Today, the totalitarians are on the march everywhere, especially in Russia and China but even in the United States, and democracy is in retreat. In the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union, it seemed that totalitarianism had been discredited and democracy was spreading across the globe. If anything, it seems more alive today than it was just a few years ago when Lynskey's book was published.Īs I also remarked at the time, 1984 seems to draw increasingly close each year. The fact that there are now two "biographies" of 1984 just goes to show that it is still very much "alive".
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As far as I know, no one has written a "biography" of Orwell's earlier novel Burmese Days, because few people read it today―I did, but I'm an Orwell completist―so that novel is figuratively "dead". Biographers usually wait until people die before writing their biographies, but books are different. While Lynskey's book called itself "the" biography of 1984, this one is called only "a" biography of it, presumably because it's not the first.Īs I remarked at the time, it's not literally possible to write a biography of a book, since books do not have literal lives, and it's only in a metaphorical sense that we can talk about the "life" of a book or its biography. The previous one is Dorian Lynskey's Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984, the New Book a few years ago 2, which I'm ashamed to admit that I still haven't read. Subtitle: A Biography of George Orwell's MasterpieceĬomment: Oddly enough, this is the second book that I know of to call itself a "biography" of 1984.
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The twentieth-century totalitarian, on the other hand…is engaged on a far more sinister project: not to tell a man that 2 + 2 = 5 and make him pretend to believe it, but to convince him that it is actually so." 1Ĭomment: This book is not about the year 1984, but about the novel of the same name published in 1949. Quote: "…he tyrants of classical legend were merely opportunistic hooligans, altogether lacking the sophistication required to alter the shape of the past. If you click through and make a purchase, I may get a commission from the sale.Previous Month | RSS/XML | Current WEBLOG July 7th, 2022 (Revised: ) ( ) 1984 in 2022 Logically Fallacious Buy On Amazon The Fallacy Detective Buy On Amazon The Art of the Argument Buy On Amazon The above book links to Amazon are affiliate links.
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