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Posts Tagged: 1984
The Rumpus Poetry Book Club Chat with Justin Phillip Reed
Justin Phillip Reed on his debut collection, Indecency, why he loves struggling with connotation, and the irresponsibility of American society.
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The Read Along: Neda Semnani
I picked up The Odyssey because I wanted to read about wanders and refugees. A story about a man who takes a decade to get home and is on a quest for safety seemed like a good place to start.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #76: Chris Tusa
Set in post-Katrina New Orleans, Chris Tusa’s second novel, In the City of Falling Stars (Livingston Press, September 2016), tells a tale of paranoia and intrigue. Maurice Delahoussaye witnesses dead birds falling from the sky, and becomes convinced the air is toxic. With equal parts humor and depravity, the novel chronicles a fractured family amidst a […]
...moreThis Week in Indie Bookstores
Emma Straub has been named Independent Bookstore Day ambassador. Author of The Vacationers and Modern Lovers, Straub worked at the recently closed BookCourt in Brooklyn, and plans to open her own store nearby. Omnivore Books, a San Francisco cookbook store, is resisting Trump’s ban on Muslims by celebrating cookbooks from the banned regions.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
Well, it’s been one week under the Trump administration, and already we are living in a land of “alternative facts.” After Kellyanne Conway used the term to defend Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s falsehoods regarding the inauguration crowd size on Sunday, the American people were, understandably, reminded of George Orwell’s 1984, and sales of the book […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Ranbir Singh Sidhu
Ranbir Singh Sidhu discusses his new novel, Deep Singh Blue, growing up in rural California, and the privileged, problematic world of publishing.
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The Rumpus Interview with John Reed
John Reed discusses Snowball’s Chance, his parody of Animal Farm, and the lawsuits, debates, and discoveries that followed the book’s publication.
...more1984 or 2016?
For the Los Angeles Review of Books, Stephen Rohde gives a thorough and chilling analyzation of our current socio-political climate which highlights just how closely our world parallels the one that George Orwell predicted in his novel 1984: No one aware of post-9/11 society in the United States, England, Europe, and elsewhere can fail to […]
...moreIn Defense of Precisely Inexact Language
Writing for Aeon, Elijah Millgram uses 1984 and George Orwell’s Newspeak/doublethink idea of language to examine why imperfect language, and expression that is sometimes inexact, contradictory, or misleading, can be better for developing the scope of human reasoning.
...moreIn the Wind Like Singing
Over on Kill Your Darlings, Angela Meyer writes a lovely reflective essay on her time spent in Barnhill, where George Orwell stayed while he wrote 1984. She explores Orwell through the mess that might be 1984, the perfection of his essays, and the importance of a book he renounced, A Clergyman’s Daughter. Much like she […]
...moreOrwell’s First Love
Brain Pickings dives into the young love lives of George Orwell, then known as Eric Blair, and Jacintha Buddicom. Jacintha was famously the model for Julia in Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the interactions between Orwell and Buddicom as they age may be just as heartbreaking, ending with a bittersweet reunion just before Orwell’s death.
...moreSong of the Day: “Purple Rain”
Our history of rock-stars-turned-movie-actors goes back a long time, but one highlight has to be Prince’s performance in his bizarre 1984 drama, Purple Rain. Though chock full of laughably weird moments—critics dismissed the movie as “overlong,” “facile,” and a “letdown”—the film’s soundtrack went on to become a huge international success. Prince’s power ballad of the same name, […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Ervin
Andrew Ervin discusses his debut novel, Burning Down George Orwell’s House, social media and writing, and how video games can serve as a way to understand the post-human world.
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The Rumpus Interview with Thomas H. McNeely
Thomas H. McNeely discusses coming of age in the 1970s, Houston’s complicated racial history, and his new novel Ghost Horse.
...moreAfter 1984, There Was 1983
Think of the year 1984 and your mind can’t help but jump to great books, thanks to George Orwell’s dystopic classic. But what about 1983? To put some sparkle back in 1983’s literary eye, the AV Club rounded up ten of the year’s excellent but underappreciated books. It’s true: despite being praiseworthy books by big-name […]
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
The book blogs are full of awesome this week. You should read them. How to write to an editor: “I have given your request for evidence 23 hours of thought, the proper number of hours to come up with the right proof. I have sent you the original life experiences behind the proem telepathically just […]
...more“Amazon.com is watching you.”
Amazon, we’re still mad at you. Last week, the company once again stirred waves of customer indignation when it remotely deleted copies of George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm from users’ Kindles. The Rumpus covered the story here and here.
...moreThe Rumpus Sunday Book Blog Roundup
This week, the book blogs are scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me. Sure, there have been a few fun, interesting updates and interviews, but most of what they’ve been saying makes me want to build a series of tunnels in and around my house so that I can start planning the first push of […]
...moreHow 1984 Killed George Orwell
George Orwell, who died at the age of 46, was one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, and arguably, given the way the Bush administration adopted many of Big Brother’s tactics, the twenty-first as well. A google search for the terms “Bush” and “Orwellian” returns upwards of 2.1 million hits. But the […]
...moreWar Is Peace, Freedom Is Slavery
With echoes of 9/11, the protagonist of Jim Knipfel’s novel flees the ubiquitous surveillance of a not-so-futuristic government.
...moreHow Books Got Their Titles
A blog about how famous books got their titles, peppered with amusing and surprisingly sexual anecdotes. John Cleland’s title Fanny Hill is dirty, but not for the reasons you might think. Marie Stopes’ 1918 Married Love might be the most sexually influential work of the 20th century, but its title is classic double speak that […]
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