Posted by Lale on 25/5/2011, 9:51:42, in reply to "Re: Lists"
173.33.119.10
This is good timing. So, let me start from the beginning. The other night, my husband had his bridge friends over. He has a bridge get-together in our home very rarely, maybe only twice a year. Those nights, before the guests arrive, I like to retire to my bedroom upstairs.I take my laptop, my book and my snacks, and spend a quiet time upstairs. This time, I had forgotten my book downstairs. I was reading "A far Cry From Kensington" by Muriel Spark (I loved it). Without my book I couldn't fall asleep. I was already in my PJs and didn't want to go downstairs. So, I went to my daughter's room to look for a book. For a person her age (25) she has a large collection (mostly thanks to xmas/bday gifts from her mom). I found the Animal Farm and took it reluctantly.
I had read 1984 and liked it. But I had never read Animal Farm. I was very reluctant to read it because: 1. I know the story, and 2. I thought it was cold war propaganda material. I was very pleasantly surprised. For someone reading it for the first time (and a very well known story) I found it brilliant, humourous, and wonderfully written. I thought it was accurate of many regimes, past and present around the world. I found connections to today Turkey (especially in the sheep.)
After reading the story and loving it, I read the foreword. I learned for the first time that Orwell never intended this book to be an anti-communism propaganda. It is most definitely anti-Stalin, of course. And not even Trotsky/Snowball escapes unscathed, he was partaking of the milk and apples and enjoying other comforts.
I have a hard time enjoying books/authors who have been turned into a propaganda tool by the West. (Soljenitsin for instance, or Turkey's own Orhan Pamuk, they gave them the Nobel prize). Sometimes this embrace by the West is welcome or even planned (in the case of Orhan Pamuk) by the author and that's a turn-off. But I was happy to learn that Orwell did not have any such desires, on the contrary he was upset by it.
I will type up excerpts from the foreword (or try to find them on the internet) tonight.
Lale
--Previous Message--
: Lale, I'm interested to know what it says in the
: foreword to your edition of Animal Farm, because it
: has always been presented to me as a specific allegory
: of the Soviet Union under Stalin. It's not
: necessarily anti-communist, exactly, but anti-Stalin.
: Which is why it strikes me as clever but irrelevant in
: 2011. Allegories, in my opinion, tend to go stale.
:
:
:
:
:
: --Previous Message--
: A Fine Balance
: A Confederacy of Dunces
:
: I didn't look at the list yet but these two should be
: mandatory in any list. I would most definitely include
: them in my list in the top 20, if not the top 10.
:
: By the way: Just the other night I read the Animal
: Farm for the first time and I thought it was
: brilliant. I knew the story of course but I had never
: actually read it thinking it was an anti-communism
: propaganda book. Even though it was embraced as such
: in the United States and the rest of the world as a
: good cold-war propaganda tool, it was not at all
: intended as such. I learned a lot about Orwell's real
: intentions and inclinations from the foreword.
:
: Lale
:
:
:
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