What are you reading?

Tocky on 30/1/2010 at 02:31

Very understanding and patient Illuminatus. 1984 is the most bleak look at the death of humanity ever written. It is indeed soul crushing horror with no redemption whatsoever. It's the scariest book ever written because of the possibility it could come true.

metal dawn on 30/1/2010 at 03:46

Quote Posted by Illuminatus

metal dawn: I think you suffered from something akin to “Godfather” syndrome when you read 1984: the work has been so influential/copied/parodied since its release that encountering it for the first time makes its overwhelming originality seem almost cliché . It's the bible of political dystopia. Cultural legacy aside, nearly all of its descriptions/ideas are sadly not fiction: there's a reason it was still banned in half of Europe in the actual year of 1984. It's very hard to deny its atmosphere and impact when actual citizens of totalitarian regimes were kept from reading it because it conveyed the grayness of their own world too accurately.

As to some of your points: Winston's affair with Julia is an extremely significant and brave action because it celebrates love and the individual, concepts which the Party have all but eroded. His gradual portrayal as a pathetic coward emphasizes the Party's terrifying omniscience and soul-crushing power: all rebellion is found, all heroes are quashed, all will is sucked out. These and many other examples show the overwhelming sense of fear and loss of control that envelops the book so thickly. Winston's capture is framed like a dream that suddenly traps you into inescapable nightmare: I find it hard to believe you can't find terror in that scene (or the entire Ministry of Love).

I understand that my anger and complaints probably sound blind, I want to clarify.
You misunderstand. I tried very hard to like the book, to appreciate it, to understand it within and without. I always make it a point to try to look beneath the surface and find the subtext and undertones.

I picked up 1984 and tried to keep my expectations in check.

(However, I had previously read Brave New World. I suppose that made 1984 cliche, but I don't see how that could have been avoided. I was determined to read the volumes in the order-time they were written. Aldous Huxley, Eric Blair, Ray Bradbury; earliest to most recent. I stand by my stance that Orwell was unoriginal. I think he gets too much credit for the dystopian scene when Aldous Huxley did nearly everything Orwell did and better...the riot squads, the ruthless government, the amorality, the cruelty, the blind and vapid masses, the hopelessness...and to better effect, I think.)

I fully expected depressing overtones, an insane, tyrannical, self-serving global government with torture, mind games, philosophical wonderings/discourses and general open-end areas of interpretation. I never asked for a depressing end I didn't judge the book by its cover or hype. I tried very hard to look at the book for what it was. Seriously I tried very hard.

I came to nearly every conclusion you did, almost every one. But I still didn't like it. I'm sorry if my opinions appear flawed, ignorant, blind, or overtly angry. You're probably right.

I stand by my opinions nonetheless.

june gloom on 30/1/2010 at 03:55

Quote Posted by Illuminatus

dethtoll: "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever."

O'Brien is the highest ranking Party member present in the book: next to the likely non-existent Big Brother, he best represents the unflinchingly amoral and power-obsessed state. He hints he is a part of the resistance so as to lure Winston towards thought-crime, but the scenes at the Ministry of Love make it extremely clear O'Brien is 100% Inner Party material.

I realize I'm operating from an alternate character interpretation, but I just want to point out that his actions in MiniLove, if he were a secret member of the Brotherhood (which of course presumes you believe it exists) are exactly because he's a secret member of the Brotherhood. Don't read too much into it, it's just an alternate theory.

Tocky on 30/1/2010 at 04:10

Your mistake is that you hold onto hope. This book is a slap in the face with a block of ice where hope is concerned.

Mina on 9/2/2010 at 09:04

Now I'm reading book of Franc Kafka - Process. But my favorite writers are Russians - Bulgakov and Dostoyevsky :cool:

SubJeff on 9/2/2010 at 13:37

Quote:

Thank you and good night.

Goodnight. Philistine.

Stitch on 9/2/2010 at 15:39

Funny, I was pretty underwhelmed with Brave New World whereas I've always considered 1984 a devastating monster that I still return to somewhat regularly. But that ridiculous pen name :mad:

Just finished Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, which was everything it should have been, although I somehow managed to read the entire thing without figuring out that the protagonist had his nuts shot off in the war. I knew there was something neutered about him, I just didn't realize it was so literal.

Edit: just read metal dawn's rant in its entirety, even the bit where he mentally reinvented the dress code to include fatigues. Christ.

SubJeff on 9/2/2010 at 17:54

Yeah, Brave New World is much softer. If you can't feel the fear in 1984 you'd better get a diagnosis cuz you ain't normal mang.

To anyone who has read, and enjoyed, 1984 I recommend "We" by Yevgeny Zamyatin.

Sulphur on 9/2/2010 at 19:30

I'm reading... whatsit now, Fornication Ark or something by Alastair Reynolds. Takes a while to get started. I should know, because I'm on page 150 and it still hasn't started.

Jism City got interesting somewhere near the beginning, but this one'll be needing some dedication. Nice detailing and all, very imaginative, but the man needs some goddamn self-control. Also too many characters introduced at the start. Certainly ain't light toilet reading.

I might need to take this one off-pot.

ercles on 9/2/2010 at 22:36

As far as Stephen King goes, the only novel of his that I've read was The Shining, which I thought was fairly terrific, ending included. Although I guess I thought it was a bit odd that the mother character just walked off all the punishment she takes in the closing sections

Quote Posted by Subjective Effect

I had a bit of a hit-and-miss experience with 1984. Although I realize that he was one of the first to the well with these ideas, this book was so influential on the sci-fi novels, films, and computer games that came after it, that I felt like I'd played it before. The other problem that I had was that I felt that Orwell was a far better thinker than he was a writer, his prose didn't really grab me. Finally I just couldn't buy into the extremes of the society that he painted. Although I got the whole fact that it was hyperbole to make points about current society, bla bla bla, the suffocating negative tone of the book just shut me down. I also fail to believe anyone will ever give up sex for pleasure.

That said it is obviously a vitally important novel, and it's predictions are only getting truer as time goes on. There was a lot I liked about the novel, it just didn't blow me away as much as I thought it would. I prefer my dys topian futures with more humanity in them e.g. James Blish's A Case of Conscience or John Brunner's mindbogglingly good Stand on Zanzibar.