Orwell Day

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

kind of passed me by ....

this piece in the Graun woke me up more here

i find this conclusion from the piece irresistible

It's surely not just me who, reading this, thinks of the government telling us, in the brazen untruth akin to O'Brien convincing Winston Smith that two plus two equals five, that we're all in this together. Perhaps 2013 isn't so different from Nineteen Eighty-Four.

... the idea that the Posh boys can not count is appealing eh ....

[teamsaint]

great links, Jazzer. Thanks.
1984 is with us every day.
Go to a railway station, and you hear endless , absolutely useless security announcements, that serve only to enhance levels of fear.

[Serial_Apologist]

great links, Jazzer. Thanks.
1984 is with us every day.
Go to a railway station, and you hear endless , absolutely useless security announcements, that serve only to enhance levels of fear.

"Please always keep your belongings with you" - famous last words - "and report anything suspicious to a" non-existent "member of staff", for example.

Alias, "Orwell that ends well"

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

bbc radio has plans

[Beef Oven]

This is very Orwellian

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/leveson-inquiry/9817625/Leveson-EU-wants-power-to-sack-journalists.html

[aeolium]

It's good to see a season devoted to Orwell's work, and 1984 should work better on radio than on TV (though apparently the first TV adaptation nearly 60 years ago was supposed to be good).

Re the article calum linked to, the phrase I most remember from Orwell's Coming Up For Air is one that occurs near the passage quoted, where Bowling eats the fishy sausage: "Bombs of filth bursting inside your mouth" (Bowling has been noticing a bomber flying overhead so perhaps makes this association). It's a combination of sensory disgust and fear that is characteristic in a lot of his descriptions.

On the other hand I never really feel the need - as Stuart Jeffries does - to speculate on how a writer (or a composer) would have written for a completely different age, and I don't really care for the adjectives Dickensian, Orwellian and Kafkaesque as applied to current phenomena.

[Anna]

bbc radio has plans

Oh Thanks! It is part of a season of programmes, called The Real George Orwell, devoted to the writer and his work. They include a dramatisation of Animal Farm, featuring Tamsin Greig and Toby Jones, and adaptations of Homage To Catalonia, Burmese Days and Down And Out In Paris And London.
I love Down and Out but I think my two favourites are Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Coming up for Air, and the terribly sad A Clergymans Daughter.

[teamsaint]

This is very Orwellian

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...urnalists.html

One thing amongst many, Beefy, sadly.
I hope that the radio "1984" is recorded at the Shard..or something else appropriate happens.

[Mandryka]

A (very) rare good article from the present-day Guardian.

I have a hunch that his experience of the 60s/70s would have turned Orwell to the Right: that is, after all, what happened to most intellectuals of his generation. Otoh, he might have gone down the David Mercer route - ie, remaining a socialist by personal conviction while losing any faith in socialism's practicability. Given that his hero (and mine) was George Gissing, I'm surprised that he ever held any faith in politics (of any kind) to effect meaningful change.