George Orwell's 1984

This book was a futuristic unthinkable when I was a junior at Portsmouth High School. Winston and Julia are caught in an anti-love crime by the thought police and questioned separately. I thought then that it could never happen in the USA, but here it is happening 60 years after the June 1949 publishing for George Orwell.

It was required reading then by our bright teachers and it should be today unless it becomes part of a burning pile soon. You can go to Google and put in Orwell 1984. I like the current Wikipedia link.

Just this much tells something about Orwell:

Popular misconceptions
In a letter to Francis A. Henson of the United Automobile Workers, dated 16 June 1949 (seven months before he died), excerpts from which were reproduced in Life (25 July 1949) and The New York Times Book Review (31 July 1949), Orwell stated the following:

"My recent novel [Nineteen Eighty-Four] is NOT intended as an attack on Socialism or on the British Labour Party (of which I am a supporter) but as a show-up of the perversions ... which have already been partly realized in Communism and Fascism. ...The scene of the book is laid in Britain in order to emphasize that the English-speaking races are not innately better than anyone else and that totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere."

—Collected Essays[12]
In his 1946 essay, "Why I Write", Orwell described himself as a Democratic Socialist, though said political agenda carried with it far different implications than would be expected today.[13]


[edit] Copyright status
Nineteen Eighty-Four will not enter the public domain in the United States until 2044 and in the European Union until 2020, although it is public domain in countries such as Canada, Russia, and Australia.



Sam Kegley