Review by New York Times Review
SHORTLY AFTER THE presidential inauguration of Donald Trump and his counselor's invocation of "alternative facts," anxious readers, bracing themselves for the worst, propelled George Orwell's "1984" back to the top of the best-seller lists. Published in 1949, under the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, the novel projects a nightmare vision of a future in which truth has been eclipsed. Its inventive vocabulary of state power and deception - Big Brother, Hate Week, Newspeak, doublethink, the Thought Police - clearly resonated with the despair of present-day Americans. As does the very term "Orwellian," used increasingly to describe any number of troubling developments : from Trump's habitual lying to the toxic politicization of the news media; from the expansion of campus speech codes to Silicon Valley's hijacking of our data and attention (the citizens of "1984" are monitored continuously by "telescreens"). Orwell's novel is the subject of Dorian Lynskey's wide-ranging and sharply written new study, "The Ministry of Truth." Lynskey, a British journalist and music critic, believes that "1984" - one of the 20 th century's most examined artifacts - is actually "more known about than truly known" and sets out to reground it in Orwell's personal and literary development. This is just as well, since Orwell, ever suspicious of armchair intellectualism, made a practice of writing directly from experience, to the point of plunging himself into many of the crises of his day. In 1936, he joined a coalition of left-wing forces opposing Franco in Spain. Intending to fight fascism, Orwell discovered its diabolical twin, Soviet communism, and became, in Lynskey's words, acutely aware of how "political expediency corrupts moral integrity, language and truth itself." He left Spain a committed anti-communist - and lifelong adversary of Stalin's defenders - and spent the World War II years back home in England. In 1946, Orwell moved to the island of Jura, where, at the age of 45, he completed "1984" shortly before succumbing to tuberculosis. Lynskey focuses much of his book on the origins and the afterlife of "1984." He devotes several early chapters to the rise of utopian and dystopian fiction, told through compressed portraits of figures like H. G. Wells (who "loomed over Orwell's childhood like a planet") and Yevgeny Zamyatin, the author of "We" - a sort of precursor to "1984." And he documents the various political and cultural responses to the novel, which was a sensation from its first publication. "1984" has inspired writers, artists and other creative types, from Margaret Atwood to David Bowie to Steve Jobs, whose commercial introducing Apple's Macintosh computer famously paid homage to the novel. Its political fate, however, has been somewhat cloudier. What Orwell observed of Dickens, that he is "one of those writers who are well worth stealing," has proved no less true of Orwell himself. Socialists, libertarians, liberals and conservatives alike have vied to remake him in their own image and claim his authority. Orwell's contested legacy may be rooted partly in his self-divisions. He was a socialist intellectual who hated socialists and intellectuals; an alienated soul who "lionized the common man," as Lynskey puts it. Still, the filial (and often proprietary) attachment that Orwell's work tends to evoke in his admirers points to something else: the morally urgent yet highly companionable nature of his writing, which can leave one with the feeling of having been directly addressed by a mind worthy of emulation. Lynskey largely refrains from participating in the quarrel over Orwell's and his novel's true teachings and rightful heirs. If anything, "The Ministry of Truth" can seem too remote at times from its subject matter. For a "biography" of "1984," it contains surprisingly little sustained discussion of the work itself, mostly referring to it in brief, though insightful, asides that are dispersed throughout. There could have been more in-depth analysis of the dynamics of power in Orwell's totalitarian state, whose leaders, we are told, are the first to have dispensed with even the pretense of serving humanity. (They pursue power as an end in itself, not as a means to some alleged ideological goal, and exercise it by inflicting pain on others.) Nor does Lynskey illuminate the literary or intellectual qualities that distinguish Orwell's novel from its many predecessors and descendants in the dystopian genre. In short, while we learn a great deal about the evolution and influence of "1984" as a cultural phenomenon, we sometimes lose sight, in the thick of Lynskey's historicizing, of the novel's intrinsic virtues - of what makes it distinctive and accounts for its terror and fascination in the first place. Lynskey is surely right, however, to note that the meaning of Orwell's novel has shifted over the decades along with the preoccupations of its readers; and that in our low, dishonest moment, it is "most of all a defense of truth." Reflecting back on the Spanish Civil War and the falsification of its record, Orwell worried that the "very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world." Yet he never seems to have resigned himself completely to hopelessness. Winston Smith, the doomed protagonist of "1984," inhabits a world in which individuality has been made almost obsolete, history is daily rewritten and reality is fabricated according to the whims of the state. Winston attempts, despairingly and bravely, to rediscover what life was like before the rise of Big Brother. He is shocked that his lover, Julia, is indifferent to the state's assault on truth - the unreality of the present is all she has known and all she believes ever was or will be. Her complacency is the counterpart to Winston's energizing despair. In this way, " 1984" elevates despair into a sort of necessary condition of truth-seeking. It is here if nowhere else, Orwell suggests, that hope for humanity may lie. LEV MENDES has written for The New York Review of Books and The New Yorker, among other publications.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 21, 2019]
Review by Booklist Review
George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been embraced by both the right and the left, viewed as a condemnation of totalitarianism and capitalism, and described as bleakly hopeless and implicitly hopeful. This powerful, infinitely provoking dystopian tale was first published on June 8, 1949, after being completed in a frenzy by the gravely ill author. Critic Lynskey (33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, 2011), marks the 70th anniversary of this indelible work with an engrossing, many-branched biography of the book and its valiant creator.In agile, syncopated prose, Lynskey briskly elucidates Orwell's life, from his birth as Eric Arthur Blair in British India in 1903 to his childhood in England, stint in the police force in British-ruled Burma, combat in the Spanish Civil War, and adventures as a daring and controversial journalist and columnist. Lynskey emphasizes the experiences that seeded Orwell's mission to protest tyranny, ""organized lying,"" and hypocrisy; his equating of truth with freedom; and his commitment to exposing the horrors of totalitarianism. During the London Blitz, Orwell rescued the manuscript for Animal Farm (1945) from the rubble of his bombed flat and worked for the BBC, while his wife, Eileen, reported to the Ministry of Information's censorship department, a job that inspired that of Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four: Smith serves in the forbidding Ministry of Truth, methodically revising history so that it conforms to the government's latest lies by carefully rewriting published newspaper articles and pitching the originals into memory holes for incineration.Running parallel to his vivid account of Orwell's struggles as a writer of conscience is Lynskey's illuminating history of utopian and dystopian literature, with analysis of works that inspired Orwell, particularly books by H. G. Wells and We (1921) by the courageous dissident Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin. Lynskey also parses the intriguing symbiosis between the awkward literary twins Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932). But his primary focus is on elucidating how Nineteen Eighty-Four expresses Orwell's deepest concerns about humanity and civilization, his belief in accuracy as a moral virtue, and his growing concern over how dictators and he witnessed the worst of them revise and spin history to both rile up and oppress the public.Orwell astutely dramatizes how the orchestrated, amplified, and intrusive lies of totalitarian regimes endanger the very concept of objective truth and a consensus reality, and he shares his alarm over the erosion and corruption of memory. Today's perpetual bombardment of lies from the Trump White House, the daily struggle over fake news, and the constant surge of toxic disinformation throughout social media are all intrinsically Orwellian.Lynskey maps the vast influence of Nineteen Eighty-Four in discussions of its stage and screen adaptations, its language, from doublethink to Newspeak, thoughtcrime, unperson, and Big Brother, and the many novels it inspired, including Kurt Vonnegut's Player Piano (1952), Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953), and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (1962). Margaret Atwood started writing The Handmaid's Tale in West Berlin in 1984, and described her novel as speculative fiction of the George Orwell variety. Other significant literary progeny include Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (2010), 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami (2011), The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers, The Subprimes by Karl Taro Greenfeld (2015), Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich (2017), and Hazards of Time Travel by Joyce Carol Oates (2018).To further enhance the 70th-anniversary celebration of Orwell's cautionary tale, David R. Godine is reissuing The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, a landmark four-volume set first published in 1968 and long out of print.Orwell has much to tell us in this time of escalating political conflicts, as evident in Nineteen Eighty-Four's return to the best-seller lists as we grapple with the implications of identity theft, ever-more intrusive surveillance, post-truth politics, and alternative facts. Lynskey writes, ""Nineteen Eighty-Four is most of all a defense of truth. It is also a call to speak out, because, as Orwell warned, totalitarianism, if not fought against, could triumph anywhere. --Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lynskey (33 Revolutions Per Minute) offers an entertaining but scattershot study that places George Orwell's 1984 in a variety of contexts: the author's life and times, the book's precursors in the science fiction genre, and its subsequent place in popular culture. Lynskey delves into how Orwell's harrowing Spanish Civil War experiences shaped his concern with political disinformation by exposing him to the deceptiveness of people he'd once regarded as allies against fascism: the Soviets and their Western apologists. Another section offers a history of Edward Bellamy's 1888 bestseller Looking Backwards, as a leading example of the once-thriving genre of utopian literature and as an optimistic counterpoint to 1984's totalitarian nightmare. While Lynskey calls this a "biography" of 1984, anyone expecting a granular examination of the novel itself will likely be disappointed. Lynskey spreads himself too thin, veering away from his purported subject: is it important to know, for example, that H.G. Wells, identified here as a major influence on Orwell, was a difficult child? Lysnkey is strongest, by far, in his analysis of the novel's influence on rock musicians, especially David Bowie. While his book offers some intriguing insights, one longs for a stronger and more intense focus on 1984 itself. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Since its 1949 UK publication, George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 has received steady critical attention. Consider Irving Howe's 1984 Revisited and On Nineteen Eighty-Four, ed. by Abbott Gleason and others. Journalist Lynskey (33 Revolutions per Minute) aims to bring this assessment up-to-date with his new novel "biography," its strength lying in its first part, which meticulously outlines Orwell's life and influences, followed by portraits of figures such as H.G. Wells and Yevgeny Zamyatin (We), and their impact on the writer. Lynskey probes Orwell's book reviews and the "As I Please" columns he wrote for the Tribune, arguing they provided a "kind of workshop" for the later novel. He then deals with the aftermath of Orwell's early death in 1950 and traces the familiar territory of the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the fall of the Soviet Union, including valuable new material about the work's adoption by popular culture (e.g., British TV's The Prisoner and the reality show Big Brother), concluding with Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and its similarities to 1984's "Two Minutes Hate." VERDICT While similar in approach to William Steinhoff's George Orwell and the Origins of 1984, this is an important contribution to Orwell studies and a timely introduction to the man and his most famous achievement.-Thomas Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA © Copyright 2019. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The life and afterlife of the celebratedand seemingly evergreennovel.Music, film, and politics writer Lynskey (33 Revolutions Per Minute: A History of Protest Songs, from Billie Holiday to Green Day, 2011) reminds us that George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four has been the book "we turn to when truth is mutilated, language is distorted, power is abused, and we want to know how bad things can get." The "fact that the novel speaks to us so loudly and clearly in 2019," he writes, is a "terrible indictment of politicians and citizens alike." The author tells his vibrant, spirited story of a man and his book in two parts. He first recounts how Orwell came to write the novel and describes in detail the world he inhabited. In the second section, he follows the "political and cultural life" of Nineteen Eighty-Four, originally titled The Last Man in Europe, from "Orwell's death to the present day." Lynskey does a superb job analyzing the young Orwell's political beliefs, his hatred for fascism, and his "vision of common-sense radicalism." He had a special admiration for Charles Dickens, whom he described as "generouslyangry." Lynskey traces Orwell's early influences, from H.G. Wells, who "loomed over Orwell's childhood like a planet," to Jack London and Yevgeny Zamyatin's "anti-utopian novel We." Arthur Koestler's "masterpiece," Darkness at Noon, provided Orwell with Nineteen Eighty-Four's "mental landscape." Though never a wealthy man, Orwell found success with Animal Farm, which provided him with the funds to finish Nineteen Eighty-Four, which he edited continuously for three years while he was quite ill. It published in June 1949; Orwell died 227 days later. Lynskey next traces the novel's impact, from the Cold War era to today, on politics and other writers; film and play versions; contemporary music and TV shows; and the "most celebrated television commercial" of the 1980s, Apple's Macintosh computer launch. As Lynskey somberly concludes in this fascinating literary history, Nineteen Eighty-Four's 70th anniversary "falls at a dark time for liberal democracy." Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
