problem and certain supersitions. A
handful of wonderfully pleasant decades....
-- C. M. Kornbluth, _The Syndic_ (1953)
In the book, that miracle is accomplished by gangsters who run the
eastern U.S. as a racket. Orwell would have cringed.
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: We're all smarter than the old folks, and wiser than the :||
||: young folks. :||
Billy Pilgrim
>>many accompanying eutopias -Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ is the only
>>one I can immediately think of).
>
>Skinner's _Walden Two_ is perhaps an exception that proves the rule --
>his unrelenting goodness is rendered interesting partly by the fact
>that so many think it wicked.
walden two was a great frustrating book. for exactly the reasons you've
said. you don't WANT to agree with them, but it seems to work so perfectly.
how in the world...?
i've heard that ecotopia works in much the same way, and i have a copy, but
i haven't gotten around to reading it.
the closet i can really think of to genuine "utopia" books are the whole
genre of the romantic works toward the end of the 18th century and beginning
of the 19th. james fenimore cooper specifically comes to mind. and the
whole point of the leatherstocking series is to define a "utopia" or
whatever that isn't reliant on society or structure but depends solely on
the romantic strength of the american hero.
maybe societies as a whole are the problem here...
"Laws don’t all come from the same quarter. God has given us his’n and some
come from the
Colony and others come from the King and Parliament. When the Colony’s
laws, or even the
King’s laws, run ag’in the laws of God, they get to be onlawful and ought
not to be obeyed."
--James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer
charles
Peter / Panderator
following are just a few of my favourites:
Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye
Limbo (1952) by Bernard Wolfe
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
Facial Justice (1960) by L.P. Hartley
The Reservation (1964) by Ward Ruyslinck
Murder on the 31st Floor (1964) by Per Wahlöö
This Perfect Day (1970) by Ira Levin
The best dystopian novel IMO is Ann Margret Dahlquist-Ljungberg's "Strålen"
(1958). That's the Swedish title; I don't know if it's been translated into
any other language. It is simply amazing.
Please visit my website about dystopias, The Dystopiate, for more
information:
http://welcome.to/thedystopiate
Peter / Panderator
http://get.to/petero
Billy Pilgrim <ol...@oakharbor.net> wrote...
Joseph C Fineman
>What about Samuel Butler? I haven't read him but think Orwell took
>him fairly seriously.
_Erewhon_ is an remarkable book, but hard to classify in the terms of
this discussion. It describes an imaginary country, and some of its
institutions are such as Butler might have wished to see in the real
world, so to that extent it is a utopia. But it is also a satire on
the real world. As Orwell says somewhere, its combination of acuity
with lightheartedness is one that is hard to imagine in a writer of
our own age.
The three chapters on the social effects of machinery, which are
seconded in Orwell's diatribe in _The Road to Wigan Pier_, are an
astonishing flight of intellect. On reading Darwin (in New Zealand!),
Butler instantly thought of applying his ideas to the evolution of
machinery, and concluded that unless the process was arbitrarily &
ruthlessly halted (as in Erewhon), mankind was finished. Machines
reward the people who improve them -- with pleasure, but, more
important, with _power_. At the same time, they make those people
more dependent on them & less useful to each other. By O.'s time we
were long past the possibility of an Erewhonian response to the
process, and by now there is an actual constituency in favor of
hurrying it on (make it possible to upload my grandmother into a
computer before she dies, etc.).
--- Joe Fineman j...@world.std.com
||: There is an obvious replacement for people who act like :||
||: badly programmed computers. :||
Tom Deveson
>> Jack London's _The Iron Heel_
>
>London is "trendy" now, (I think its one of his anniversaries (birth, death
>etc.)) so expect a good few new crits. on it.
Possibly some confusion here? Jack London (born 1876/died 1916) has been
on/off "trendy" since The *Call of The Wild* became a best-seller in
1903. At times he's been unfavourably compared with a near-contemporary
like Stephen Crane, whose realism is fascinatingly bound up with subtle
tendencies towards literary impressionism and other innovative
techniques in writing which are alien to London; or with other realists
like Norris or Dreiser who might be argued to have more melodramatic
power; at others he's been simply neglected by contrast with writers
like Henry James or Gertrude Stein whose formal experiment and
cosmopolitanism are more strikingly (and some would argue rewardingly)
literary; and at times he's been attacked for his would-be Nietzschean
attitudinizing and crude "Nordic" imperatives. (Ambrose Bierce said of
one Jack London book -- don't know which -- that it had "a pretty bad
style and no sense of proportion.")
But hasn't he always had an established place in American literary
history on both sides of the Atlantic? Andrew Sinclair's Life came out
about 20+ years ago, and Eric Mottram (for Penguin Books) was writing
that "London is the archetypal popular 20th-century novelist: his
conflicts are still central" in 1971, which is old enough to be rather
more than trendy.
>> Various Kafka - esp _The Trial_ for authoritarian government.
>
>Be VERY careful with "The Trial". If you speak German, read it in German.
>If not, then don't go for a populist "literary" translation (ie- Penguin
>etc.) but for a literal translation, because in making the book read nicely
>in English, the text has a totally different tone. The thoughts, ideas and
>presumptions that go behind German are soooo different from English, that
>I'd reccomend the Oxford University Press (Annotated) Edition. The notes are
>a bit condescending, but its very good. I bought a literary "nice"
>translation in New York (...it was cheap...I needed one...) and it was
>bloody awful. (If you want it in German, try "Die Verwandlung". Kafka gave
>it another name, but I don't remember it...)
Possibly more confusion? * Der Prozess* is *The Trial* in English (the
one about Joseph K finding himself inexplicably under arrest), while
*Die Verwandlung* is usually translated as *Metamorphosis* (the story
about Gregor Samsa becoming an insect overnight.)
As for translations, I'd suggest that Kafka writes relatively straight-
forward German prose in The Trial and that as "the creator of the most
obscure lucidity in the history of literature" as Erich Heller put it,
he's fairly well-served by his translators -- unlike, say, Thomas Mann.
Heller probably knew as much about Kafka as anyone (unless JP Stern knew
more), and was happy to use the Muirs' pioneering translation -- the
revised version as used by Penguin -- in his little book on K. (Though
there is an argument to be had about whether the word Urteil shd be
rendered as Verdict, as in the translation, or more forthrightly as
Judgement.)
Compare the first sentence of *The Trial* with the first sentence of
Mann's *Death in Venice* and you see at once that in the latter there's
far more to get wrong.
Returning to the thread, isn't *The Trial* about much more than just
"authoritarian government"?
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
>
> the closet i can really think of to genuine "utopia" books are the whole
> genre of the romantic works toward the end of the 18th century and beginning
> of the 19th. james fenimore cooper specifically comes to mind. and the
> whole point of the leatherstocking series is to define a "utopia" or
> whatever that isn't reliant on society or structure but depends solely on
> the romantic strength of the american hero.
>
> maybe societies as a whole are the problem here...
>
> "Laws don’t all come from the same quarter. God has given us his’n and some
> come from the
> Colony and others come from the King and Parliament. When the Colony’s
> laws, or even the
> King’s laws, run ag’in the laws of God, they get to be onlawful and ought
> not to be obeyed."
> --James Fenimore Cooper, The Deerslayer
I dunno. Apart from wreaking havoc on the laws of physics (cf. Mark
Twain on same), Cooper seems like more of an escapist than a utopian.
His characters aren't exactly building a new society, they're getting
away from one to Mother Nature and the Noble Savages. (For all Cooper
suggests admiration for various tribes, he doesn't exactly recommend
their form of govt, does he?)
/MAB
Chris Cook
Radio 4 (sorry, people) and there is a spate of new books coming out to sate
the revived interest in him, including a revision of "Iron Heel" (the whole
dialogue is a fuzzy memory. John Peel was probably involved).
(If you want it in German, try "Die Verwandlung". Kafka gave
> >it another name, but I don't remember it...)
Its other name (translated) according to my notes was "The Verdict",
although none of my books bear witness to this assertion of mentor...
>
> Possibly more confusion? * Der Prozess* is *The Trial* in English
My mistake. Just me typing without thinking. Thanks for that
> As for translations, I'd suggest that Kafka writes relatively straight-
> forward German prose in The Trial and that as "the creator of the most
> obscure lucidity in the history of literature" as Erich Heller put it,
It's lucid, and always blunt (thats why its so powerful). My main crit. of
the translation, which I am struggling to find/remember the name of, is the
use of the verb "to be able to".... (see next para.)
> Compare the first sentence of *The Trial* with the first sentence of
> Mann's *Death in Venice* and you see at once that in the latter there's
> far more to get wrong.
Mann is VERY difficult to translate. Whilst Kafka wrote bluntly and let the
ridiculous expose iytself (I hesitate to use the word "satire" out of an
educated group of people...), Mann used tyrades and cascades, where the
order and emphases are almost impossible to hold in any other language. He
holds the record for the most consecutive verbs in a "useful"
sentence...[Isn't German great? (12 verbs, for the record)]. He is also a
lot more subtle than Kafka in his approach, prefering to actual make
commentary within his prose. Thats one of two reasons I dislike his
approach to Kafka. Theres a lot of "mistranslation", even by the great Mr.
Mann (to whom in evry other respect I bow down to, and take off my hat etc.
Boy., can that Man(n) build a sentence...)), which, to me, seemed to detract
a great deal from the prose. The blunt simplicity of the German was just
dissolved in a myriad of nasty repetitive anglicisms. (the word "can" crops
up in every other phrase)
Anyway...
Apologies for blatant inaccuracy...
Chris
Tom Deveson
<snip discussion re Kafka titles>
Does this resolve the confusion? Kafka wrote (in a single night --
there's a superb description of the process in his diary) a short story
of about ten pages called *Das Urteil* which was later translated into
English, by Willa and Edwin Muir, as *The Judgement*, the version used
in the Penguin edition.
When the lawyer in *The Trial* talks to Joseph K, he speaks of two
classes of lawyer -- the one who leads his client "by a slender thread
until the verdict is reached" and the superior kind who "lifts his
client on his shoulders...and carries him without once letting him down
until the verdict is reached, and even beyond it." The translation here
says "verdict" where the German reads "Urteil" and Heller suggests,
rightly IMO, that Kafka is also thinking here of his short story; that
writing belongs for Kafka to the domain of that sin he has contracted by
eating of the Tree of Knowledge, and therefore that "judgement" would
here be a better translation. (After all, we can only read the book at
all because Max Brod ignored Kafka's wish that his unpublished writings
should be destroyed -- simply by reading the book we're complicit in
this act of disobedience.)
<snip discussion of Thomas Mann>
I don't really follow you here about what you call Mann's "approach to
Kafka" and his "mistranslation". I was comparing the Muirs' translations
of Kafka with HT Lowe-Porter's standard (e.g. Penguin) translations of
Thomas Mann, and suggesting the Muirs did it better, even though it was
done as a form of hack-work -- after all, Edwin Muir was also himself a
very distinguished poet and writer of prose, apart from any
considerations about the greater directness of Kafka's own German
compared to Mann's. [Muir's *Autobiography* would interest any Orwellian
with its piercingly painful account of leaving a hard-working idyll on
the Orkney Islands for the hellish slums of industrial Glasgow before
WW1-- it's a book of great moral and imaginative power.]
Referring again to those opening sentences of The Trial and Death in
Venice -- while the Muirs add a redundant adjective ("one fine morning")
to Kafka's "eines Morgens", Ms Lowe-Porter breaks Mann's first sentence
into two, introduces an unnecessary and awkward metaphor, and misses the
accumulating ironic weight of the deliberately pedantic syntax. But as I
say, I simply don't understand your reference to Mann's wrongful
treatment of Kafka.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
>
..... But as I
> say, I simply don't understand your reference to Mann's wrongful
> treatment of Kafka.
Don't know about "The Trial." However --
I can't find the copy of "The Castle" that I read, but IIRC there's a
preface by Mann in which he treats the whole story as a religious fable
-- the Land-Surveyor trying to get a hearing from the authorities as the
ordinary soul pining for access to God.
Mann's view seemed to ring false at the time I read it. Mann seemed like
a more old-fashioned fellow than Kafka, one who didn't understand
bureaucracy or secular mentalities. Am not so sure about that opinion
now & would like to read the preface again -- but do other folks think
the preface is realistic? (And am I remembering it right?)
/MAB
Alan Allport
>Returning to the thread, isn't *The Trial* about much more than just
>"authoritarian government"?
"The readers or non-readers of _The Trial_ remember it wrong. Its
reputation is as a tale about man and bureaucracy, a fable appropriate
to the office block. One recalls the office in Orson Welles's film - a
vast hangar in which hundreds of clerks toil at identical desks to an
identical routine. In fact _The Trial_ is set in small rooms in dark
houses in surroundings that are picturesque, romantic and downright
quaint. For the setting of _The Trial_ there is no blaming the planners.
It is all on an impeccably human scale."
- Alan Bennett, _Kafka at Las Vegas_.
c/o Alan.
MN1st
>BTW, isn't "Billy Pilgrim" a Pynchon character, & do we think Orwell was
>an influence on Pynchon?
"Slaughterhouse Five," a novelization of his experiences as a POW in WWII.
Chris Cook
Tom Deveson <a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:IEcb0eAM...@devesons.demon.co.uk...
> Chris Cook writes
>
> <snip discussion re Kafka titles>
>
> Does this resolve the confusion? Kafka wrote (in a single night --
> there's a superb description of the process in his diary) a short story
> of about ten pages called *Das Urteil* which was later translated into
> English, by Willa and Edwin Muir, as *The Judgement*, the version used
> in the Penguin edition.
Sounds like I was probably sleeping through the lesson when that came up.
In my notes it says "...aka "The Verdict..." re: "The Trial".
Okay.
Here goes:
The whole Kafka/Mann thing
I said:
>He is also a
>lot more subtle than Kafka in his approach, prefering to actual make
>commentary within his prose.
Okay. no mistakes so far, methinks. I'm babbling tho'.
>Thats one of two reasons I dislike his
>approach to Kafka.
Okay. Now I'm confused. This is me writing whilst trying to plant the next
sentence without thinking about the present one.
>Theres a lot of "mistranslation", even by the great Mr.
>Mann (to whom in evry other respect I bow down to, and take off my hat etc.
>Boy., can that Man(n) build a sentence...)),
Okay. Replace the word "by" with the word "of" here.
>which, to me, seemed to detract
>a great deal from the prose. The blunt simplicity of the German was just
>dissolved in a myriad of nasty repetitive anglicisms. (the word "can"
crops
>up in every other phrase)
Okay. This is still babble. It holds true, but its certainly babble. You
know, I have no memory of having written this.
Tom; apologies. I was babbling. I'll stick to debating headlights.
What I probably meant to say was that although Mann suffers more, since the
passages where he uses tyrades etc. are impossible to hold together in the
way he intended, the blunt simplicity of Kafka is dissolved in English.
Okay?
I've had to do a translation of Death in Venice, and I have it here. Ive
kept it hyper literal, making "des Morgens" into "of that morning". The
whole thing is correct, but unreadable.
p.s. I still haven't finished my crit. on Kafka, so this is actually helping
muchly.
But as I
> say, I simply don't understand your reference to Mann's wrongful
> treatment of Kafka.
It was just babble
>
> Tom
> --
> Tom Deveson
greg
Peter / Panderator wrote in message ...
>There are lots of good dystopian novels. The three you mentioned and the
>following are just a few of my favourites:
>
>Kallocain (1940) by Karin Boye
>Limbo (1952) by Bernard Wolfe
>Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
>Facial Justice (1960) by L.P. Hartley
>The Reservation (1964) by Ward Ruyslinck
>Murder on the 31st Floor (1964) by Per Wahlöö
>This Perfect Day (1970) by Ira Levin
>
>The best dystopian novel IMO is Ann Margret Dahlquist-Ljungberg's "Strålen"
>(1958). That's the Swedish title; I don't know if it's been translated into
>any other language. It is simply amazing.
Sounds good. I liked Facial Justice quite a bit, although that story by
Vonnegut, about the perfect people who need to disguise their perfection
from the govt. (title?) covers the same ground without being a whole novel.
So who is Karin Boye?
Greg
Alex Ball
<a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote:
<snip Tom debunking Chris>
Thanks for the input Chris, call again when you know what you are
talking about, eh.
>
>Returning to the thread, isn't *The Trial* about much more than just
>"authoritarian government"?
<Alex holds hands up to massively over-simplifying>
Of course it's about more than that, I just mentioned totalitarianism
as a simple way of moving from N-EF and The Trial
Peter / Panderator
greg <petro...@netzero.net>...
> Sounds good. I liked Facial Justice quite a bit, although that story by
> Vonnegut, about the perfect people who need to disguise their perfection
> from the govt. (title?) covers the same ground without being a whole
novel.
Harrison Bergeron?
> So who is Karin Boye?
I guess she is mostly known for her poetry. The Karin Boye Society has a
website:
http://www.ivo.se/kboye/home-english.html
KALLOCAIN
by Karin Boye
_Kallocain_ translated from the Swedish by Gustaf Lannestock
This is a novel of the future, profoundly sinister in its vision of a drab
terror. Ironic and detached, the author shows us the totalitarian Worldstate
through the eyes of a product of that state, the scientist Leo Kall. On this
man's romantic and idealistic nature, the indoctrination which every
"fellow-soldier" of the Worldstate receives has had a particularly baleful
effect.
The author of this novel is Karin Boye, Swedish poet and novelist, whose
suicide in 1941 amid the shambles of a war-racked Europe somehow symbolizes
the fate of a whole generation of writers. Karin Boye, like so many others,
had had her vision of a brave new world, and her sensitive and unstable
nature had never really recovered from the shock of disillusionment.
Born in 1900, the daughter of a civil engineer, Karin Boye lived her
life in a series of emotional and intellectual crises. Sent to a seminary at
the age of twenty, she revolted against the hardened institutionalized
Christianity she there encountered, a Christianity which seemed to her to
efface her life's impulses, her real identity. She joined the international
worker movement Clarté, and was that organization's leading writer in Sweden
until a 1928 trip to Russia brought disillusionment. Then and in the early
thirties she was active in the liberal journals which did much to acquaint
Sweden with the surrealists and the poetry of T. S. Eliot. An early,
unsuccessful marriage was but the first of a series of defeats which led her
to seek psychoanalytic help in Berlin and Sweden, and, though the experience
enriched her prose and poetry, it did nothing to afford her permanent peace
of mind.
Before the end of the twenties her reputation as a poet had been solidly
established. Her first novel, _Astarte_, appeared in 1931, and _Kallocain_,
published in 1940, was swiftly acclaimed as a novel of European
significance.
Like _Brave New World_ and _1984_, _Kallocain_ is a fantastic novel of
idea. Its nightmare vision of a world state is a montage of what Boye had
seen or sensed in Russia and Germany; its central idea grew from the rumors
of truth drugs that insured the subservience of every citizen to the state.
Kallocain, the drug invented by Leo Kall, by denying the privacy of thought
is the final step towards the transmutation of the individual human being
into a "happy, healthy cell in the state organism." For, says Leo, "from
thoughts and feelings, words and actions are born. How then could these
thoughts and feelings belong to the individual? Doesn't the whole
fellow-soldier belong to the state? To whom should his thoughts and feelings
belong then, if not to the state?"
As the first-person record of Leo Kall, scientist, fellow-soldier too
late disillusioned to undo his previous actions, _Kallocain_ achieves a
chilling power and veracity which place it among the finest novels to emerge
from the strife-torn Europe of the twentieth century.
Peter / Panderator
http://get.to/petero
- - - - - -
The Dystopiate
http://welcome.to/thedystopiate
Tom Deveson
><snip Tom debunking Chris>
Debunking not intended -- intention was to clarify what was going on.
><Alex holds hands up to massively over-simplifying
Tom holds hand up to tiresome tendency to bang on like teacher after 30
years of being one. I think I said before that our own kids used to call
me Example Man.
Please keep posting.
Tom
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
>
> greg <petro...@netzero.net>...
> > Sounds good. I liked Facial Justice quite a bit, although that story by
> > Vonnegut, about the perfect people who need to disguise their perfection
> > from the govt. (title?) covers the same ground without being a whole
> novel.
>
> Harrison Bergeron?
IIRC "Harrison Bergeron" is Ray Bradbury's, isn't it? (Somebody pls
correct if not.)
It's certainly not Vonnegut. Vonnegut is surely some kind of liberal, &
"Harrison Bergeron" is a reductio ad absurdam re: disability rights and
other nondiscrimination laws. A very moving story, but one that only a
conservative would see as extrapolating current trends.
Partisanship aside, though, it does pick up something real in the way
institutions make misfits out of people who function above *or* below
the level expected.
>
> > So who is Karin Boye?
>
<thx for explaining>.
Why haven't we heard of her? (Or am I only speaking for myself?)
/MAB
Alan Allport
>It's certainly not Vonnegut. Vonnegut is surely some kind of liberal
Based on what I've read of his - _Slaughterhouse_, _Cat's Cradle_,
_Hocus Pocus_, _God Bless You Mr. Rosewater_, one of his essay
collections, and a story about an Armenian abstract expressionist whose
name I have completely forgotten - I would hazard that Vonnegut's
world-view is too idiosyncratic to summarize in anything less than a
novel.
Alan.
Martha Bridegam
All right. Bokononist, Anarchist, impractical believer in unconditional
love, something like that. But not a Goldwater conservative anyway.
/MAB
Billy Pilgrim
>love, something like that. But not a Goldwater conservative anyway.
i think vonnegut's philosphy is pretty well described in two quotes:
"god damn it, you've got to be kind"
--god bless you mr. rosewater
"love may fail, but common decency will endure"
--fates worse than death
definitely not goldwater conservative though. gotta agree with that.
charles
Billy Pilgrim
>white representations of societies for the stylistic reason that
>unrelenting wickedness can become dull (unrelenting goodness is even
>worse, of course, hence the lack of many accompanying eutopias -
>Bellamy's _Looking Backward_ is the only one I can immediately think
>of).
i went searching at various bookstores this weekend for good books on either
side. like you said, the only real "utopian" novel i came across was
"looking backward" and it suffers from precisely those flaws. the thing
that struck me most about this "utopian" society is the almost precise
parallel to huxley's "brave new world."
sure, there's no soma, but that's about the only difference. can you
imagine a 20th century that didn't have steinbeck, orwell, faulkner,
derrida, etc. can you imagine what holden caulfield would be in that
society?
i'll pass on utopia and just look for real life.
charles
Chris Cook
Alex Ball <alex...@REMOVETHIS.clara.net> wrote in message
news:3793729...@news.clara.net...
> On Sun, 18 Jul 1999 18:40:27 +0100, Tom Deveson
> <a...@devesons.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> <snip Tom debunking Chris>
>
> Thanks for the input Chris, call again when you know what you are
> talking about, eh.
i) You called Orwell a "nonce" yesterday.
ii) You spent about 5 mins laughing at the "Don't Walk-Boogie" sign above
the Hippodrome
iii) You summarised the career of AJPT as "the one who wrote about
timetables"
Martha Bridegam
>
> i) You called Orwell a "nonce" yesterday.
What's a nonce?
And while you're at it, define a metope.
/MAB
Rowland McDonnell
[snip]
> I suppose what separates a dystopian novel from pulpy catastrophic
> worlds is that it's written with a serious political purpose, it
> attempts to construct an internally logical philosophy for its regime,
> and it usually ends unhappily. (ie. Mongo under Ming might be considered
> fairly dystopian, but that doesn't mean that we can lump Flash Gordon
> together with Winston Smith). A few novels by Burgess, eg. _The Wanting
> Seed_, come to mind,
How about `A clockwork orange'?
[snip]
Rowland.
--
Remove the animal for email address: rowland....@dog.physics.org
PGP pub key A680B89D Sorry - the spam got to me
http://www.mag-uk.org
UK biker? Join MAG and help keep bureaucracy at bay
Tom Deveson
>> Who's been calling George Orwell a metope?
>
>Nobody. Python joke. Sorry to put you to trouble.
Fell right into the teacher-trap now, didn't I? Still at least I know
the difference between the Battle of Borodino and a tiger's bum.
Third Miner (after looking it up)
--
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam
>
> Martha Bridegam writes
>
> >And while you're at it, define a metope.
>
> Doric frieze e.g. on the Parthenon, the triglyphs are the ornamental
> blocks with the triple grooves, and the metopes are the spaces between
> which had pictorial designs on them. Triglpyh/metope come just above the
> architrave, which comes just above the capitals at the head of the
> columns. So on the analogy of human body = column, the metope is the
> forehead, whence
>
> 2) Zoology: Sometimes the forehead of a skull or more specifically a
> crab's forehead (this a/c my OED).
>
> Who's been calling George Orwell a metope?
Nobody. Python joke. Sorry to put you to trouble.
Episode 26:
"...Still no settlement in the coal mine dispute at Llanddarog. Miners
refused to return to work until the management define a metope.
Meanwhile, at Dagenham the unofficial strike committee at Fords have
increased their demands to thirteen reasons why Henry III was a bad
king...And now, the Toad Elevating Moment..."
/MAB
Tom Deveson
>And while you're at it, define a metope.
1) Architecture: A square panel set back between the triglyphs in a
Doric frieze e.g. on the Parthenon, the triglyphs are the ornamental
blocks with the triple grooves, and the metopes are the spaces between
which had pictorial designs on them. Triglpyh/metope come just above the
architrave, which comes just above the capitals at the head of the
columns. So on the analogy of human body = column, the metope is the
forehead, whence
2) Zoology: Sometimes the forehead of a skull or more specifically a
crab's forehead (this a/c my OED).
Who's been calling George Orwell a metope?
Tom
--
Tom Deveson