"4891" Don't get angry get even...

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In a message dated 5/7/2003 5:08:37 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
jbor at bigpond.com writes:


> For Orwell, the tyranny of
> doublethink is exemplified in Winston being tortured and brainwashed into
> accepting that 2 + 2 = 5 (or, indeed, 3, or any number). Orwell was
> rationalist through and through - it's pomo Pynchon who seeks to "transcend
> opposites" and who likes to think of himself as a "Zen Buddhis

Not doublethink, O'Brien. Doublethink merely gives a name to the 
duality(ies) inherent in any system of signification, e.g., language. 
Furthermore, although it's been years since I've read the whole of 
"1984" (Perhaps we should undertake it as a group?) I seem to 
recall a certain amount of fascination with Trotsky's (Goldstein's) 
ideas myself, and I think that's what Pynchon is referring to with
regards to Orwell. Trotsky was a thinker. Stalin was a totalitarian.

And while Orwell may have been a rationalist, as you claim, he was
also very consciously an artist, like Pynchon, and therefore, very
much involved with something akin to magic.

       Indeed it is, which is why Pynchon tries to dilute Orwell's 
       contempt for it by bringing in those superfluous references 
       to social psychology, F.S. Fitzgerald, Whitman, Yogi Berra 
       and Schrödinger's cat, and then in the next paragraph claiming 
       that it both repelled Orwell and "at the same time fascinat[ed] 
       him with its promise of a way to transcend opposities - as if
       some aberrant form of Zen Buddhism" (xi-xii).

Well, it certainly fascinates me. And I don't detect such categorical
contempt on Orwell's part, either, what little I know of him. I think
what Pynchon is getting at, is, that doublethink is a double-edged
sword, not to be wielded lightly, certainly not by those who would
impose it on others as a means of control, or, by those "dudes" who
might be in a vulnerable position with respect to such "O'Briens" who
could easily use it against them in order to perpetuate their (O'Briens')
power. It cuts both ways- like "the force" or "the rings" or evm art, 
and requires discipline, lest it be abused.

I think Orwell was as contemptuous of those who would abuse 
doublethink, as those who would allow themselves to be abused 
by them. Doublethink itself is just the way things are, something 
else to be dealt with in order to survive, something maybe even 
miraculous that given the proper training bridges the divide between 
art and science, of which Orwell was the lead engineer- an artist 
with the future in his bones.

respectfully

  
 
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