Why Orwell Endures

A very interesting article on the impact of Orwell's writings. I had occasion to reread 1984 last year, the first time I had read the book since before the year in its title, and it is still striking how vivid its imagined future era--fortunately not realized in the year of the title--is. I have more than tripled my years on earth since the first time I read through 1984, but it continues to have an unmatched ability to disturb with real-life observations of human capacity for evil, while retaining just an ever-so-slight glimmer of hope in the appendix on Newspeak, carefully written in the past tense and including a quotation from the Declaration of Independence. Not a literary novel, but a great novel nonetheless. And Animal Farm and many of Orwell's essays are also must-reads.

Because he succinctly and clearly captured the dangers of the modern age in a voice the modern ear can recognize and understand.

"In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning." - George Orwell (http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm) :)

Christopher Hitchens gave a fascinating interview on the topic of Orwell for the Econtalk podcast:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/hitchens_on_orw.htm...

The first time I read "1984" was during the "smoking gun" talks that congress was having about Iraq. I was amazed that in a classroom of thirty people I was the only one that was drawing the parallels between the novel and the then current political climate. That's when I realized that very few people have meta-cognitive abilities and are able to learn from past mistakes whereas others are doomed to constantly repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Orwell was in tune and aware of political thought like no other and it is a shame there aren't more like him during modern times.