George Orwell’s 1984 contains excerpts from a fictional book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism. Orwell provides a short passage from Chapter 1, entitled “Ignorance is Strength” and a much longer passage from Chapter 3, entitled “War Is Peace.” Although 1984 is a work of dystopian fiction, TPOC has long struck me as a profound work of social science. The book is a wonderful meditation on not only totalitarianism (especially Stalinism), but politics itself.
The upshot: I’ve decided to run a new book club – not on 1984 as a whole, but merely Orwell’s book-within-a-book.
You can read TPOC online here, or just take out your handy copy of 1984 and read the relevant parts of Part 2, Chapter 9. The whole read should take just 40 minutes or so.
The first installment will run on January 18. Who’s in?
READER COMMENTS
David Henderson
Jan 11 2021 at 11:03am
I’m in.
robc
Jan 11 2021 at 11:25am
I am only partly through it, but once thing is really clear: despite whatever his political/economic faults were, Orwell had a grasp on the Broken Window Fallacy.
KevinDC
Jan 11 2021 at 11:30am
I’m also in!
Nicholas Decker
Jan 11 2021 at 12:23pm
This can’t be just me – when I read the book as a child, this was, from the start, my favorite part of the whole book and nothing else came close.
robc
Jan 11 2021 at 2:02pm
I originally tried to read it in 1983. I think I checked out Dune from the library at the same time, and although I started 1984, I never finished it. I read it later as an adult, loved it, and haven’t been able to pick it up again, because the ending is too depressing. Every time I want to reread it (and I am an avid rereader of books I love), I remember the last chapter and put it back down.
Joe Denver
Jan 11 2021 at 12:33pm
I’m in.
Jonathan Culp
Jan 11 2021 at 12:51pm
I’m in. Will we be reading it in the order written in the chapter, or will we read all of ch. 1 and then all of ch. 3?
Henri Hein
Jan 11 2021 at 1:51pm
Hand up.
David
Jan 11 2021 at 4:08pm
I’m in, if it means my choco rations will increase to 20 grams. Doubleplus Good!😀👍
Aisla Sinclair Portland
Jan 11 2021 at 4:57pm
Just got the book out of the loft.
Great timing, count me in.
Allan McGregor
Jan 11 2021 at 9:52pm
So in. I teach this book in a senior highschool English course and we spend a day on the TPOC and they love it.
Michael McInerney
Jan 11 2021 at 11:18pm
This sounds interesting. Sign me up.
Stanley James
Jan 12 2021 at 5:15am
Definitely in. The book is both Orwell at his best as a novelist and a commentator.
Art Carden
Jan 12 2021 at 11:19am
I’m in.
Norician Anderson
Jan 12 2021 at 11:54am
I’m in. Really good book.
Brendan
Jan 12 2021 at 3:13pm
Be sure to check out aThe Grand Inquisitor, a very similar book-within-a-book in The Brothers Karamazov!
William fraser
Jan 13 2021 at 10:26am
I have mostly finished my novel called ‘Normalised utopia’ it is like 1984 but more mathematical, econometrics, statistics.
”War is peace” etc ties in with my economic theory which I put in my novel.
Zamyatin who wrote the original 1984 called ‘We’ also mentioned a similar concept. A novel I only read after I mostly writing my novel.
Daniel Klein
Jan 13 2021 at 3:29pm
I’m interested. The hour could be an issue.
Jason Ford
Jan 15 2021 at 6:21pm
I just finished reading it. Do you want people to start posting questions and comments now or wait until Monday?
David
Jan 18 2021 at 10:31pm
How do we sign up for the book club???
Comments are closed.