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"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is very funny. It's been made into a movie twice. The 1965 one is closer to the original.
It used to be available on line, but with the copyright crackdown, films only of historical interest, with near zero revenue potential, are no longer available.
"Orwell, the Lost Writings" is quite useful. It makes it clear where Orwell got many of the ideas for "1984". During WWII, he worked for the British Ministry of Information. Part of his job was translating news reports into the Basic English 1000 word vocabulary, for transmission on the BBC to the colonies. Mostly India. He discovered that translation to Basic English is a political act. Basic English cannot express much ambiguity. So ambiguous political statements had to be hammered down into simple unambiguous statements.
Hence Newspeak and the Ministry of Truth.
Thats a neat fact which i wasn't aware of. I had read most of his essays (the edition by Everyman's Library contains the most in a single volume) but not all of his novels. So i think i need to revisit Orwell again.
I recently noticed that "Oxford World's Classics" has started publishing Orwell's works in their series. The books in this series are generally very good with a great introduction giving the background/setting the tone for the work and great authorship/translators.
I was surprised at how modern many of the themes in both Keep The Aspidistra Flying and Coming Up For Air are, from (in Keep The Aspidistra Flying) the negative effects of commercialisation and mass advertising, obsession with (because of a dependence on) money, difficulties making ends meet when trying to follow your dreams, the alternative of meaningless but well paying jobs, to (in Coming Up For Air) a reaction against property development and what you might even call environmentalism.
The book shop that Orwell worked in and lived above when he wrote Keep The Aspidistra Flying is now split between a fancy bakery and a hairdresser. I get my hair cut at the hairdresser.
Keep the Apidistra Flying is one of my favorite books. I first read it in High School and I remember distinctly relating with the scene when he's counting how much money he has left in his pocket during the date.
Down and Out in Paris and London is an all-time favorite of mine, delving as it does into eternal truths about both restaurant work and homelessness. It's also a fantastic slice of life for that particular time period. The experience of sharing a malnourished existence and tiny flea-ridden Parisian tenement room with a voluble White Russian emigré was conveyed so well it nearly feels like one of my own memories.
I think of his description of “facade of cleanliness” for hotels and restaurants frequently.
Also, that the biggest snobs in a restaurant are not the patrons, but the waitstaff.
I haven't read everything of his, but the bits that I've had have both enlightened and empowered me.
I think Orwell's books are more than social commentary, and more than far-sighted predictions.
If you look carefully, they can help navigate, survive, and thrive in an "Orwellian" environment.
I think that's why 1984 is standard reading material in Orwellian schools.
It makes the smart kids think about things, and come to the conclusion that they can try to start a rebellion, get found out, and find a rat cage on their head, or they can be happy getting better rations than the dumber kids.
It made you arrive at that conclusion, I suppose.
i don't think it's an accident that out of all the books about dystopia, only the ones where the hero fails to resist or even symbiate with "the system" are taught. it's kind of like the cops tv show, they don't show any episodes where the perp gets away.
there is plenty of fiction out there that takes another route, from bringing down the system, to the system collapsing upon itself, to finding a symbiotic way to co-exist with it while maintaining the self, to many other approaches.
If I'm understanding correctly, you're postulating that there is a general preference in the dystopian-category reading material selected by schools, towards "bleak" novels in which resistance proves futile. Moreover, this is on some level a conscious decision by the education establishment to encourage children to play by the rules at school. Is that fair?
This isn't a hypothesis I've come across before. On reflection I firmly disagree with it, but it's an interesting claim and worth discussing.
The main problem I have is that there is a much simpler explanation for why schools choose the bleak dystopian novels: simply because all the most established, popular, and excellent dystopian novels are the bleak ones. 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, Clockwork Orange, Fahrenheit 451, Handmaid's Tale etc... . The reason these books are taught in school is actually that bleak novels capture the human condition more successfully, and thus stand the test of time and become classics. The only dystopian novels I can think of with a successful protagonist, which are cuturally established and excellent at a literary level, are Philip K Dick's books; there are many other reasons schools would not choose to offer these, not least the prevalent casual attitudes towards drugs.
The other issue I have is that the commonly accepted moral thrust of the above listed books is not that one should simply play by the rules and keep one's head down. It is instead that we should be collectively aware of the threat of society going in that direction, and take steps to prevent it before it gets as bad as that. Whilst all those novels are bleak depictions, they contain a message of hope: that we still have time to stop this from happening. If you look at the life of George Orwell and the views he expressed publicly, it's clear that he would not advocate keeping your head down and working hard to get more "rations" than your neighbour. He fought in Spain with the anarchists against the fascists, and spent a lot of his life going hungry rather than give up his vocation of being an authentic writer.
Lastly, is there any evidence/data to suggest that books like 1984 are more common in more authoritarian schools? I would actually expect the opposite, that schools with a more liberal leaning are more likely to teach it for the reasons I state in the paragraph above.
Orwell's less well-known works are some of his very best. Homage to Catalonia is superb, as are some of his essays -- Politics and the English Language I remember as an essential piece. He's a wonderful writer, especially at his more thoughtful or subtle (as compared to 1984 and Animal Farm, which are good but ultimately very on-the-nose).
I think 1984 is more subtle than it's commonly been given credit for. Read the outer story as a fast-forward (narrated by an unreliable antihero) for The Theory and Practice (Goldstein is far more realistic than Smith) and it gets much better. It might even become a story of what happens if one seriously attempts to implement Plato's Republic.
Also compare to various essays of Orwell's, especially Such Such Were the Joys, The Atomic Bomb and You, etc.
I enjoyed Coming Up For Air. I didn't find the description in the article matched the book. The nostalgia in the book is that of the character not of the author. There is a reasonable ironic distance between the two. The narrator is an unloveable middle aged prick really. What works well in the book is how threadbare and futile the social contract is shown to be. The character and their life illustrate it brilliantly without it seeming preachy.
I can highly recommend "Homage to Catalonia". It's a really insightful look into the world of the Communist revolutionaries and the anti-Fascist front-lines in the early 20th century. In fact, it's a really good look into similar political movements all the way up through today. It's also a very good first-hand account of war in multiple environments and the sections on urban warfare in Barcelona reminded me of the scenes of warfare in Baghdad during the Iraq war.
Some people find the writing about all of the factions confusing and hard to track, but I think that's on purpose. I think being there, it would have been confusing as well.
I read it a few years before actually making it to Barcelona and the description of the city came back to me in a flood as I was spending time in it. I hadn't realized how well he had described the look at feel of the city but the image I drew in my mind while I read the book was almost exactly what it actually looks like in many parts.
Orwell had an amazing ability to evoke complex settings in surprisingly sparse and unadorned language.
his non-fiction needs more reading. I honestly don't think his fiction is that good in comparison. One of my favourite pieces of criticism is still Asimov's fairly snarky review of 1984.
"One person cannot watch more than one person in full concentration, and
can only do so for a comparatively short time before attention begins to
wander. ... Consequently, the system of oppression by two-way television simply will not work."
I find it strange that a widely read author with a known interest in history had apparently never heard of the panopticon. Orwell outright states that the telescreens work on the same principle: "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. ... You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
Sounds like Twitter. Except that Orwellian tech did not have the ability to search your actions back ten years ago.
At least the Orwellian invisible guards were paid employees. On contemporary Internet, there is no shortage of unpaid volunteers digging in other people's activity just for the thrill of getting someone punished.
The difference is that the state apparatus may run out of money; the USSR did. You never run of enthusiastic volunteers, as long as you reward their actions with what they want, in this case, a public spectacle of a virtual guillotine.
There were plenty of enthusiastic volunteers in 1984. Children in the story were trained as spies and rewarded for denouncing their parents. Friends denounced friends.
Orwell understood that in order to create an atmosphere of total oppression there could be no loyalty between anyone. This is why the party criminalizes sex for pleasure. It’s the recognition that the loyalty within families is the greatest threat to the totalitarian state.
The government in Brave New World recognizes that as well but seeks to eliminate the threat by other means (taboo and superficial pleasure).
I grew up behind the Iron Curtain. The entire Orwell canon was banned, of course, but you could still hear it on BBC broadcast from abroad (the authorities tried to jam the signal, with various levels of success).
We liked 1984. Forbidden fruit tastes the best, but it also spoke to us. Those empty slogans and lingering fear of the Secret Police did translate fairly well into real life behind the Curtain.
Honestly, after attempting to read it, I read much better criticisms of books then that one. He takes forever till he even get toward book criticism part.
Plus, Asimov complaining about Orwells female characters is kind of rich.
> Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance. Our own computers to some extent do this in the IRS, in credit files, and so on, but that does not take us towards 1984, except in fevered imaginations. Computers and tyranny do not necessarily go hand in hand. Tyrannies have worked very well without computers (consider the Nazis) and the most computerised nations in today's world are also the least tyrannical.
I'd go with Orwell over Asimov as far as predictions of the future...
When I think of Orwell I group him together with Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit_451) and Ayn Rand (Cloud Atlas)
Great ideas, great concept, definitely food for thought - but painful to read.
Narrative is a different art.
> "Ayn Rand (Cloud Atlas)"
Cloud Atlas is David Mitchell.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Atlas_(novel)
I suspect you mean Atlas Shrugged.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged
(And now I've got Tom Hanks as Hank Reardon in my head. Didn't see that coming.)
Indeed, I meant Atlas Shrugged, thanks for the correction!
It's a good essay, in the narrow sense that it unequivocally identifies Asimov as a Communist and apologist for Stalin.
This aspect of the Futurians is often memory-holed, I thank you for bringing it to everyone's attention.
His critique of the science fiction, that screens which watch you back is a poor prediction (because how on Earth could Google watch people at scale?!) is particularly hilarious, if a bit sad.
> it unequivocally identifies Asimov as a Communist and apologist for Stalin
It critiques 1984 for it's narrow focus on the Stalinist form of totalitarianism, but I see no actual apologia for Stalinism. (The closest is the acknowledgement of the role the USSR under Stalin played as an ally against the Nazis.)
It does argue that 1984 misses the internal instability of totalitarianisms like Stalinism, which besame evident after 1984 was written.
> His critique of the science fiction, that screens which watch you back is a poor prediction (because how on Earth could Google watch people at scale?!) is particularly hilarious, if a bit sad.
The critique isn't of screens that watch you back, but of the failure of imagination of Orwell envisioning only screens by which a human watches you in real time rather than one that does so by some automated, scalable means.
He snidely denigrates socialism and communism constantly throughout. Is anything that talks about communism with any nuance apologism?
> it unequivocally identifies Asimov as a Communist and apologist for Stalin.
Scroll to the bottom of the article.
> His critique of the science fiction, that screens which watch you back is a poor prediction (because how on Earth could Google watch people at scale?!) is particularly hilarious, if a bit sad.
> Orwell was unable to conceive of computers or robots, or he would have placed everyone under non-human surveillance.
I guess this answers it
I adore Orwell. The second chapter of The Road to Wigan Pier (separately published in the excellent essay collection 'Inside The Whale'), which describes the working conditions of coal miners in the North of England, is one of the greatest pieces of journalistic writing in history [1]. In fact the whole book is very good, and contrary to this article I think only a fool would not find it relevant to the modern day - especially in its discussion of utopianism and the post-work society.
In general, the fact that Orwell is remembered in the public consciousness as the 1984 guy is a shame (and is particularly jarring when right wing populists invoke his name to decry people who try and get them to stop lying).
Orwell's essay 'England Your England' (the first part of 'The Lion and the Unicorn') is perhaps his piece which is dearest to my heart, as a patriotic but anti-reactionary Englishman. However, of broader appeal are 'Shooting an Elephant' and 'A Hanging' - essays which expose the brutal workings of colonialism better than any jargon-laden journal of post-colonial theory ever could.
But that's just the start when it comes to Orwell. I don't think the man wrote anything not worth reading and at his best he was near-untouchable in his ability to capture in the written word a society and its injustices.
Your comment shines an insightful light on Orwell's observations and commentary on the human condition, but it's getting some downvotes, presumably for the 2nd half of the 2nd para, which is worth considering in more detail.
> In general, the fact that Orwell is remembered in the public consciousness as the 1984 guy is a shame (and is particularly jarring when right wing populists invoke his name to decry people who try and get them to stop lying).
What do "right wing populists" mean when they call critics "Orwellian"?
> But once-popular works such as The Road to Wigan Pier are now in danger of falling into obsolescence, as the social circumstances that Orwell describes seem less and less relevant to a 21st-century readership...
Not surprising that this sentence was written by someone in the UK; to the US reader it's still quite relevant: for a significant proportion of the population life is just as desparate and his trenchant commentary on the Fabians (closest to contemporary US socialists) as earnest, sandal-wearing vegetarians is apposite here, not just metaphorically but just as often literally as in his time.
This essay is pretty good.
Politics and the English Language https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_poli...
i’ve regularly found his essays among the best of his writing.
My favorite essay of his is "What is Fascism?"
It shows that, even before actual self-proclaimed fascist nations were defeated in WW2, the word had effectively lost all meaning and was just a pejorative:
https://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/As_I_Please/english/e...
Notes on Nationalism
https://orwell.ru/library/essays/nationalism/english/e_nat
Absolutely true, although I feel almost vindicated that I have been calling Trump out for what he is now since 2015 - he is the closest you'll ever get to a fascist as president. The signs were there from the start, but the overeager way some people characterize others as fascist really helped him. The only real defence I can think of the man is that he isn't intelligent enough to really formulate an ideology beyond tribal urges.
The short-lived "Orange man bad" meme has not aged well.
Ian Hislop has a very good introduction to Orwell's "As I please" lectures.
Not mentioned, but "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is on my reading list. "The main theme is... romantic ambition to defy worship of ... money-god and status"
— Wikipedia
It’s in the article and the author chooses it as the best of the lesser know Orwell novels.
Apparently Orwell entered the public domain in Australia 20 years ago. I've been meaning to read some of this.
Keep The Aspidistra Flying is my favorite Orwell book atleast his among his fiction. I have read it atleast thrice. Among the Non Fictions I loved Down and Out in Paris and London and Homage to Catalonia which is perhaps my favorite.
The preface to Animal Farm is pretty interesting in how it paralells the current social media censorship with the censorship imposed by the English intelligentsia of Orwell's day.
In the case of social media, there's a difference between censorship and blocking hate speech/incitement to violence. The former is about quelling ideas and latter is about fomenting violence against "others".
Conflating the two is disingenuous at best.
As for "ideas", look at what Fox News has done to political discourse in America and tell me that's a good thing. I'm against outright censorship but they really push the limits of "free speech". From my point of view, they engage in stochastic terrorism and do not engage in good faith.
I'm not even talking about hate speech/incitement. I'm talking about the whole year's haggling over so-called fake news whenever there were opinions that did not match the official narrative. For example, if there was an opinion posted that contradicted the WHO or CDC on Covid then it was flagged, despite in some cases the obvious dissonance like the "masks don't work but they should be reserved for health workers" guideline.
You can argue there is a distinction to be made, but you can’t argue that it isn’t a form of censorship.
I bought his early work Burmese Days as a very inexpensive eBook about ten days ago. Definitely feels autobiographical and those experiences were precursors for his later beliefs. He really was ahead of his time.
Actually to understand his stories you have to understand the complexity of the history of military dictatorship in Myanmar in a system of power like no other ( only found in Orwell's works and today's state of controlling minorities in Myanmar- every day war with thousands of refugees and deads from napalm bombs for years with no coverage by any sort of media.In a real Orwellian state you can watch the behaving of Aung Sung Ki after her rise in power with the blessing of surveillance provided by a mix of military , police, casts and church)
Orwell stock will explode this year, I wish I could bet my money on it.