1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

[Otto]

----- Original Message -----
From: "jbor" <jbor at bigpond.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2003 12:02 AM
Subject: Re: 1984 Foreword "fascistic disposition"

> As I was reading the "other" discussion of the Foreword which James linked
> to (and lamenting the fact that there are articulate, intelligent, polite
> people out there somewhere in cyber-land after all), I noticed the link to
> Menand's piece in the New Yorker which Otto also posted back in January.
>
> http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?030127crat_atlarge
>
> How much better than Pynchon's Foreword is that piece.
>
> best
>

I agree that this is good literary criticism (thanks to MalignD for
reminding us of the piece), highly informative about the Orwell-criticism,
including many biographic details and busy with Orwell's politics:

"All politics, he writes, "is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and
schizophrenia." And by the end of the essay ["The Road to Wigan Pier"] he
has damned the whole discourse: "Political language-and with variations this
is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists-is
designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable." All political
parties? Orwell had sniffed out a tendency."

Is it really that much better or isn't Pynchon's intention in relating
"1984" to the present a very different approach? This is what he's got to
say about "doublethink" today:

"(...) recall that in the present-day United States, few have any problem
with a war-making apparatus named 'the Department of Defense,' any more than
we have saying 'Department of Justice' with a straight face, despite
well-documented abuses of human and constitutional rights by its most
formidable arm, the F.B.I. Our nominally free news media are required to
present 'balanced' coverage, in which every 'truth' is immediately neutered
by an equal and opposite one. Every day public opinion is the target of
rewritten history, official amnesia and outright lying, all of which is
benevolently termed 'spin,' as if it were no more harmful than a ride on a
merry-go-round. We know better than what they tell us, yet hope otherwise.
We believe and doubt at the same time--it seems a condition of political
thought in a modern superstate to be permanently of at least two minds on
most issues. Needless to say, this is of inestimable use to those in power
who wish to remain there, preferably forever."
("Foreword," pp. xii-xiii)

Generally it seems to me that Menand and Pynchon both are saying that
Orwell, in all his contradictions and changes throughout his lifetime,
wasn't a man who would have supported any government action,
whether right or wrong.

Otto