Guardian publishes edited version of P's 1984 intro

[Paul Nightingale]

Dave Monroe: "For the record, as well as any and all concerned, this
'excerpt' contains roughly as much of the "Foreword' as I've posted,
albeit with slight differences in editing."

It's those "slight difference[s]" that are always interesting, of
course.

Having put my cut-&-paste version from Dave's posts next to the
Guardianised version ...

What becomes clearer the more you read it/them is the way P. goes back
and forth, from 'then' to 'now' (he refers to "'our' 1984" - an
interesting use of scare-quotes there), from 1984 the novel to Orwell
the engaged intellectual, from democracy/totalitarianism 'then' to
whatever we're stuck with at the moment, from implicit references to
current events (the much-discussed, and disputed, references to 9/11) to
rather more explicit references (not even the most stubborn of sceptics
can deny the section on the war (sorry, peace - sorry, defence, or even
defense) department. Such juxtapositions remind us to ask how we 'know'
anything.

The purpose of this to-&-froing, I think, is to refuse the reader a
position from which to consume Orwell (one of the reasons we're unable
to agree on much). I still say Pynchon's not so much giving us an
'introduction' to the novel; rather, he's asking us to think about the
way in which writing/reading is/are always-already history (which
partially explains the scare-quotes in "'our' 1984", as well as the
importance he grants Orwell's Appendix). He's asking us to think about
how we construct the story's protagonist, Orwell.

And just as importantly, he's asking us to consider how we construct
ourselves as readers/rewriters.