1984 Foreword, The Principles of Newspeak

[Paul Mackin]

On Sun, 2003-05-18 at 17:19, jbor wrote:
> > Could that be basis for Pynchon's
> > faith in the english language, and perhaps, what lies behind it?
> > 
> 
> Thinking about Pynchon's interpretation of why that essay on Newspeak was
> written and included as an appendix, what it implies (its "hints of
> restoration and redemption ... to brighten an otherwise bleakly pessimistic
> ending" xxiv-xxv), and why Orwell stood his ground with the American Book of
> the Month Club (well, duh, why wouldn't he have?), it strikes me that
> Pynchon skips over the obvious question of how this "restoration"
> (interesting choice of term) has actually come about, which is something the
> text gives no answer to.

It's very odd the way Pynchon fails to make more explicit the 
connection between the eventual demise of Newspeak and the quote of
Orwell in the succeeding paragraph. "The huge, invincible, everlasting
slave empire of which Burnham appears to dream will not be established,
or if established, will not endure, because slavery is no longer a
stable basis for human society." Doesn't this belief of Orwell--that
slavery is no longer viable--stand as a fairly obvious explanation for
why the  return to the use of normal language pretty much had to happen?
Like slavery, Newspeak is ultimately self-negating in a modern setting,
or so Orwell seems to have thought.

It's as it Pynchon doesn't want to put too much credence in Orwell's
optimism. Decides it's best to make a bit of a joke out of it with the
whistling a happier tune business.

I'm in deep doo-doo now with the Pynchon Protection Society.





> 
> It might be as Pynchon says, but it is only an interpretation, as he does
> admit. ("The answer may lie ... ")
> 
> Who's to say that that "scholarly appendix" isn't *itself* a chapter from
> one of the subsequent editions of the approved Oceania dictionary? And,
> perhaps, the novel's text something likewise churned out on one of those
> novel-writing machines where Julia works in the Ministry of Truth? A version
> of Winston's diary, appropriated, sanitised by one of the Fiction Department
> committees, and leaked out to us like Goldstein's book? How close are we to
> Camus here?
> 
> best
>