Foreword "There is a Photograph"

[Dave Monroe]

   "There is a photograph, taken around 1946 in
Islington, of Orwell with his adopted son, Richard
Horatio Blair.  The little boy, who would have been
around two at the time, is beaming, with unguarded
delight.  Orwell is holding him gently with both
hands, smiling too, pleased, but not smugly so--it is
more complex than that, as if he has discovered
something that might be worth evn more than anger--his
head titletd a bit, his eyes with a careful look that
might remind filmgoers of a Robert Duvall character
with a backstory in which he has seen more than one
would have preferred to.  Winston Smith 'believed that
he had been born in 1944 or 1945 ...'  Richard Blair
was born May 14, 1944.  It is not too difficult to
guess that Orwell, in 1984, was imagining a future for
his son's generation, a world he was not so much
wishing upon them as warning against.  He was
impatient with predictions of the inevitable, he
remained confident in the ability of ordinary people
to cahneg anything, if they would.  It is the boy's
smile, in any case, that we return to, direct and
radiant, proceeding out of an unhesitating faith that
the world, at the end of the day, is good, and that
human decency, like parental love, can always be taken
for granted--a faith so honorable that we can imagine
Orwell, and perhaps even ourselves, for a moment
anyway, swearing to do whatever must be done to keep
it from ever being betrayed." ("Foreword," xxv-xxvi)


"There is a photograph"

http://orwell.ru/a_life/crick/img/_023.htm

http://orwell.ru/a_life/crick/img/_025.htm

http://orwell.ru/bio/gallery/img/_014.htm

http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/search2?coll_id=5088&inst_id=13

Well, there's a photograph somehwere, but ...


"Pynchon lives in New York with his wife and agent,
Melanie Jackson, and their son, Jackson Pynchon."

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pynchon


Robert Duvall

http://my.netian.com/~hatcreek/

http://www.imdb.com/Name?Duvall,+Robert

There used to be a nice array of pictures of RD in
various roles in The Guinness Book of World Records
under "Most Versatile Actor" or somesuch, but ...


"at the end of the day"

http://www.onthepage.org/offthepage.htm

http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/2986636.htm

http://www.bagnut.com/soup/languagephrases.html

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