Orwell vs. Huxley, Part Deux
My first thoughts on Orwell and Huxley are pretty much what is here. [link removed and I swear what it was linked to was in no way something that could get me fired].
Although I’ve never stopped writing, and never stopped wanting to make a living at writing, listening to this On The Media story on George Orwell made me realize that I had utterly given up some part of my ambition to be a writer.
The specific ambition is not the one to put down words, or to make people listen to me, or prove I exist in the universe by creating something. Rather it is the ambition to have the skill, as George Packer describes Orwell as having, to spin out the commonplace and mundane into something that helps illustrate some universal truth.
At some point, without even being aware of it, I stopped thinking I was a person who had the education/intelligence/insight/right to do this.
Maybe I don’t. I mean, I mainly write about reality television and sugar, so it’s enitrely possible that I will never be able to do something on even the tiniest scale approaching what a Real Writer like Orwell can.
But what was jarring was realizing this ambition just evaporated into the humbling nature of adult life without a fight, without even being aware of it.
Thinking about this confirmed for me once again that although I still much prefer Orwell’s body of work, Huxley’s dystopian vision was a lot clearer, at least for the industrialized world. The totalitarianism that is most effective is not the one that is an outside oppressor; rather it’s the one that gets inside your head and convinces you there’s no point in trying.
