Forgive me for posting the same comment twice, but since I just was talking about 1984 in this thread, I’ll say here as well that I don’t think you should be ashamed for enjoying multiple reads of it. I harp on how bad the writing was, but honestly it was… passable. But more importantly, I would argue that that book really did capture some important concepts and feelings and fears that were floating around. It’s just that it was written by a hardcore liberal at heart who just had to fucking blame communism instead of taking the accurate path and blaming capitalism and imperialism. Anyway… what I just posted in another comment:
It’s not even that 1984 was a terrible book. It is rather poorly written by an author who was kinda a shit writer, but the dude did capture a certain important and lasting zeitgeist. He did identify an undercurrent of fear, a very valid fear, that permeated culture. The problem was that he misidentified the direction where the fear was coming from, the systems it was actually bubbling up from were the capitalist systems. But commies were both easy and profitable to make the enemies. The source was the society he actually knew better and mostly lived in, but he had witnessed other systems and wanted to project all the negativity onto the socialist systems that, again, benefited him to badmouth. His book could have been still a poorly written but interestingly prescient warning of capitalism, what it was what it was becoming (and what it is), and some of the extremes trends towards… That’s what could have been if he had correctly attributed the dystopian elements as being rooted in capitalism instead of communism. Also, even thought he may not have been a great writer in general, he was good with using phrases that fit well in the milieu at the time and continue to. Like “thought police” and “Doublethink” and “Newspeak” and “memory hole.” “Big Brother is watching.” “We’ve always been at war with East Oceania.” Bunch of others. There is a reason that shit stuck around, reason that goes beyond just the fact that the capitalists blew it up and made it popular, this otherwise mediocre book they held up for its usefulness in propaganda as some great bulwark against the terrors of communism. Really a tragedy that Orwell was a fucking rat-narc liberal coward.
im going to die on the hill that even though 1984 is anticommunist and the plot sort of meanders around the place, i still think on the level of the individual sentences its really well written and Orwell was very good at conveying the emotions he wanted too without ever getting too flowery with it like some writers do. I’m not going to hold up 1984 next to like dracula or anything but its a decently written book and i think hexbear posters have a sort of kneejerk reaction to overly shit on it because the worst possible people like it for all the wrong reasons.
Actually, I will die by your side on that hill, or at least put in a good effort before retreating. The main reason I was repeating how the writing was poor is because the book gets held up as like this literary masterpiece since it’s taught in schools and is on every single list of “books you must read before you die.” Of course the reason it’s taught in school is largely about propaganda, not literary genius, but the people who love it will talk about it like it’s barely a step down from Shakespeare, even though a lot of the writing is objectively cringe. Like I just read the hero’s opening description as having “ruggedly handsome features.” But I agree, it’s really good at what it does well. I think in most cases and in most spaces, it should be shit on and taken down a peg because it doesn’t deserve its common position as being this great masterpiece, but the other side of that coin is that it’s an entertaining and effective book, certainly not trash simply by virtue of how it gets used to serve a reactionary agenda.
I’ve read and enjoyed 1984 two or three times. I read Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia (about half of it), Burmese Days, plus a book of his essays, his writing advice, etc. Orwell sucks but I agree with the other commenter here saying that there is just something about 1984. I don’t know. I took another look at Brave New World recently and thought that it was just eugenicist crap. I haven’t looked at 1984 in at least ten years so maybe my opinion would change if I did.
I read and enjoyed 1984 at least 4 times
Forgive me for posting the same comment twice, but since I just was talking about 1984 in this thread, I’ll say here as well that I don’t think you should be ashamed for enjoying multiple reads of it. I harp on how bad the writing was, but honestly it was… passable. But more importantly, I would argue that that book really did capture some important concepts and feelings and fears that were floating around. It’s just that it was written by a hardcore liberal at heart who just had to fucking blame communism instead of taking the accurate path and blaming capitalism and imperialism. Anyway… what I just posted in another comment:
It’s not even that 1984 was a terrible book. It is rather poorly written by an author who was kinda a shit writer, but the dude did capture a certain important and lasting zeitgeist. He did identify an undercurrent of fear, a very valid fear, that permeated culture. The problem was that he misidentified the direction where the fear was coming from, the systems it was actually bubbling up from were the capitalist systems. But commies were both easy and profitable to make the enemies. The source was the society he actually knew better and mostly lived in, but he had witnessed other systems and wanted to project all the negativity onto the socialist systems that, again, benefited him to badmouth. His book could have been still a poorly written but interestingly prescient warning of capitalism, what it was what it was becoming (and what it is), and some of the extremes trends towards… That’s what could have been if he had correctly attributed the dystopian elements as being rooted in capitalism instead of communism. Also, even thought he may not have been a great writer in general, he was good with using phrases that fit well in the milieu at the time and continue to. Like “thought police” and “Doublethink” and “Newspeak” and “memory hole.” “Big Brother is watching.” “We’ve always been at war with East Oceania.” Bunch of others. There is a reason that shit stuck around, reason that goes beyond just the fact that the capitalists blew it up and made it popular, this otherwise mediocre book they held up for its usefulness in propaganda as some great bulwark against the terrors of communism. Really a tragedy that Orwell was a fucking rat-narc liberal coward.
im going to die on the hill that even though 1984 is anticommunist and the plot sort of meanders around the place, i still think on the level of the individual sentences its really well written and Orwell was very good at conveying the emotions he wanted too without ever getting too flowery with it like some writers do. I’m not going to hold up 1984 next to like dracula or anything but its a decently written book and i think hexbear posters have a sort of kneejerk reaction to overly shit on it because the worst possible people like it for all the wrong reasons.
Actually, I will die by your side on that hill, or at least put in a good effort before retreating. The main reason I was repeating how the writing was poor is because the book gets held up as like this literary masterpiece since it’s taught in schools and is on every single list of “books you must read before you die.” Of course the reason it’s taught in school is largely about propaganda, not literary genius, but the people who love it will talk about it like it’s barely a step down from Shakespeare, even though a lot of the writing is objectively cringe. Like I just read the hero’s opening description as having “ruggedly handsome features.” But I agree, it’s really good at what it does well. I think in most cases and in most spaces, it should be shit on and taken down a peg because it doesn’t deserve its common position as being this great masterpiece, but the other side of that coin is that it’s an entertaining and effective book, certainly not trash simply by virtue of how it gets used to serve a reactionary agenda.
I’ve read and enjoyed 1984 two or three times. I read Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London, Homage to Catalonia (about half of it), Burmese Days, plus a book of his essays, his writing advice, etc. Orwell sucks but I agree with the other commenter here saying that there is just something about 1984. I don’t know. I took another look at Brave New World recently and thought that it was just eugenicist crap. I haven’t looked at 1984 in at least ten years so maybe my opinion would change if I did.