Available:*
Library | Audience | Home Location | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... Central | Adult | Non-fiction | Book | 820.900912 OR9R | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
Two years ago, there was such an explosion of books and articles about Orwell and 1984 that these essays, based on papers presented at an academic symposium, contain little that hasn't been said before. England's Bernard Crick reiterates his contention that 1984 was intended not as a prophesy, but as a satire in which the actuality of wartime and postwar England was projected to its logical (and ridiculous) extreme. Sheldon Wolin of Princeton proposes that Orwell's totalitarian state represents the end of the Enlightenment and its belief in reason and human advancement. Penn's Ivar Berg stands Orwell's thesis on its head to examine the ""microcosmic"" tyrannies over workers and consumers that can result when the federal government relinquishes controls over industries. Others (Mark Crispin Miller, Ruth Macklin, Joseph Weizenbaum) find Orwellian parallels in the stultifying effect of television viewing, the development of behavior modification techniques and drugs and, of course, in the computer revolution. On the whole, the various essays are literate and evocative; unfortunately, they are hitting the book market two years too late. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Choice Review
If this is not the last book of essays in celebration of the conjunction of the year 1984 and Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is-so far, at least-the very best and the most attractive. The contributors to 1984 Revisited, ed. by Irving Howe (CH, Jan '84), and to The Future of Nineteen Eighty-Four, ed. by Ejner J. Jensen (CH, Jul '84), are not so uniformly distinguished, so various, or so engaging as those edited by Mulvihill. This volume, surely, is worth its price for Robert Coles's essay alone, or Sheldon Wolin's, or James Billington's, or-just as particularly-Joseph Weizenbaum's. Together, these 12 essays as papers from the three-day symposium held at Rosemount College, March 1984, touch upon ten fields, although each essay relates directly to the symposium theme (How does Nineteen Eighty-Four reflect on American life in 1984?). Some pieces are footnoted, some are not. The editor identifies each contributor, writes an introductory essay, and provides a modest index. Of the two rather mediocre offerings of Bernard Crick, the authorized biographer of Orwell (George Orwell, A Life, CH, Jul '81), one is ``A Photographic Essay,'' for which some 47 well-known photographs of or about Orwell are reproduced in black and white. Appropriate for community college, upper-division undergraduate, and graduate students and for general readers.-R.D. Thornton, emeritus, SUNY College at New Paltz
Kirkus Review
Two years ago, there was such an explosion of books and articles about Orwell and 1984 that these essays, based on papers presented at an academic symposium, contain little that hasn't been said before. England's Bernard Crick reiterates his contention that 1984 was intended not as a prophesy, but as a satire in which the actuality of wartime and postwar England was projected to its logical (and ridiculous) extreme. Sheldon Wolin of Princeton proposes that Orwell's totalitarian state represents the end of the Enlightenment and its belief in reason and human advancement. Penn's Ivar Berg stands Orwell's thesis on its head to examine the ""microcosmic"" tyrannies over workers and consumers that can result when the federal government relinquishes controls over industries. Others (Mark Crispin Miller, Ruth Macklin, Joseph Weizenbaum) find Orwellian parallels in the stultifying effect of television viewing, the development of behavior modification techniques and drugs and, of course, in the computer revolution. On the whole, the various essays are literate and evocative; unfortunately, they are hitting the book market two years too late. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
