Exercise your freedom...to read

It seems I usually am reading more than one book at a time. Okay, not reading with books in both hands, but one for afternoon reading, another at bedtime, and poking my nose into some other book or two throughout the day.

One of the books I've been reading (actually, re-reading) is George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's amazing that it's held up so well over the many years since it was published. But I'm finding that quite a lot of it seems a little too spot-on, with ubiquitous surveillance cameras only one of those aspects.

Other parts of it that seem a little too close to reality are those that concern both writing and language.

Much of the writing depicted in the novel is actually re-writing -- the re-creation of history that's become inconvenient -- often because an individual was too caught up in the mores of his time. And yes, that individual is generally a man, but then that simply reflects how our histories have been written. And what the protagonist (Winston) must do in his job seems not all that different from ways we have recently been revisiting some of our own history. 

Even more chilling to me as a creative writer is the notion of machines spinning out novels. As with the revision of history in the book's Ministry of Truth, an entire department is devoted to the creation of Fiction. Books are conceived by directive of a committee, then the words are spun out by a machine. Sure, there's a department for rewriting, but somehow it doesn't sound very literary. And the same process is also true for pornography in Orwell's dystopian society, though only women are permitted to work in that section. Much too stimulating for men. Harrumph.

But even more bothersome to me is his vision of what he called Newspeak, a word that showed up yesterday as one of the answers to the New York Times crossword (one of my morning addictions, along with coffee).

Newspeak's goal was purportedly to simplify and clarify language (right...) by paring down the dictionary to only the most basic words, all of which could be modified with simple prefixes and suffixes. Thus, 'bad' becomes 'ungood' and a person who is particular righteous and law-abiding would be described as 'goodthinkful'.

And we can't forget Newspeak's brother, doublespeak, whose presence lingers in our midst like a bad smell. Examples that come to mind include "It's all good" (especially when things might be anything but) and "Have a good one." (A good what, I ask myself.)

I find it worrisome to have 'good' be the basis for such meaningless remarks. It seems like shades of the simplistic 'ungood' to have 'good' as the foundation for so many of our offhand, rote remarks. Although really, it isn't that I don't want life to be good, it's the diminishment of language that rankles me.

Anyway, this happens to be Freedom to Read Week, and I'm glad that even my socks (in the photo) have something to say on that. My advice? Learn a new word -- or better yet, go find a book that's been banned and read it.