1984 by George Orwell (1949)

In a dystopian future (or is it the past, or present?), Big Brother (the government) tries to control thinking, openly lies, distorts the past, and attacks any who disagree.

Book Review: 1984, as someone wise said recently, is meant to be a cautionary tale, and not an instruction manual. When I read that 1984 had topped the Amazon sales charts because of the recent concept of "alternate facts," I jumped on the bandwagon (what is a bandwagon for if not to be jumped on?), but assumed that its applicability to today would be limited. After all, the book was written almost 70 years ago (my copy is in its 135th printing) and even its "futuristic" title date is long in the past. Yet in just the first few pages we're introduced to the concept of "Hate Week," learned that health care is insufficient and that television is routinely used for propaganda, that enormous portraits of the leader and his name are everywhere, that history is changeable and deniable, and that "ignorance is strength." Yikes. Although in many ways this is an exaggerated view of a dystopia, it was all too easy to read this pessimistic view of society, human nature, and evil, as if living through it. Based on 1930s and '40s Nazi Germany and communist Russia, it still seemed all too real. I first read this when a young teenager and distinctly recall feeling menaced by the gray, barren world Orwell had created. On this re-read, I'm only minimally more optimistic, or maybe more foolish. 1984 is an overtly political book, and suffers from the same flaws as all overly political art: too talky, telling not showing, long ranting diatribes, the author coming through louder than the characters. All of that is true, but this book succeeds and overwhelms anyway. Even the Saharan "book within the book" and Appendix didn't slow me down (how many novels have an Appendix?). A book must have Herculean strength to succeed despite those obstacles. Would the book have been stronger if Orwell had expanded the powerful "showing" sections and trimmed the slow-moving "telling" sections? Yes. But his descriptions life in "Oceania" (one of three great nation states -- still basically true today) are overwhelming and too close for comfort: the 85% of society that constitutes the lower class ("the proles") and the 15% that comprise the Party. This book, more famous than read, has become part of our thinking and our language, but is still capable of thought-provoking surprise. A few things Orwell got wrong: in 1984 the proles rarely have televisions. As we know, society has made sure that television is available to almost everyone. And he thought television would be used primarily for propaganda, instead of primarily to sedate the masses (he thought the opiates would be gin and Party activities). Along with We by Zamyatin, and Brave New World by Huxley, 1984 is one of the first dystopias (then called "negative utopias"). In his valuable Afterword (1961), Erich Fromm writes about the early utopian books (starting with Utopia by Thomas More), which described what a perfect society would look like and how to achieve it. Here Orwell describes just how close we are to becoming a totalitarian society (look how quickly it happened in the 1930s), and how controlling language, history, and privacy can deform human nature. 1984 is a book that will always be valuable and necessary. [5★]