1984 Foreword

[jbor]

on 13/5/03 1:42 PM, pynchonoid wrote:

> From
> the start Pynchon's broadening the perspective,
> pulling back from a strict focus on _1984_ itself to
> embrace issues that his work shares with Orwell's, as
> well as bringing what Orwell presents in _1984_ about
> facism into a discussion of what's happening "circa
> 2003" (a phrase he repeats in the Foreword) into
> "looking around us at the present moment".

The first paragraph is a straightforward biographical summary and typical of
the genre. The details Pynchon includes here aren't obscure or unusual.

Pynchon does indeed write "circa 2003" twice (xvi & xxi). As a "Centennial
Edition", and as it's the year in which Pynchon is writing, that's hardly
surprising of course. There's no mention of September 11, 2001, however.

When he uses the phrase "Looking around us at the present moment, for
example ... " (xv) it's in the context of his dig at the way "some critics"
play "a game" of making "lists of what Orwell did and didn't 'get right'"
(possibly a retort to Louis Menand's January _New Yorker_ piece, as the
earlier reference to "anticommunist ideologues with Pavlovian-response
issues of their own" on p. ix might be a jibe at Christopher Hitchens). This
is the paragraph which concludes with that great parody of a conversation
between two back-slapping trivialisers who would appropriate isolated
details from a novel such as _1984_ (or, indeed, from Pynchon's Foreword, or
his other work) only in order to fuel their own, blatantly self-centred and
propagandistic, political agendas:

    "Wow, the Government has turned into Big Brother, *just like
    Orwell predicted!* Something, huh?" "Orwellian, dude!"

Who does that sound like, I wonder.

best