From: mabjo@pacbell.net   
      
   Bobby Farouk wrote:   
      
   > "Rhino"  wrote in message   
   > news:cs%2d.20474$lb5.1485744@news20.bellglobal.com...   
   > >   
   > >   
   > > One of the things I'm most curious about is Orwell's level of optimism or   
   > > pessimism that Ingsoc would truly survive. I've just re-read 1984 and   
   > > noticed something about the Appendix that I hadn't seen before: the verb   
   > > tenses in the first paragraph suggest that the Appendix may have been   
   > > written from the point of view of an academic analyzing Ingsoc and   
   > Newspeak   
   > > *after* their demise. I wonder if Orwell might have intended the Appendix   
   > as   
   > > a ray of hope that the infinitely bleak and hopeless world of 1984 might   
   > not   
   > > actually endure?   
   > >   
   >   
   > Interesting.  Proof that there is always a new way of looking at a good   
   > book.   
      
   Actually I think I've seen that mentioned here before, forget by whom -- the   
   part about seeing cause for hope in the past-tense language of the appendix.   
      
   You might, btw, be interested in the first reader's report on *1984* by   
   Orwell's publisher Fred Warburg, much of which I typed out in 1999 at   
   .   
      
   In that text "manaterial" and "manaterialism" are my own typos for Warburg's   
   words "managerial" and "managerialism" -- referring to the book *The   
   Managerial Revolution* by James Burnham, who afterwards became a cofounder of   
   the National Review. As you may know, Orwell reviewed that book angrily,   
   saying Burnham seemed covertly to worship totalitarian regimes and their   
   strongmen, and arguing Burnham had repeatedly overestimated such regimes'   
   staying power during WWII out of a kind of sick wishful thinking. And yet the   
   *1984* backstory clearly owes something to Burnham's notion that world   
   politics would settle into a three-way superpower stalemate marked by   
   inconclusive peripheral conflicts. Probably goes to show the ambivalence in   
   Orwell's own feelings on subjects having to do with the abuse of power.   
      
   /M   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)