What would Nineteen Eighty-Four be like if it were written today?

Dale, J

What would Nineteen Eighty-Four be like if it were written today?

Dale, J

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: New Writing, 2020, 17 (1), pp. 19 - 30
Issue Date:: 2020-01-02

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Dale, J https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7559-6641	en_US
dc.date.available	2019-01-01	en_US
dc.date.issued	2020-01-02	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	New Writing, 2020, 17 (1), pp. 19 - 30	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	1479-0726	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/137520
dc.description.abstract	© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. If George Orwell were alive today what would his politics be? The writer Norman Podhoretz posed this question in 1983 and concluded that Orwell would have sided with the neo-conservatives. For Podhoretz, Orwell's driving passion was his opposition to totalitarianism, and if he had lived, Podhoretz argued, he would have come to identify with those neo-conservatives opposed to Soviet expansionism. Great writers engage with the changing times and by using their imaginations transform their ideas and environments into fiction. More than any other writer of the 20th century, Orwell responded to a period of historical change by imagining his dystopian future of Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps the most influential political novel ever written. At the same time Nineteen Eighty-Four was very much a product of post-war England with its rations and shortages. Orwell, in fact, remained a socialist until his death in January 1950, but the far more intriguing question is what Nineteen Eighty-Four would be like if it were written today, in an age of Islamist terror, fake news and post-truth politics.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	New Writing	en_US
dc.relation.isbasedon	10.1080/14790726.2019.1566370	en_US
dc.title	What would Nineteen Eighty-Four be like if it were written today?	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	1	en_US
utslib.citation.volume	17	en_US
utslib.for	2005 Literary Studies	en_US
utslib.for	1302 Curriculum and Pedagogy	en_US
utslib.for	1904 Performing Arts and Creative Writing	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences/Creative Writing Program
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/Strength - CPCE - Centre for Creative Practices and the Cultural Economy
utslib.copyright.status	open_access	*
pubs.issue	1	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US
pubs.volume	17	en_US

Abstract:

© 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. If George Orwell were alive today what would his politics be? The writer Norman Podhoretz posed this question in 1983 and concluded that Orwell would have sided with the neo-conservatives. For Podhoretz, Orwell's driving passion was his opposition to totalitarianism, and if he had lived, Podhoretz argued, he would have come to identify with those neo-conservatives opposed to Soviet expansionism. Great writers engage with the changing times and by using their imaginations transform their ideas and environments into fiction. More than any other writer of the 20th century, Orwell responded to a period of historical change by imagining his dystopian future of Nineteen Eighty-Four, perhaps the most influential political novel ever written. At the same time Nineteen Eighty-Four was very much a product of post-war England with its rations and shortages. Orwell, in fact, remained a socialist until his death in January 1950, but the far more intriguing question is what Nineteen Eighty-Four would be like if it were written today, in an age of Islamist terror, fake news and post-truth politics.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/137520