I could never understand why Orwell is the second most popular author on here. I know it's subjective, but he seems like a second rate writer compared to Tolstoy or the ever-controversial Joyce.
I could never understand why Orwell is the second most popular author on here. I know it's subjective, but he seems like a second rate writer compared to Tolstoy or the ever-controversial Joyce.
A lot of people I know in school have to read Orwell. Animal Farm or whatever. In high school I'm sure we all read 1984. I think John Dos Passos is a better writer than Joyce and if you take his trilogy U.S.A as a complete work (which is how it should be read) it is probably more important than Joyces Ulysses. But that's subjective and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree. It's like how everyone likes Led Zeppelin but no one has ever heard of The Quicksilver Messenger Service. I think Zeppelin sucks but again most people would disagree.
Her hair was like a flowing cascade and her breasts were real awesome also.
My ***** Better Have My Money by Fly Guy
My ***** better have my money.
Through rain, sleet, or snow,
my ho better have my money.
Not half, not some, but all my cash.
Because if she don't, I'll put my foot dead in her ***.
Orwell's ideas are still important and influential. The name Big Brother is still often used to describe intrusive government surveillance into people's private affairs. This is still hugely current issue, with CCTVs everywhere and the security services wanting to snoop into people's emails. The term was so powerful they they named a TV program after it. It was him who coined the term Newspeak in which language is craftily redefined to mean something it originally didn't. I sometimes think our government comes pretty close to wanting to implement Thought Crime. People can find themselves in jail pretty quick, it seems, if they say something unpleasant on the internet. Even the concept of Double Think resounds as much as it ever did. Our legal system is most intolerant of free speech where it involves racism or incitement to violence of some kind. I suppose a society has to impose some restrictions on people's liberty to say absolutely anything. In addition, the security services do have to seek out people who would want to create violence or topple the legitimate government. However, the language of Orwell helps us to resist government imposed restrictions on liberty with insufficient justification.
It was also Orwell who most articulately described the corruption process that always seems to occur when a popular movement sweeps away a previous corrupt regime and takes power, and it was Orwell who showed the danger of allowing a charismatic leader to establishing himself as the head of a personality cult. Time after time this happened during the 20th century: Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Mao. Whenever you see a big-mouth national leader, who becomes intolerant of criticism or starts subverting the democratic process, you are reminded of Animal Farm. Whenever you see a people who profess devotion to their national leader while living in ideologically induced poverty as in North Korea, you think 1984.
I also think Orwell is popular for some of his non-fiction books, especially among the Left. He fought against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War and was nearly killed. He lived among the destitute and homeless in the 1930s. He wrote about all these experiences.
According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was 'a gigantic dwarf', and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.
Charles Dickens, by George Orwell
Orwell and Shakespeare aren't the only authors with their own section on the forum. There are tons of them.
This thread was started in 2004.Originally Posted by Volya
And I was replying because other people brought the thread up again...
Yes, but when the thread was started, Orwell and Shakespeare were alone - and eight years later the mystery remains.......
I wrote a poem on a leaf and it blew away...
I doubt very much that Shakespeare will be seriously challenged for his place at the top, despite other heavyweights such as Dante, Homer etc. being to the fore, but although Orwell might be called into question on the quality of his writing, no other 20th century writer has had the impact that he has in terms of highlighting the dangers inherent in political idealism, even though, paradoxically, he was a political idealist himself.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
The issue is mostly popularity in the sense that they are the most "frequented" ones, which is mostly due to the fact that they are still widely read and taught all over the world. Many students visit the Forum seeking for assistance or guidance on their works.
It is not because the Admin thinks they are "better" writers than the rest.
~
"It is not that I am mad; it is only that my head is different from yours.”
~
I've never understood Orwell's popularity here. Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge fan, but 1984 taking the number 1 spot in the 100 Favorite Books thread? That just seems weird.
It's not weird if you consider its influence. There have been writers such as Zamyatin and Koestler who also warned of unqualified support for totalitarian regimes and in particular that of the now defunct USSR. The fact that it is defunct is due in no small measure to 1984 which pointed up the naivety of left-leaning intellectuals and has acted as a counter measure to their influence in academia and elsewhere.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
Okay, but that still doesn't explain, or necessarily justify (not that it really needs justification), why it gets the top spot, considering there are plenty of great authors who have had just as much, and more, influence. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, Dickens, and a whole bunch of others have had much greater influence.
Few of their readers in the 20th century actually experienced what they had written about, whereas many of Orwell's readers did as they witnessed Soviet Russia's control of its Eastern and Central European satellites and had to live with the cold war that ensued.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
So what?
Actuality will usually get the vote over related past experience, which is why Orwell resonates to a greater degree with his readers than would otherwise be the case.
"L'art de la statistique est de tirer des conclusions erronèes a partir de chiffres exacts." Napoléon Bonaparte.
"Je crois que beaucoup de gens sont dans cet état d’esprit: au fond, ils ne sentent pas concernés par l’Histoire. Mais pourtant, de temps à autre, l’Histoire pose sa main sur eux." Michel Houellebecq.
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