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A review by batbones
1985 by Anthony Burgess
4.0
I have had a considerable amount of time to read this. (That time was prolonged by a rereading of 1984, as I had read a book a long time ago and couldn't catch most of the references in time for the first few pages to be enjoyable. You have to have read it for most of the book to make sense.) However this review will be kept short and prefaced by the following disclaimer: I like Burgess so there is naturally some bias.
Perks:
1. A response to Orwell that isn't taking him completely in earnest while appreciating his contributions in 1984 to the literary pool of fiction about political thought, freedom and state control, and free speech, education and violence (the latter two which are more intertwined than one would think), socialism and its discontents; he mentions in a particular passage about the decline of productivity which follows on the heels of the lack of inclination to put in effort for something not yours.
2. Dystopian speculative fiction that doesn't embrace the oft touted bland and dull-by-repetition dichotomies of evil men controlling women, evil corporations over innocent consumer, or evil state over free citizen. (Please write something else, or do it differently.)
3. Burgess is attentive to nuances and apparently able to speak a little about everything from Renaissance writers to contemporary British politics (read: when he was alive). Caveats abound, especially where speculation is involved; he talks at length in one chapter about the usefulness/uselessness of speculative fiction as prophecy, and whether accurate 'prophecies' even matter. I love it when he talks discursively and I can read it all day.
4. A few chapters are in the format of a series of 'interviews' with the writer, and both format and writer I find interesting. The book is loosely structured into two sections: the first is a collection of thoughts/essays/'interview', crafted as responses to Orwell's book (hence the title); the second is meant to be a sequel or reworking of Orwell's underpinnings into a completely new story.
5. The interviews had a platonic dialogue quality about them in the question-and-answer format; lots of banter, pointed questions asked, some answers given, perspectives reframed. I suppose the questions were there to anticipate any thoughts/misgivings readers of his answers might have. They didn't anticipate mine, but the answers offer food for thought and will stay with me for a while.
6. The story itself was intriguing, but to speak of it would be to spoil it. The characters weren't terribly interesting but the world-building was, which I suppose is a large part of the point of speculative fiction. The lovable ultraviolent rogue Alex returns in another form: imagine street gangs speaking in Latin and Greek in a world where education is purely technical and utilitarian and speech is simplified to the purely quotidian and communicative, a world where these gangsters listen to history and literature teachers (whose subjects are now obsolete) teach lessons in illegal underground universities.
Hindrances:
1. Too much linguistics in the section on Workers' English. (But this is Burgess and his interests so I will let it slide.)
Perks:
1. A response to Orwell that isn't taking him completely in earnest while appreciating his contributions in 1984 to the literary pool of fiction about political thought, freedom and state control, and free speech, education and violence (the latter two which are more intertwined than one would think), socialism and its discontents; he mentions in a particular passage about the decline of productivity which follows on the heels of the lack of inclination to put in effort for something not yours.
2. Dystopian speculative fiction that doesn't embrace the oft touted bland and dull-by-repetition dichotomies of evil men controlling women, evil corporations over innocent consumer, or evil state over free citizen. (Please write something else, or do it differently.)
3. Burgess is attentive to nuances and apparently able to speak a little about everything from Renaissance writers to contemporary British politics (read: when he was alive). Caveats abound, especially where speculation is involved; he talks at length in one chapter about the usefulness/uselessness of speculative fiction as prophecy, and whether accurate 'prophecies' even matter. I love it when he talks discursively and I can read it all day.
4. A few chapters are in the format of a series of 'interviews' with the writer, and both format and writer I find interesting. The book is loosely structured into two sections: the first is a collection of thoughts/essays/'interview', crafted as responses to Orwell's book (hence the title); the second is meant to be a sequel or reworking of Orwell's underpinnings into a completely new story.
5. The interviews had a platonic dialogue quality about them in the question-and-answer format; lots of banter, pointed questions asked, some answers given, perspectives reframed. I suppose the questions were there to anticipate any thoughts/misgivings readers of his answers might have. They didn't anticipate mine, but the answers offer food for thought and will stay with me for a while.
6. The story itself was intriguing, but to speak of it would be to spoil it. The characters weren't terribly interesting but the world-building was, which I suppose is a large part of the point of speculative fiction. The lovable ultraviolent rogue Alex returns in another form: imagine street gangs speaking in Latin and Greek in a world where education is purely technical and utilitarian and speech is simplified to the purely quotidian and communicative, a world where these gangsters listen to history and literature teachers (whose subjects are now obsolete) teach lessons in illegal underground universities.
Hindrances:
1. Too much linguistics in the section on Workers' English. (But this is Burgess and his interests so I will let it slide.)