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juntakinte1968 's review for:
1984
by George Orwell
For decades I'd experienced the book through a cultural osmosis of hearing the references in everyday life. Still, this was my first time attempting to sit down and read it. For the large part it doesn't disappoint. George Orwell does what I love in speculative science fiction: he turns modern day anxieties into a story that fleshed out his concerns to what he considered their natural conclusion. So a large portion of the writing deals with his own rants and ravings about the post-war problems of the Soviet Communism and Nazi Germany. It is fine at that level.
However, I should point out one reason why I hesitated on reading this for so long. I once heard Noam Chomsky say that he thought 1984 wasn't well written. For many pages, I didn't understand what he meant by that. Then I came to the novel's book within a book. And I completely agreed with that point. It was bad. Orwell already had a historical understanding of power dynamics and a fantastic approach at world building. But his dedicating so much of the narrative to an insider's perspective of the world and a Marxist analysis was monotonous and dull. It would be like Tolkien taking out time of the Lord of the Rings to have the characters read a travel magazine. He took the thing he already did well, and added to it in an overly indulgent way that took away from the magic.
But in the final analysis, it holds up. At times some of his predictions are prescient. Others can be a bit silly (a problem with all dystopia fiction--which tries to outdo previous works with bleak visions). But overall it is a masterfully written work of a philosophical novel that, sadly, is still applicable for study in a world full of despotic people who try to rewrite the past and the present.
Highly recommended.
However, I should point out one reason why I hesitated on reading this for so long. I once heard Noam Chomsky say that he thought 1984 wasn't well written. For many pages, I didn't understand what he meant by that. Then I came to the novel's book within a book. And I completely agreed with that point. It was bad. Orwell already had a historical understanding of power dynamics and a fantastic approach at world building. But his dedicating so much of the narrative to an insider's perspective of the world and a Marxist analysis was monotonous and dull. It would be like Tolkien taking out time of the Lord of the Rings to have the characters read a travel magazine. He took the thing he already did well, and added to it in an overly indulgent way that took away from the magic.
But in the final analysis, it holds up. At times some of his predictions are prescient. Others can be a bit silly (a problem with all dystopia fiction--which tries to outdo previous works with bleak visions). But overall it is a masterfully written work of a philosophical novel that, sadly, is still applicable for study in a world full of despotic people who try to rewrite the past and the present.
Highly recommended.