Chasing Orwell’s Ghost | Roads & Kingdoms
I happen to think that 1984 is a vastly overrated work, but it is still of interest to read this photo essay about the remote Scottish island location where Orwell went to finish it. Very bleak, like the novel (although the black and white photography doubtless makes it look as bleak as possible.)
5 comments:
over-rated!!!
It was a great book.
I was being generous with "vastly overrated". I think it's positively bad, with an analysis of fascism and human nature that doesn't even ring true.
I have never understood its success, and have an active dislike of it that far outweighs my puzzlement over the success of Tolkien. (Which I just consider "mostly harmless".)
As a book it makes a great long-form essay. (Essays were surely really where Orwell's strengths lay). It really hits the spot in a few ways - Big Brother is an absolutely iconic image/idea that perfectly represents the bland presence of the state. It's morphed in popular culture in some strange ways. (I don't think Orwell can be blamed for the television series of the same name).
The satirical touches (though not actually particularly funny) are spot on too: the telescreens that watch the people watching them - the two minute hate - and Winston's job in some state department in which he is largely responsible for manipulating figures, getting rid of undesirable memories, etc.
And I think Orwell was pretty perceptive in his breakdown of the language of fascism, his concepts of 'duck speak', 'doubleplusgood', and so on. It's not an especially novelistic idea and he didn't try very hard to make it fit in the novel but it is certainly an interesting analysis.
The prose and narrative is as exciting, at least, as many science fiction equivalents which I'm usually inclined to forgive.
I read it in my teens and was rather depressed at the end, but then, I suppose you would be by a novel that ends with about 100 pages of torture scenes! I was left with the impression of a good work that I'd never like to read again; possibly my impression would be less kindly now (I'm often underwhelmed when I glance through the pages these days).... but then, there's so much to read, that why would I bother going back to that one?
I'm glad you do not give it a whole hearted endorsement, Tim.
The whole anti-sex league bizzo made me laugh out loud in the (old) movie version, where instead of just wearing a sash, the sash actually had printed on it "Anti Sex League". I think I have mentioned that here before - maybe twice.
I always thought the story showing sex as the great ennobling activity against the overbearing control of the State was particularly silly.
I guess the marks of tyranny in Orwell's future state were the things 1948 Britons tended to be extra prudish about. But certainly, by all indications, Orwell in his day to day life doesn't seem to have been particularly interested in women or sex at all.
Brian Aldiss remarked in an essay on 1984 how humble Orwell's idea of utopia appeared to be: a girl, a cigarette, a bed, and enough to drink.
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