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No class today. There's nothing better to read when coming to class a half hour late with only half the assigned book read than the professor having a family emergency. Ok, it's sad that there's something bad happening with her family but I get to read the rest of 1984. Right now Winston is being led into a trap by O'Brian and doesn't know it. Winston you putz, just get the hell out of the power structure.
You know 1984 is much more interesting given George Orwell's friendship with Henry Miller who did things like laugh at him for going off to fight with the Republicans in Spain. Winston being Orwell's alter ego is way too earnest about changing society or rebelling against society but his method is a physical spiritual rebellion and he's just not up to doing it in the effortless way that Miller dropped out of society altogether (I have no money. No resources. No Hope. I am the happiest man alive.) The proles will always be too damn chaotic to form a rebellion that satisfies a Winston Smith. Love the scene where he tries asking hte old prole about the past and the old prole starts talking about hats and nice houses. And WInston really is getting an answer to his question if he listens but he wants an outright "this was better" or "this was worse" instead of "capitalists with top hats? YOu don't see many of those do you? I wore one once..."
Of course the prole parts are the most interesting from the perspective of the USSR mockery going through the book as what eventually tore down the Soviet Union was a deep cynicism about everything and anything communist instilled by generations of indoctrination. (and not Reagan like the Republicans would have us believe) And by the time of Gorbachev the Glasnost reforms were an effort to preserve Communism by chasing after the reality that an entire population created by simply not giving a shit about Communism.
You know 1984 is much more interesting given George Orwell's friendship with Henry Miller who did things like laugh at him for going off to fight with the Republicans in Spain. Winston being Orwell's alter ego is way too earnest about changing society or rebelling against society but his method is a physical spiritual rebellion and he's just not up to doing it in the effortless way that Miller dropped out of society altogether (I have no money. No resources. No Hope. I am the happiest man alive.) The proles will always be too damn chaotic to form a rebellion that satisfies a Winston Smith. Love the scene where he tries asking hte old prole about the past and the old prole starts talking about hats and nice houses. And WInston really is getting an answer to his question if he listens but he wants an outright "this was better" or "this was worse" instead of "capitalists with top hats? YOu don't see many of those do you? I wore one once..."
Of course the prole parts are the most interesting from the perspective of the USSR mockery going through the book as what eventually tore down the Soviet Union was a deep cynicism about everything and anything communist instilled by generations of indoctrination. (and not Reagan like the Republicans would have us believe) And by the time of Gorbachev the Glasnost reforms were an effort to preserve Communism by chasing after the reality that an entire population created by simply not giving a shit about Communism.
