More on '84

Okay, so yes I just read 1984 which is ridiculous considering:

(a) I love Orwell's essays
(b) I've read (and seen the musical version of) Animal Farm
(c) I was a big scifi nerd in high school

But... well.... I have no reason, really, other than an ingrained anti-canonical prejudice that I have (oh, you mean I'm supposed to read this? FUUUUUUCK YOUUUUU) that at times stands in the way from my enjoying great literature and movies.

So what's my opinion on 1984? Weirdly mixed. Look, it's an odd experience to read something that has been so culturally influencial after it's influence has already taken grip. For the first 90 (nearly plotless) pages of the book, not a page goes by without some important cultural thing going by... Memory Hole... Ministry of Truth... Freedom is Slavery... Doublethink... Thoughtcrime... Newspeak etc... It's ironic, considering that Orwell's Politics and the English Language is so thoroughly obsessed with dead phrases that his book would give birth to an eventual lexicon of what he would've defined as dead language. But that isn't his fault. His book is filled to the brim with important ideas and phrases that have become cliches because they have lasting power and real descriptive power.

Orwell writes with an essayist's clarity, which is, frankly, not always good from a novelist's perspective. He commits the cardinal sin of saying instead of showing for the first 100 pages of the book, and honestly my own taste in sci-fi and fantasy is against super-thorough world-creation* and towards more character and narrative driven work.

Once the action of the book gets going, however, Orwell shows himself quite a capable novelist, and the descriptive language and inner monologues of Winston Smith are quite beautiful and exciting. By the end, the book is a page turner, even if Orwell makes the unfortunate decision to devote nearly 40 pages to reprinting a book describing INGSOC in as dry langauge as possible roughly 60% of the way through. (And the appendix at the end on NewSpeak is totally unneccessary world-creation stuff that's important for the writer to do but not important for the reader to read).

In 1984, the entire point of the novel is the world creation, and for roughly 50% of the book, Orwell doesn't seem to really care about Winston Smith or what happens to him. Which is all well and good, and I think I would've been more willing to roll with it (as that world has a lot to teach our own) if I didn't-- thanks to the book's cannonical placement and cultural influence-- know all that stuff already. In other words, I bet were I in high school (or 1950) the book would've been brilliant and mindblowing, but reading it in the present day there are certain things having to do with the political nature of the book that get in the way of its ability to tell a good story, but when it focuses instead of storytelling, the book is fucking awesome, and in its fucking awesomeness it contains all the stuff that Orwell tries to accomplish with the dryer world-creation writing. And the third part of it (Which I read in one sitting) is a harrowing depiction of brainwashing and the motives of the world he's created.

So... Yes, I liked it. I think it's an important book and its place in the cannon is well deserved. I will almost certainly reread it at some point, given that it isn't banned once we all live in Oceana. I just wish I had come across it earlier in life.

* this is, if memory serves, a major debate amongst sci-fi/fantasy readers. So, for example, Orson Scott Card's work doesn't spend a lot of time giving you background on the created world but instead plunks you down in it while Larry Niven gives you detailed explanations of the physics of the worlds he's created. It's the same difference that crops up between, say, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials (which has next to no time spent on world creation even as it takes places in multiple worlds) and Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is roughly 25% world creation. My prejudice against world creation is one of the reasons why I have never read Lord of the Rings

Comments

[patrick]

"I bet, were I in high school (or 1950) the book would've been brilliant and mindblowing..."

Which, of course, was when many of us read it. How'd you escape it? My senior year AP English class covered 1984, Brave New World, and A Clockwork Orange all at once which was, to put it mildly, mindblowing.

[freeman]

You're leaving out the world champions of world creation and sci-fi: Asimov's Foundation series and Dune.

[isaac]

I actually love Dune, and was bored by Foundation. I just chose the first two books that came into my head. Far better examples of non-world-creation sci-fi would've been Philip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson.

[freeman]

Dune rocks with the caveat that I tried to read God Emperor of Dune and put it down and said "I do not care."

The story takes place MILLENIA after Children of Dune ends, which I just couldn't quite deal with. That's a little too much effort for me. The first three, though, are perfect.

I actually really enjoyed Foundation, although it's been centuries since I read them. The basic ideas in Foundation (future economics and all that jazz) turn my crank.

I am ashmed to admit I've never read Ender's Game. You may relieve me of my geek card now.

[isaac]

Freeman, I run an anti-canonical shop around here, your geek card is safe with me...

[Alison Croggon]

There tend to be reasons why thing are in a canon. Though I've never quite managed The Mill on the Floss.

I simply don't agree that Orwell doesn't care about Winston Smith. He's one of the most heartbreaking characters in literature. I read 1984 at 14, around the same time I read Metamorphosis; both of them were books I found inexpressibly painful. Orwell's "world creation" is actually an imaginative description of post-war London (you can still walk past the Ministry of Truth, and Room 101 is supposedly in the BBC).

[Joshua James]

I'm telling ya, PHANTOM TOLLBOOTH for fantasy, and THE RUNNING MAN for adult scares of future tolitarian government meets reality TeeVee . . .

Okay, I'm getting carried away . . .

[nick]

The 1984 Apple commercial has eclipsed my memory of the novel. This probably has to do with how I watched it. The 60-second ad played only once during the Super Bowl and I watched with a roomful of dramaturgs at the Gypsy bar at the Yale School of Drama. An all-time wacky experience, reflecting on that book at that time with that group, while watching a football game.

Read the interesting wiki story of the ad’s production and airing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_(television_commercial)

And watch it here. It’s still impressive and fun.

http://www.uriahcarpenter.info/1984.html

[James]

Yeah, I definitely like 1984, even though....let's face it...it reads much more like a textbook/long essay rather than a story or novel. The times Orwell portrays Winston as an honest-to-gosh three dimensional character are very far and very few between (I only vaguely remember him being self-deprecating in one scene and found it oddly out of place with the tone of the rest of the book).

[isaac]

I think that Orwell invests in Winston Smith, but only intermittently. One of the reasons it feels like a textbook is that roughly 1/5 of the book *is a textbook* that Winston reads. But the moments when Orwell is invested in Smith, I think the book is a thing of beauty.

One other thing... having read *The Power and the Glory* this year as well, I noticed the stark similarities in terms of charactarization and inner monologue between the Whisky Priest and Winston Smith. I wonder how heavily Orwell was influenced by that book, given the scant nine years between their publication dates. Anyone else who has read both noticed a similarity?

[James]

I have read both, but never made the overt comparison. I guess I've always felt that Greene's characters were more three dimensional (i.e., I don't have any excellent analysis or argument here, but i just remember finding Greene's whiskey priest to be more like a person than Winston), even though, like Orwell, he's very on the nose with his ideas (that border on being outright propaganda).

[Marisela]

I love Dune.

I've read almost all of the books in the original series, but the first book is my favorite. Herbert creates such an amazing political world. And it felt so much like chess to me, a feint with in a feint with in a feint.

And I have to say the director's cut of the 80s movie is much closer to the book.