Orwell & Nineteen Eighty-Four

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2003 12:30 PM
Subject: Orwell & Nineteen Eighty-Four
>
> >> Orwell was pro-democracy. Socialist democracy.
>
> on 5/5/03 9:30 PM, Terrance wrote:
>
> > "Ingsoc," English Socialism. Like so many Americans on the left, Orwell
> > was more concerned with what Russia portended for socialism than with
> > the actual struggles of the working class.
>
> I don't think that is correct at all. Though the particularities might
> have
> changed as events unfolded, Orwell was and remained a socialist, and he
> was
> and remained pro-democracy. Trawling on the web yesterday I found two
> decent
> pieces on Orwell. The first accurately places _1984_ in its literary genre
> and genealogy as an anti-utopia or "dystopia":
>
> http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture13.html
>
> The second is a review of an Orwell biography which presents a good
> summary of the developments and changes in Orwell's politics:
>
> http://www.marxists.de/culture/orwell/chen.htm
>
> Both are more informative and accurate than what I've seen of Pynchon's
> Foreword.
>
> best

Orwell wrote: "Capitalism leads to dole queues, the scramble for markets,
and war. Collectivism leads to concentration camps, leader worship and war."
The only way out, according to Orwell, was a depressing compromise in which
"a planned economy can be somehow combined with the freedom of the
intellect, which can only happen if the concept of right and wrong is
restored to politics."
(...)
Orwell also drew his stage settings from what he observed firsthand in
post-war England. Much of Nineteen Eighty-Four is set in a gray, gritty,
depressing London of shortages, queues, inconveniences, ruined buildings and
occasional bombings. Many of the specifics of the novel relate to the years
1941-1943, when Orwell was employed by the BBC. For example, the images of
the canteen at the Ministry of Truth, where Winston Smith is employed, are
drawn directly from the BBC canteen. The Ministry of Truth itself -- 1000
feet high, is an exaggerated version of the wartime British Ministry of
Information. Even the fictional Big Brother may have been drawn from the
head of the Ministry of Information, Brendan Bracken, who was known to his
employees as B.B.
(...)
"If you ever do manage to read Nineteen Eighty-Four, you will come away from
the novel saddened, angry and perhaps even full of doom for the generation
that had to live through the totalitarian regimes of the 1930s and 40s. You
will have felt the full emotional impact of Orwell's mind as well. Dystopias
are powerful weapons, even more so than the vast number of utopian novels
that came before them. Utopias hold out for a vision of the future -- a
vision of how society ought to be. As a novel about how things are, Nineteen
Eighty-Four ought not to be considered a clever bit of prophecy on Orwell's
part. Better to leave that to a writer like H. G. Wells. Rather, I think we
have to see Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four as a description of what he saw
around him in post-war England. Again, the images of the novel and the two
film versions are those of a post-war London. They are constant reminders of
what England needed to avoid, and on a broader scale, of what we all need to
avoid."
http://www.historyguide.org/europe/lecture13.html

How is this that different from and so much better than what Pynchon says?

"What detractors - and even some admirers - have missed is that he never
ceased to write from within the left, attacking the betrayal of the
revolution rather than the revolution itself."
http://www.marxists.de/culture/orwell/chen.htm

This seems to be a contradiction to what you have said about Orwell
imagining in "1984" Britain having undergone some kind of revolution.
Following this quote Ozeania would be the product of a *betrayed revolution*
like the Soviet Union.

Otto