orwellian | writing notes

Despite not being a big fan of biographies, I am very much enjoying The Ministry of Truth: A biography of George Orwell’s 1984 by Dorian Lynskey, which, with its focus on the book, tells the story of Orwell in a fascinating new (to me) light. It’s also a great way of talking about the impact of the world on Orwell’s thinking, and the impact of Orwell’s writing on the world.

Books like these are filled with great ideas and wonderful small nuggets of information. My favorite is the word Orwellian was coined by Mary
McCarthy, in her essay on fashion magazines “Up the Ladder from Charm to Vogue” published in The Reporter on August 1, 1950.

The Orwellian future was a “without content or point of view beyond its proclamation of itself, one hundred and twenty pages of sheer presentation, a journalistic mirage”, McCarthy continues

The articles, in fact, seem meant not to be read but inhaled like a whiff of scent from the mystic… Nobody, one imagines, has read them, not even their authors: Grammatical sentences are arranged around a vanishing point of meaning.

Text, without content, that hasn’t been read, and nobody will read… But it will be consumed.

While most of society seems to have swung in a different direction. We seem to be more subdued by hedonism and triviality but none the less it is important to remember we are never far from this final warning from Orwell, and in particular “…don’t let it happen. It depends on you”.

This is a dramatization from the BBC documentary Orwell: A Life in Pictures. In the film’s final dramatized scene (complete film here), the re-created Orwell himself makes the following ominous prediction:

Allowing for the book, after all, being a parody, something like 1984 could actually happen. This is the direction the world is going in at the present time. In our world, there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. The sex instinct will be eradicated. We shall abolish the orgasm. There will be no loyalty except loyalty to the Party. But always there will be the intoxication of power. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who’s helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face, forever. The moral to be drawn from this dangerous nightmare situation is a simple one: don’t let it happen. It depends on you.

Via Open Culture