Commentary: I kind of ducked this last night, but Animal Farm is very heavy on the didactic. 1984 hides it until near the end, but Animal Farm isn't long enough for the luxury. That means that it basically starts with a fairly generic COMRADES! REVOLUTION! speech from Major (one of the pigs) about overthrowing humanity, which oppresses the animals.
It's not much to bite onto. A page or two listing all the animals on the farm, a speech, an iffy song. This is not a strong chapter one.
Couldn't find the right edition anywhere convenient :(
Bonus:
I'll run out of trailers eventually.
Summary: Animal Farm good, two intros bad.
Commentary: I'm using the Signet Classics edition, simply because that's the one I found at work. Since it's not a translation (or even a particularly annotated edition) I don't see how it makes much difference.
I got through the preface by Russel Baker (undated) and introduction by C.M. Woodhouse (1954)
The preface introduced the excellent essay I looked at the other day, but I don't know that I agree with its conclusions.
What all had in common was a depressing pessimism about the future. Like so much other writing of the era, they rested on the assumption that individuals were no match for the efficient new technology at the disposal of totalitarian politicians. [...] Well, here we are in that future that so many writers fifty years ago could only guess at, and what do we see? They were ludicrously wrong about the amazing efficiency with which totalitarians would destroy individualism.
I'm not sure which future Baker is living in, but it feels pretty hard to argue that we "won" against the 1984 future. Even people in "free" countries are under a state of constant surveillance, people are getting rounded up for social media posts, etc. We're not 100% lost, but it's hard to look at any other time in the last century that we've been much worse off in terms of freedom from various forms of totalitarianism on a global scale.
Woodhouse's intro is messy. It jumps around, seems to contradict itself, and is full of long awkward sentences. I considered going through with a highlighter and marking all of Orwell and Strunk's sins in it, but it didn't feel like it was worth the time.
Actual book tomorrow, hopefully a large improvement.
This might semi-retroactively become the first piece on a longer series on decision making. Pop quiz! What did Daedalus tell Icarus not to do?
"Fly too close to the sun" is the standard answer. But, the full quote is:
Then thus instructs his child: “My boy, take care To wing your course along the middle air: If low, the surges wet your flagging plumes; If high, the sun the melting wax consumes. Steer between both; nor to the northern skies, Nor south Orion, turn your giddy eyes, But follow me: let me before you lay Rules for the flight, and mark the pathless way.”
This is often used as an illustration of "the golden mean" saying that you should avoid excess, even in seemingly good things.
Would Orwell agree with Kevin's dialect? Why, or why not?
Summary: Lazy thinking leads to writing/speaking, which leads to lazy thinking.
Commentary:
Made it all of five pages into the intro to Animal Farm when I found a reference to it. Found it online and read it on my lunch break. I liked it. The basic thesis about lazy thinking and writing is very relevant to this blog. If you can't be bothered to actually organize your own thoughts, how can they be original?
Orwell gives five basic rules:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
It's funny how closely they parallel William Strunk's famous "Elementary Principals of Composition."
8. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic 9. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning 10. Use the active voice 11. Put statements in positive form 12. Use definite, specific, concrete language 13. Omit needless words 14. Avoid a succession of loose sentences 15. Express co-ordinate ideas in similar form 16. Keep related words together 17. In summaries, keep to one tense 18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end
The green highlights aren't explicitly in Orwell's rules, but are in line with things he says throughout the essay.
Animal Farm is on a reading challenge list I'm looking at. Since I did 1984 earlier this year, seemed like it might be fun to do the other. We'll see if I get around to Brave New World as well.
Summary: Be reasonably jealous of your kids in the country and their projects/industry.
Commentary:
208. Be not fancifully Jealous: For that is Foolish; as, to be reasonably so, is Wise.
I don't think I've ever heard jealousy described as Wise before.
214. If we would amend the World, we should mend Our selves; and teach our Children to be, not what we are, but what they should be.
215. We are too apt to awaken and turn up their Passions by the Examples of our own; and to teach them to be pleased, not with what is best, but with what pleases best.
216. It is our Duty, and ought to be our Care, to ward against that Passion in them, which is more especially our Own Weakness and Affliction: For we are in great measure accountable for them, as well as for our selves.
I think this is a pretty concise parenting manual:
1. Be a better person to help your children be better.
2. Don't accidentally teach your children your
We get more "country good, city bad" I wonder what these classical writers would say about the suburbs. Probably bad.
232. As many Hands make light Work, so several Purses make cheap Experiments.
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235. Never give out while there is Hope; but hope not beyond Reason, for that shews more Desire than Judgment.
