2,165 words
By her side, on the little reading-desk, was a survival from the ages of litter — one book. This was the book of the Machine. – E. M. Forster
Welcome, my son.
Welcome to the machine.
— Pink Floyd
Writers of fiction are obviously not bound to set their work in their own times. (more…)
2,399 words
Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy. — George Orwell, 1984
American college students have said, ‘Like 1984, man’, when asked not to smoke pot in the classroom or advised gently to do a little reading. — Anthony Burgess, 1985
I made a half-hearted New Year’s resolution not to mention Orwell’s 1984 this year, not once. Like most of these Janus-faced pledges, however, it didn’t last long. But hasn’t the book been over-visited? (more…)
1,631 words
“There is nothing one can do against those who approach. Except run . . .” So begins, not Septentrion the novel, but Septentrion the blog page. It is with this quote — a quote by himself — that Jean Raspail begins his personal blog page dedicated to his own work, a novel from 1979, recently translated into English, for the first time, after nearly 45 years. That quote is quickly followed by this one: “Death is our deepest memory . . .”, from Ernst Jünger.
What to say about Septentrion the novel without giving away the story? One will have to speak in luminous abstractions, poetic bounds, quotes, and thick or thin riddles unless . . . (more…)
1,194 words
Though he has a dedicated fan base from Twitter, Zero HP Lovecraft’s (ZHPL) long-form writing allows us to experience his words beyond a mere 280 characters. This is not to suggest that the extreme short form doesn’t have its merits, but for those who need more, ZHPL’s stories have a profound delivery. (more…)
Winston & Julia, 1984
Winston & Julia, 1984
2,699 words
Love is best. — last line of Robert Browning’s “Love among the Ruins”
He loved Big Brother. — last line of George Orwell’s 1984 (more…)
2,542 words
Anthony Burgess
1985
London: Hutchinson, 1978
Anthony Burgess of A Clockwork Orange fame celebrated thirty years of Nineteen Eighty-Four with his 1985. It is in two parts: a discussion of Orwell and freedom, and a novella updating Winston Smith’s struggle. (more…)
1,618 words
How do you break into Hollywood? Director Grant Sputore and writer Michael Lloyd Green might have a few tips for you in their first full-length feature film for Netflix. Released in 2019, their debut, I am Mother, does all it can to please the Hollywood elite and bring a warm glow of smug satisfaction into the bleeding hearts of their old college professors.
It takes a man to write a great feminist movie, and with their all-female cast, these two guys lay it on twice as thick. (more…)
2,206 words
Ash Donaldson’s novel From Her Eyes a Doctrine accomplishes several striking things which make it stand out among dissident literature. For one, it does what all novels should do: It tells an entertaining story – although in this case, we have multiple stories, some new, some old, some present, some past. A few of these stories are discrete; others are dropped off and revisited later. (more…)
1,325 words
The third season of The Handmaid’s Tale is well-crafted in almost every way. The cinematography is outstanding. The dialogue is good. The acting is excellent. Its fictional universe is interesting, and it has a dark, dystopian beauty to it. However, the season doesn’t hang together. I got quite bored with it and stopped watching after getting enough information to scrape together a review. (I know what happens in the rest because I cheated and read the plot summaries after watching two-thirds of the season.)
65 words / 52:55
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June 8th is the 70th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Greg Johnson interviews Margot Metroland on some of Orwell’s sources and influences, the loosely “Trotskyite” political context in which he wrote, and the possibility that he was bumped off by Stalinists. (more…)
3,232 words
Connolly, Burnham, Orwell, & “Corner Table”
“In the torture scenes, he is merely melodramatic: he introduces those rather grotesque machines which used to appear in terror stories for boys.”
—V. S. Pritchett, The New Statesman, June 18, 1949
2,498 words
“When I was little, this was a large village. And that was not too many years ago; now, there’s not so much as a single shadow. The destruction of an entire people can come about very easily!”[1]
Lao She’s Cat Country is one of the finest pieces of literature I’ve read. Written in 1932 in the long shadow of the Bolshevik Revolution and foreshadowing the Maoist terror that would wrack China, (more…)