Thanks Louise. This is worth a read if you haven't seen it yet.

1984 has been very influential to me, even though I read it in high school. I think I may have read it twice, perhaps in college the second time. But not since. Still it's very vivid to me. The linguistic critique has proven to have lasting application, like the things it was critiquing. I read Animal Farm in high school, too, and don't really remember it that well.

Janet is always looking for an excuse to type the word "inkling" -- oops, I must be too!

Not too long ago I decided to read: Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, and The Handmaid's Tale. I wanted to read them in order of publication (as I have typed them out) and sort of compare and contrast, see which ideas may have been picked up by the authors influenced by their predecessor(s), and also because I don't think I had read any of these until I took on this project - maybe 1984 in high school. I graduated that year, so it was sort of a big book, by maybe not. I was in AP English and I'm thinking that Orwell was read in the regular English classes.

What was the most striking about my reading list is that I thought the writing and stories were stronger with each book. Huxley was certainly the worst of the writers, Orwell the bleakest, Bradbury the most poetic, Burgess the most complex and interesting, and Atwood kind of blew me away.

I'm not trying to bash Orwell here at all, but I was bummed out after reading 1984. But since if followed Brave New World I was also happy that the writing was so much better. Burgess remains my favorite of the group - I really loved the language he made up for his main character and found the words so much fun to read.

I also have not read Animal Farm, and I need to. I believe I have another of his novels at home, Burmese Days, which of course I should read as well.

I really am not looking for an excuse to say "inkling," but I am looking for a an excuse to say, "Their mourning was as great as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the plain of Megiddo."

Except I don't want to be mourning.

AMDG

I think it's really cool that Orwell himself is contributing to the discussion!

"Not too long ago I decided to read: Brave New World, 1984, Fahrenheit 451, A Clockwork Orange, and The Handmaid's Tale. I wanted to read them in order of publication (as I have typed them out) and sort of compare and contrast"

Good idea, Stu! I might try that myself. I didn't like Atwood's story at all. Not sure if I could cope with "A Clockwork Orange." Is it worse in terms of violence than the others?

Louise,

They're both Gnosticism.

AMDG

Thanks Janet, re: Clockwork Orange.

I guess I can see that about the gnosticism, sort of.

Lord of the World should be in your list of dystopias, Stu!

I only got to scan the article about Merton and Orwell, and now I have to leave and won't be back online until late or tomorrow. If I get what Merton is saying, I think he is right. ;-)
For one thing, I think in analogy, and I can't really write without it. And I'm also thinking that since what I write about has turned out to be for the most part spiritual, I'm talking about things that can't be pinned down in clear precise words because we aren't able to see them clearly.

Well, I have more to say, but have to go now.

AMDG

You're welcome, Craig.

"Although it's well written, it's at the bottom of my list of the five, because the whole premise of the religious right creating a brutal totalitarian regime is just too silly."

Yes, that's what I thought.

I echo the recommendation of "Lord of the World," which I read and thoroughly enjoyed a few months ago.

Janet, I think that if one is going to write about anything at all which is somewhat spiritual or artistic or about beauty, Orwell's list probably can't apply. I take it his advice is more for essays along political and practical lines. Also, I think analogies could work even in such writing, provided the meaning is fairly clear. In such a case I guess one would try to let the meaning choose the analogy.

I was thinking about how maybe we ought to throw Children of Men into that mix too. If you aren't familiar with it, there hasn't been a baby born in 20 years, and the last generation of young people gathers in violent groups. The reason I was thinking about this is that from what I see around me there seems to be a significant increase in miscarriage, stillbirth and infertility. I would love to see some statistics on this. It might just be a big coincidence and it might not be this way elsewhere, but there's a local parish where 3 women lost their babies at 30+ weeks in one month.

As for the group of irrational violent youth, well . . . .

I know my Christmas cheer is overwhelming.

AMDG

We cross-posted--I was replying to Stu, in case that wasn't obvious.

I did not find Fahrenheit 451 dated at all, and find it anticipated cultural phenomena which were at the time it was written novelties or not yet present. (While we're at it, it is actually an edited assemblage of magazine fiction; it did not start out as a completed monograph).

Thank you, Mary.

which is the major feature of the story.

You need to read it again. The prohibition on reading is epiphenomenal. Read the fire captain's lecture to Montag. Read Clarisse's observations of her contemporaries to Montag. Re-read the scene with Montag reading poetry to Millie's friends. Re read the scene wherein Millie has her bloodstream pumped out.

Thanks for you comment, Mary. It's much appreciated! I've really enjoyed the series too.

Janet, maybe I'll add "Children of Men" to my list too.

I loved Fahrenheit 451 so am glad Art came along to defend it. Pretty sure I read that one as a teen-ager when I read a lot of Bradbury. He is a poetic writer for me. I was glad to revisit him in middle-age and find he was still magical. I think Neil Gaiman may be the nearest writer there is to him in contemporary fiction. At the time I thought that maybe the reason F451 was so wonderful for me was I really didn't like the previous two: BNW seemed to me poorly written, and 1984 was just so depressing (thank you, George!).

So apparently Atwood is sort of a nut, okay. I know little about her, except that other than Robertson Davies she is the only Canadian writer I can name. Alias Grace is absolutely outstanding, for anyone that wants a non-dystopic Atwood read. :) It is historical fiction.

Week 25: Josef Skvorecky

AMDG

Wow, thanks Janet.

That's great, Janet!

All the links work. The only discrepancy is that Ronald Blythe appears in the list as "Robert Blythe".

I'll fix it tomorrow.

I was wondering if you could put it on the sidebar somehow because this comment thread is going to disappear into the dark soon. I might put it on my blog too.

AMDG

"except that other than Robertson Davies she is the only Canadian writer I can name."

Alistair MacLeod is very good. He wrote only two books of stories and one novel, but they're well worth reading.

Re: Bradbury, you may know that he and Russell Kirk were friends and correspondents. Back in 2006 a friend of mine was a Fellow at the Kirk Center in Michigan, and he invited me up for a long weekend, during which I had several opportunities to talk with Mrs. Kirk. In one of the conversations Bradbury's name came up. Mrs. Kirk described him as fairly apolitical, but "temperamentally conservative." You do get the sense from his fiction that he had some level of discomfort with certain aspects of modernity.

I read one book by Robertson Davies quite a few years ago, and liked it, but not enough to seek out more.

Bradbury's temperamental conservatism does come out in his writing. You can certainly see that in F451. And by the way my criticism of it is not a rejection of his ideas, what he's saying about the state of the culture etc. It just isn't effective as fiction for me, at least as experienced through that recording. I'll see if it's better on the page.

Atwood, or rather The Handmaid's Tale, is the opposite, now that I think of it. Very effective artistically, not-takeable-seriously intellectually. I have no trouble believing some of her other novels could be excellent.

No, I mean clicking on the "52 Authors" tag or keyword or whatever it's called that's at the bottom of each post in the series. Or should be--it's entirely possible that I missed a few. But like I said that's cumbersome. It gives you all the posts themselves, not a list, in reverse chronological order.

I like this quote from Orwell, apparently, which was just put on my FB page by my friend, Rob:

"A question ... seldom asked by anybody, is why we are on earth at all, and, leading out of this, what kind of lives we want to live. Yet till we have an answer to this question we shall never solve our housing problem and are merely making it rather more likely that the atom bombs will solve it for us."

I have difficulty believing that few people have ever asked why we are on earth, but if they want to know the answer to that question, I can tell them. There were plenty of people who could have given Orwell the answer, but he apparently closed his mind to them.

AMDG

I found an interesting essay on Orwell and his relationship with the Church of England at the Orwell Prize website, which has this:

Many were surprised that in his will, signed just before his death from tuberculosis in January 1950, he asked to be buried according to the rites of the Church of England. However, as he approached the Great Unknown, he could have been closer to his Creator than anyone imagined. In late 1949, in a letter from his hospital bed to Malcolm Muggeridge, he enclosed a newspaper advertisement which had, he said, upset him. It was for Wolsey socks, and read, ‘Wolsey socks — Fit for the gods.’ Wasn’t that blasphemous? he asked. It is just conceivable that for Orwell, the atheist and Old Etonian Cynic, his relationship with the Almighty had suddenly mellowed. One of his last hospital visitors noticed that he was reading the first volume of Dante’s Divine Comedy.

Blair’s paternal grandfather was Vicar of Milborne St. Andrew in Dorset. He himself was born in Bengal in 1903 and baptised at the Anglican Church of St John in the Wilderness in Motihari. Aged four months he was brought to England, settling with his mother and elder sister at Henley-on-Thames. Most biographers have him being first taught by Anglican nuns there, but diocesan and local records reveal that the only convent in Henley at that time was run by French Ursulines, forbidden to teach in France.

Having been educated by Catholic nuns in an all-girls school probably explains Orwell’s lifelong antipathy to the Catholic Church and perhaps also his acknowledged misogyny.