1984 Foreword

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: "Otto" <ottosell at yahoo.de>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 30, 2003 7:38 PM
Subject: Re: 1984 Foreword


>
>
> Otto wrote:
> >
> > I like Fromm's Afterword because it deals with weapons of mass
destruction,
> > politics and doublethink.
>
> Wonder why Fromm would bring those things up.
>
> _1984_ is not easy reading. Doublethink & Newspeak are a bit insane. The
> Appendix is helpful, I guess,  but I don't like the fact that the book
> has an Appendix to explain Newspeak.
>

What about Pynchon's solution?

"Why end a novel as passionate, violent and dark as this one with what
appears to be a scholarly appendix? (...) The answer may lie in simple
grammar. (...) is written consistently in the past tense, as if to suggest
some later piece of history, post-1984, in which Newspeak has become
literally a thing of the past (...) it is our own pre-Newspeak English
language that is being used to write the essay. Newspeak was supposed to
have become general by 2050, and yet it appears that it did not last that
long, let alone triumph, that the ancient humanistic ways of thinking
inherent in standard English have persisted, survived, and ultimately
prevailed, and that perhaps the social and moral order it speaks for has
even, somehow, been restored."