/lit/ - Literature

>>5116748
left libertarians are kinda cool though.pic related.
and are somewhat rare...

>>4848984
Hello

>>4771074
"A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterton called the “good bad book”: that is, the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished... I would back Uncle Tom's Cabin to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies."

>>4237671
>hurr durr it's us against the system

That is not the fucking point of it at all.
The plot mainly revolves around a character going from silent rebellion into actual action against a system. The point of that is not going up against some system per se. It is clear from the very beginning how Winstons stance on the party is. If that was the point Orwell was trying to make he could have stopped after like 50 pages.
The point in fact is the transition of Winston himself going from a thoughtcriminal alone to someone who actually actively seeks to sabotage the system. He seeks to do so - even though it is pointed out several times that it's fucking useless. The point that is made with this is that a sane person within a system of absolute insanity still tries to overcome his or her situation.

>Firstly, they are better written
Might be the translation but I though BNWs prose wasn't so great.

>secondly they actually succeeded to a much greater extent in examining the society the authors lived in and from that, make predictions from the future.

And to me the premise of Huxleys society seems alrightish but in the end far too much over the top. The point in the end is just the same as in 1984 where instinct and logic are overshadowed by a greater system. Be that system whatever it might be.
I think 1984 gives a much better insight on societies as they seem to work in general. Especially in revolutionary times.
Just read for an example the few pages from Goldsteins book. A lot of the stuff you can read there (with the middle class overthrowing the higher class by the help of the lower class establishing new regimes etc etc) is actually happening right fucking now.
Just take a look at egypt. 1984 gives you a fucking perfect manual to what happened there.

The aspect Huxley widely ignores is that beyond all the drugs and orgies or whatever makes people happy in BNW there still is the societal aspect of total chaos and violence overthrowing someone who cannot fight back.
And that is some very basic human shit right there.

One of the question most people are focusing on when they compare both stories (we all know the comic), is whether we are destroyed by what we love (e.g. overstimulation of the sex instinct in BNW) or by what we hate (e.g. re-routing the sex instinct into hate). However at the point above this gets absolutely neglegtable.
Because what in the end really gets us down is the strifing for power of the one over the other. And like it or not but that is just somewhat better depicted in 1984.

Favorite George Orwell?

Mine is keep the aspidistra flying.

Anarchism and Other Essays (1910), by Emma Goldman
The State and Revolution (1917), by Vladimir Lenin
The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), by John Maynard Keynes
The end of Laissez-Faire (1926), by John Maynard Keynes
Brave New World (1932), by Aldous Huxley
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), by John Maynard Keynes
On Guerrilla Warfare (1937), by Mao Zedong
Homage to Catalonia (1938), by George Orwell
Animal Farm (1945), by George Orwell
The Second Sex (1949), by Simone de Beauvoir
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell
The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), by Hannah Arendt
The Rebel (1951), by Albert Camus
The Wretched of the Earth (1961), by Frantz Fanon
Guerrilla Warfare (1961), by Che Guevara
Capitalism and Freedom (1962), by Milton Friedman

My face.