1984: The book. C/D? (Or just discussion about it.)

'His last novel, the disturbing dystopian vision of the future, Nineteen Eighty Four, written in 1948, was influenced by the Trotskyist critique of the Soviet Union. Originally written to attack both Fascist and Communist tyranny, the defeat of Nazism allowed Orwell to focus on the totalitarianism of the Russian state and the slavishness of the left intelligentsia that allowed the myth of Soviet 'socialism' to take hold. For Orwell it was the managerial class, of which the intelligentsia was one section, who would make the revolution alongside the working class, but who would also be repelled by the Soviet myth. He was appealing to them, warning what it would be like to be 'rigidly policed and controlled by an omnipotent terroristic apparatus that aspires to thought-control'.39 He dissects the mentality of this 'middling' group and recounts Winston Smith's failed rebellion against Big Brother.'

'Nineteen Eighty Four was immediately seized upon by the right to attack socialism which was equated with Stalinist Russia. In refusing to recognise that the Soviet Union was not socialist, the left found themselves wide open to these attacks. The most schizoid reaction must be Raymond Williams's dismissal of Orwell as an 'ex-socialist' in the same breath as he was apologising for Mao's Cultural Revolution, and Pol Pot and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge campaign: 'The revolutionary movement has to impose the harshest discipline on itself and over relatively innocent people in order not to be broken down and defeated'.44 Orwell was never able to complete his defence of the book--that it was never intended as an attack on socialism or the British Labour Party--due to his illness from TB and his early death in 1950.'

But he wasn't overly fond of the British radicals of the era - there are some hilarious lines in Wigan Pier (that are all too applicable today)
"We have reached a stage when the very word 'Socialism' calls up, on the one hand, a picture of aeroplanes, tractors, and huge glittering factories of glass and concrete; on the other, a picture of vegetarians with wilting beards, of Bolshevik commissars (half gangster, half gramophone), of earnest ladies in sandals, shock-headed Marxists chewing polysyllables, escaped Quakers, birth-control fanatics, and Labour Party backstairs-crawlers. Socialism, at least in this island, does not smell any longer of revolution and the overthrow of tyrants; it smells of crankishness, machine-worship, and the stupid cult of
Russia. Unless you can remove that smell, and very rapidly, Fascism may
win."

Ingsoc

that didn't take long

http://www.unitedstateofcinema.com/

If you've never read George Orwell's "1984," here's your chance to catch up. The classic dystopian novel seems to be everywhere these days, including on the air: On Tuesday, KPFT (90.1 FM) will air a 15-hour dramatic reading of the entire story.

The recording was made in 1975 at KPFK in Los Angeles. It was read by Charles Morgan, a longtime KPFK morning host (and a blacklisted writer). He got some help from June Foray, the voiceover artist best known for playing Rocky in "Rocky and Bullwinkle."

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/entertainment/books/article/An-all-day-reading-of-1984-11243383.php

June Foray!! reading 1984!

You've sold me, Tracer.

tiny trains

Fainting, vomiting, fisticuffs:

http://jezebel.com/broadway-production-of-1984-is-causing-audience-members-1796405665

Pynchon's essay on the book.

the Pynchon essay arguing it's as much a critique of British Labour as Stalin was revelatory for me (and relates to this point) https://t.co/5Z70ZT1Nrl

— dylan matthews (@dylanmatt) November 29, 2022

Now here's something we hope you'll really like.

I'm surprised that hasn't been an Oceana TV series.. not necessarily just the Winston/Julia story, but just using that world to tell a bunch of stories.. there's the whole part where Winston rents his secret room, and the Proles drinking gin and playing lotto in the pub would make an interesting side setting. Also, the machinations of the Party hierarchy, etc.