Andrew Guthrie's Reviews > Nineteen Eighty-Four:

Yeah sure . . . I'll give this classic three stars . . . just to take all the critical prognostication down a notch . . . I got on an Orwell binge after I noted that every stripe of contemporary political opinion was appropriating him for "their side" . . . I read "Burmese Days", "Road to Wigan Pier", "Homage to Catalonia" . . . and then I figured I had to read "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (I had yet to read it!) . . . and despite the introduction (in the edition I read by Julian Symons) stating that Orwell was a weak novelist until his two most famous novels ("Nineteen Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm") I think "Burmese Day" is of tighter construction . . . I believe what touched the political nerve (as it stands) is the catch-phrases Orwell introduced in "Nineteen Eighty-Four": Big Brother, doublespeak, and the like . . . but it's a bit disheveled, for instance having an appendix about "newspeak" after the conclusion, after we find out what happens with Winston, after being arrested, imprisoned and brainwashed. I just skimmed that appendix while finding the previous descriptions of Winston's tortures horrifyingly riveting . . . so two things: the novel is fundamentally, and should be classified as, science-fiction, and, what's obscured by all the brouhaha about Big Brother, is that "Nineteen Eighty-Four" is also a kind of a love story, and how intimate relationships separate one (or peel off lovers) from society at large . . . by being a kind of science-fiction it gets certain ideas about the future totally wrong, and in that way should not be read as any kind of prognostication or template. On the other hand, certain of the book's themes are utterly depressing in light of specific contemporary (make your own choice) politicians maintaining power for the sake of power through outright fabrications and state-enforced deception. As far as background, and what was really on Orwell's mind (as far as which "side" gets to claim him), I found it very helpful to read "Homage to Catalonia" before "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Not only do we find Orwell reading cheap detective novels to wile away the tedium of standing guard during internecine warfare (in Barcelona) but "Nineteen Eighty-Four" was clearly influenced by the Stalinist orthodoxy that was enforced on the Spanish left at the expense of the trade union anarchists (who Orwell aligned himself with).