Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
wasn't orwell a bit of a cunt too? didn't he grass up his former comrades as a state informer or summat? (i have only vague recollections of this, so could have got the wrong end of the stick)
Orwell vs Huxley
- Thread starter Orang Utan
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wasn't orwell a bit of a cunt too? didn't he grass up his former comrades as a state informer or summat? (i have only vague recollections of this, so could have got the wrong end of the stick)
he knew how to make a cup of tea though 
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
Anyone read 'Island' by Huxley? It's sort of an antidote to Brave New World, and consists of a simillar blend of the plausible with the downright silly; the latter in this case being of the hippy bollocks variety rather than the sci-fi bollocks variety. There's lots of drug use, promiscuity and general hedonism but it's presented as a good thing rather than a bad thing. The two books sort of cancel each other out in a number of ways and what you're left with is a consideration of the nature of power and control that ties in pretty well with Orwell's work.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
It's hard to explain, but it's the simplicity of the writing. Not that it is simple, the ideas and the concepts are imparted with great clarity, but there is a lack of fussiness, an elegant precision to the writing. Let me dig out his rules for effective writing link, it goes some way to showing the how. (taken from the Politics and the English Language essay)
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/5-rules-of-effective-writing-by-george-orwell.html
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
I'm not defending Huxley anti-semitism and the like, but tbf, a lot of authors of old would probably be cunts by today's, more socially liberal standards.
I guess the point I'm pondering is does a book automatically become not worth reading once you find out the author had dodgy ideas (but which weren't seen quite so much at the time), even if those ideas aren't actually in the book?
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
A subject on which the great Douglas Adams wrote with simillar affection and attention to detail
e2a: Adams was a milk-firster though, with Orwell clearly in the tea-first camp where all right thinking folk belong.
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
course not. 'Death of the author' and all that stuff. But I am unlikely if ever to read an authors essays, interviews or whatever unless I already have the book(s) and am now seeking out biographical and all that.
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
I have to say I don't often seek out biographic information on writers. I was quite shocked when you told me before on here that Huxley did have such awful, anti-semitic views. And it did surprise me a little given how progressive Island could be seen as, and saddened me too if I'm honest.
Obnoxiousness
>-->))).>
Thank you for the bookmark. Most interesting.
Then buy this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Style
Best book on stylistics ever written.
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
I think he improves. But I agree, I don't think BNW is very well written, even if I do like the concepts.
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Huxley was more overtly right, Orwell was more covertly right.
Upfront it's a Huxley-consumerist world, in the dark corners of power however... from the careers of the likes of Pinochet, Bush, Clinton, Blair and Saddam Hussein to things like the National Endowment for Democracy and the IMF and the World Bank etc, it's all totally Orwellian.
Obnoxiousness
>-->))).>
DotCommunist
So many particulars. So many questions.
I have to say I don't often seek out biographic information on writers. I was quite shocked when you told me before on here that Huxley did have such awful, anti-semitic views. And it did surprise me a little given how progressive Island could be seen as, and saddened me too if I'm honest.
oh it's fun. I found out my 3 current favourite currently-writing scj-fi/fantasy authors are respectively a trotskyist, an anarcho syndicalist and an astronomer who used to work for ESA.
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
Actually, I like this answer. Can I please steal it?
Where does Ray Bradbury fit into all this?
SpookyFrank
Don't swallow the cap
A better writer than either of the other two for my money. A better novelist at any rate. Fahrenheit 451 has a subtlety and a hypnotic quality that Orwell and Huxley don't even come close to.
Yes, I found it very very readable - finished it in a day IIRC. I'm like that with books, either read them in ten seconds, or spend about 500 years trying to get through them...
Paulie Tandoori
shut it you egg!
both a bit rubbish tbh...
Agent Sparrow
AGENT TRAITOR; fools 8 year olds
I'd hazard a guess Kim Stanely Robinson is a decent chap with sound views, who I'd quite like to hang out with in the pub. Though him and Crispy would get really technical about climate issues, and I'd have to amuse myself by thinking of kittens.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
why was this edited? there was a pic there before! why is it daft to post a cartoon that posts orwell against huxley which is the entire point of the thread?chainsaw cat
Tea. Biccies. Happy now?
Yeah, but, like what Orwell said of Dali, just because he's a disgusting human being doesn't mean he's not a fine draughtsman. May have been Picasso. Or Augustus John, point's the same.
BNW is a Very Important Work. I collected AHs stuff in first edition for a while, and I do think it was ultimately a bit hollow, but you need to look at the context he was in... change then was like now, massive societal shifts, technology running wild, fear of the future. AH must also have had some form of survivor guilt as a (medically downgraded) non combatant who missed the defining experience of his generation but then lived and worked amongst hugely intelligent veterans who could think about little else but the Western Front.
I don't think (not read a biog for a long time) he was a risk taker as a kid. I wonder if the drugs and the boundary pushing were some form of compensation for not being involved in the war? Maybe the whacky - to our eyes - opinions were part of that? I always find it hard to believe, of humane and intelligent people, that they are genuinely racist, in our time. Surely, against more challenges, similar was true then?
Pickman's model
sunset spires and twilight woods
poll
camouflage
gaslit at scale.
Orang Utan
Maybe I like the misery
I have to say I don't often seek out biographic information on writers. I was quite shocked when you told me before on here that Huxley did have such awful, anti-semitic views. And it did surprise me a little given how progressive Island could be seen as, and saddened me too if I'm honest.
in those days eugenics was seen as socially progressive and liberal types promoted it. it wasn't yet seen as a right wing/fascist enterprise.
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