Orwell/Adorno

[Mutualcode at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/21/2003 10:12:26 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
lorentzen-nicklaus at t-online.de writes:


>             > Thomas Adorno.
> 
>          guess he means theodor pynchon ... kfl 
> 
> 

My apologies, I guess I was still in a state of shock and awe...
over the courage demonstrated by the French and Germans, that
is, for refusing to knuckle under to U.S. demands for fealty.

Here's some more Hitchens, concluding the chapter under discussion:

       ...Adorno hated the crass matrerialism of American journalism,
       and rightly suspected that its claim to provide 'facts full in
       the face' was boastful and empty. He overbalanced this criticism 
       by comparing it to the form and timbre of the command issued
       under Fascism by the dumb to the silent'- But 'comprehensibility
       to the most stupid', as he put it, has advantages over condescen-
       sion. A lie can be detected even by the simplest folk; would
       Adorno  (...) have had it otherwise? As Professor Miller [the same
       cited by D. Monroe earlier:

       http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0303&msg=77241&sort=date

       ]...pointed out, if the critical theorists are right, and a linguistic
       'retention of strangeness is the only antidote to estrangement',
       then what occurs when the 'new' language becomes current and
       intelligble? Orwell's wager, in spite of some lapses into pessimism,
       was that the profane were well able to understand the language of
       the temple, and thus to penetrate the supposed secrets of authority.
       He did of course deploy a 'subjective' and unquantifiable tool,
       something that cannot be taught or inherited, but the old name for
       this X-factor is intellectual honesty. (p.204, Why Orwell Matters).

Sounds a trifle close to Calvinism- but Hitchens is a polemicist, after all,
and here (and elsewhere), seems unable to resist the temptation to enlist
the pellucid prose of Orwell into the service of his own arguments, which
seem to be listing rightward, of late.

respectfully

             After obligingly charging at each of the news cameras
       while making insane faces, and after the police had finished
       their paperwork, Zoyd caught sight of Hector squatting in
       front of the destroyed window, among the glittering debris,
       holding a bright jagged polygon of plate glass. (Vineland, 12)



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