Reading George Orwell feels like a lobotomy. His prose is so bare, so inexpressive and monotone, that I feel my intelligence actively being retarded while reading it.

>>24514470 (OP)
Prose like I feel completely the same. Some of his thoughts are worth reading and are pretty good. But his prose is really boring and bland. Maybe it has to do with his "tips for reading":

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.


According to ChatGPT these rules are from his essay "Politics and the English Language". It sounds like he used them. A lot. You may only read him for the thoughts but there are betters authors to read. But it is nice if you are a beginner.

>>24514786
His tips have less to do with making the speech/writing Spartan, but rather being aware of the changes the language undergoes, and not being goycattle.
According to chatpgt, holy fuck. I can't wait for the day google removes all search results leaving only the generated shit at the top of the page.

>>24514470 (OP)
>surveilance is... LE BAD, socialism lmao
>is that someone advocating violence on behalf of the english working class? POLICE! THIS WAY!

>>24515373
I didn't read this essay so this could make sense.
I thought that he uses these tips to make his ideas understandable for average readers that don't read political/philosophical stuff often. Like that you don't need to focus and be in awe of that prose and could just focus on the idea while having an easy read.

<ChatGPT
Sorry that I wanted to include some source. The website if got these tips from didn't offer any source because it probably were some of these "high society" booktok fucks that don't read anything and pretend to be authors while not writing any actual stuff. Like vibe coding but more shitty and literature like.
And I didn't want to spent 15min searching all over these fucking vibe author websites that just talk about how Jorjor Well was the best thinker ever to find some source. Asking ChatGPT took like 5s and was efficient. Sorry I don't want to spent my time searching some source. Non here probably don't even know what that is.

>>24514470 (OP)
filtered

>>24514786
>According to ChatGPT
Orwellians winning the argument by doing nothing

>>24517245
lol

>>24517245
kek. He got btfo'd to death

>>24514470 (OP)
Read his non fiction, much better than his fiction, and he's often genuinely funny in it too

>>24514786
>According to ChatGPT

>>24514470 (OP)
>I feel my intelligence actively being retarded
Maybe it was like that before you picked up the book.

>>24519026
seconding this anon, his memoirs are amazing. Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London great reads both in their contents and prose

>>24514470 (OP)
I like his work. It reads as if he's relaying a genuinely urgent message with little room for distraction.

>>24514470 (OP)
>Filtered by Orwell
There was no intelligence there to begin with

>>24515493
You did nothing wrong, but read the essay. Probably the most famous idea in it is the loss of meaning for overused words like democracy and fascism.

>>24515486
he was a fabianist socialist he just didn't like the stalinist methods of achieving their utopia

>>24515493
It's a good essay. A lot of it is about cliches and overloaded or inflated rhetoric in political writing, which he saw a way for various hacks to cover up all kinds of stuff they were justifying.

>In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

>"While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigours which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

>>24521258
its kind of funny how easy it is to parody political extremists just because of how cliche riddled their language is

a leyend!!!!

>>24519038
>Natalie Nunn gif
The last season of Baddies is unwatcheable, sis.

>>24521258
>governments use... POLITE TERMINOLOGY FOR THE PUBLIC!??!?!??
He was such an extraordinary midwit in his every observation. He always just grabs the lowest hanging fruit possible. I really find it difficult to believe anyone with an iq above 110 gets much out of reading him.

>>24514470 (OP)
He is a mid author as all polemicists are. He didn't write literary fiction he wrote sci-fi.

>>24522743
Burmese Days is sci-fi? Keep the Aspidistra Flying is sci-fi? Coming Up for Air is sci-fi? Homage to Catalonia is sci-fi? The Road to Wigan Pier is sci-fi? Down and Out in Paris and London is sci-fi? A Clergyman's Daughter is sci-fi?

People misunderstand him anyway. If you actually read the collection of his newspaper columns, he wrote an interesting one about self-policing language to avoid offending others. He mentions how Muslims loathe being called 'Mohammedans' and compares it to Britons' own dislike of the term 'Britisher'

>>24514470 (OP)
Why does Winston have a rape fetish

>>24523836
>Homage to Catalonia is sci-fi? The Road to Wigan Pier is sci-fi? Down and Out in Paris and London is sci-fi?

Cyberpunk

>A Clergyman's Daughter is sci-fi?
It is noir, but it has horribly and ineffectively written rape, which seems to be an essential of science fiction.

>>24524311
repressed hypermasculinity, or something

>>24524404
>horribly and ineffectively written rape, which seems to be an essential of science fiction
lolwut

>>24524236
>Britons' own dislike of the term 'Britisher'
I don't mind, I've been called worse.

>>24514470 (OP)
>His prose is so bare, so inexpressive and monotone
I just got the feeling it was concise. Brevity is the soul of wit and all that. His 'rules' pointed by >>24514786 are amazing IMO, I wish more writers would follow them--though they were meant to be guidelines for speech in general, like politicians and teachers and such. Basically write a phrase short and direct, unless you can write something really cool instead.
I didn't like 1984, but his prose was fine in that.
>>24517245
Holy shit Lmao

>>24524633
It doesn't bother me either, but it was the comparison he used

>>24514470 (OP)
Most of these ""famous"" political authors are. Marx, Hegel, Orwell, etc, are just shit writers. Might is right was a entertaining book, even though I disagree with the author.

Orwell is a solid social historian and his nonfiction writing is descriptive but not flowery, factual but not dryly impartial, engaging but not salacious. His fiction is pretty decent, ignoring the main allegorical works his protagonists are sensitive anon types who just want to work in comfy bookshops and spill spaghetti around women.

>>24514786
>According to ChatGPT
bugman retard