Orwell on the Isle of Jura | Hacker News Reader

Orwell on the Isle of Jura

bbc.com

52 pointsvinnyvichy25 comments

It was nearly 30 years ago, I was in high school and heard about 1984. I couldn't find it in the school library, so I asked the librarian and in the most surreal experience, she looked at me and said, "Follow me."

A few corridors later, we arrived at a double door. She unlocked it and led me to the back. There were stacks of them. She handed me one and said, bring it back when you're done with it. I asked why it wasn't in the library, and she said, "They say it is outdated and no longer relevant." Her facial expression clearly stated she disagreed. They had pulled it from the curriculum, it used to be taught it class, and by the 90's already missing from the school library.

Excellent book. As the article quotes, many people think they know the book, yet have never read it. Completely worth it, I recommend some tea and Drone Station on Soma FM. Speaking of Soma, be sure to read Brave New World as well.

Besides the erasing of collective knowledge, there's the subversive woman, leading you to a back room, to partake of banned things...

That's the most "1984" story I've heard since:

"Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle" https://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/18/technology/companies/18am...

a take I have on 1984, outside of the infamy, is that it's an epic romantic novel. Winston and Julia vs. the world.

Only at the very end does Winston discover his true love?

Julia was a plant[0] and Winston[1] is a terrorist*. It's about as romantic (look at their kill count!) as the underage fling[2] of Romeo(M16?) and Juliet(F13)?

People have to read 1984 in middle school, or at least before they have any life experience, in order not to spot the Potemkin cardboard of the frame[3] story.

[0] "so, how did you guys meet?"

[1] consider his answers when O'Brien tries to determine where his limits lie.

[2] although marrying them off has, in at least one case, been an effective way to defuse boys who had been trained as suicide bombers.

[3] "Theory and Practice" is Orwell's active ingredient; Julia and Winston are the sugar in the pill.

> People have to read 1984 in middle school,

And yet they don't underestand anything from it.

You don't say what country this is in.

1984 is being read by children in England. I doubt it's a compulsory text, as that's not how the exam system works, but there are questions on the book in recent GCSE English exams so at worst it is one option out of a small number.

You can search "1984 GCSE English" to see this.

Possibly it's required or recommended for the younger age group (before the big exams), 12-14, as I see many references to dystopian texts when searching "1984 KS3 English".

I have fond memories of the time I visited Jura. It’s an island of 100 people and 10,000 deer. When we stayed at the one hotel there we had an amazing hostess who showed us to our room and then when we went down to the (only) bar was our bartender and later at the restaurant she was our server. It was an amazing small community. There is also a museum in town dedicated to people who have lived on the island. My favorite description of one women was “she was known for causing general mischief on the island”. I didn’t realize that Orwell lived there until I visited. I didn’t understand how that place would inspire 1984 but this article gives another perspective of how the environment may have affected him that i never considered.

I don't think that place inspired 1984; reverse the arrows: the place was a result of the thinking that led to 1984's "Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism".

Orwell had tried joining the proletariat for their franchise, but Blair's habitus always gave him away (see "The Spike"). His nonfiction ("Ode to...", "Atom bomb...") suggests he had no reason to believe that Airstrip One would also not turn Stalinesque[0] (at worst), and his upbringing gave him every reason to believe it was (already) run like an English boarding school in macrocosm; either way Jura would've been an insular escape.

(if one reads Maugham's Sanatorium as a reflection on the small world of great power helvetic intelligence and counter-intelligence during the Great War[1], then could Jura "for one's health" have been a better way to come in from the cold than a large, formal, institution?)

[0] Might Blair have had any reason to believe that someone, somewhere, might've had a sawed-off ice axe with Orwell's name on it?

[1] I was just reading something the other day where during that period Swiss authorities had at first, upon discovery of an arms cache, thought they'd uncovered an Indian Anarchist plot to arm Italian Anarchists, only to eventually discover there was an English double agent fomenting the whole thing...

cf https://www.srf.ch/play/tv/sendung/davos-1917?id=04afcde8-77...

Pen-Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plhtk_XJqhM

[0] had a Luger with him at all times, according to a darker retrospective from 2019

Any theories where Julia is named after Jura? What would that make of Kilbride?

[0]https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/1984-author-george-orwell-fear...

Julia is obviously "Jeff's uncommon Lisp is acrostical" (therefore, in the character's case: "Jeff's uncommon Lisp is anachronistic"?)

I spy a more satisfying response-riff to that thought:

http://www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.asp?id=243&referer=Hp

See "Content"; I am looking forward to having it fire all my 1984 cylinders, Julia/Jura getting the manic pixie treatment they deserve etc.

EDIT:I accept that it might hard to take Jura, as a concept, much further than very good Scotch.

(Professional fanfic)

BtW this is the KM who wrote the preface to his buddy Iain Banks' poetry release. So on the one hand Banks inspired (right arrow) Elon and on the other end in KM's stories it's the postSoviets(+Linux) who dominate future space exploration, due to socialist virtu (left arrow)

(Apologies to Bezanson)

Cover art is Jennifer Lawrence meets John Christopher's Tripods?

Hmmm... haven't thought about those in a long time, even though I was looking at the "White Mountains" earlier today.

Seems as if EAB would've agreed his frame story could've been handled a bit better[0], but as he did go to a sanatorium once prescribed, I guess my imputation of paranoia driving choice of island over institution had been apophenic[1]. Maybe he was just into it because all the rich kids at St Cyprian's used to summer (ca.1915?) in exotic[2] Scotland?

Lagniappe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Mv6gXqADM

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1360500/#:~:tex...

[1] when did Sonia start working with IRD, anyway?

[2] two bits of information (decent bits, so we shan't mention Oliver Mellors!) as to what constituted "exotic" in postwar Britain: (a) Spaghetti Trees [1957], and (b) the first James Bond [1953] is set all the way across the Channel in "Royale-les-Eaux".

By no means contraindicating your (harmless) micro-apophenia, but "Orwell >>> Galois >>> we" in terms of gambling nous, might explain the difficulty of modelling their emotional states or purchases (ie of insurance for theories of uncertain import)

L: https://vuir.vu.edu.au/18204/1/PETSINIS_1995compressed.pdf

& As for the 3-fold gluing/halving (the collatz avemaria?) u might have missed the other retrospective https://minervawisdom.com/2019/06/20/ciceros-republic-the-cy...

odd, Petsinis' Galois was left-handed, but the record of the autopsy describes a right-hander: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k267462/f100.item

(do they describe him as having had a normally small cerebellum, or abnormally?)

Hmmm perhaps you refer to studies such as the following?

https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=38488....

Indeed, although I think in Petsinis' case it was just a moment of inattention (bonus Homer). Given that I read very few XIX autopsy reports, it's completely unclear to me if they're giving a standard report or drawing attention to something. (it's even unclear to me why they should have been paying so much attention to the cranium when the problem clearly lay in the abdomen? early phrenology?)

Current-day JL; could be H G Wells too.

in which case she ought to have, not a quiver, but tubercular lungs?

A great short read on one of the more interesting aspects of the creation of a beguiling masterpiece on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of its publication.

The article wonders if the Hebridean climate was good for a man suffering from tuberculosis - there may have been better places, but London would have been much worse at the time due to domestic use of coal for fuel. Eg, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

I'm now reading a bunch of Orwell's more journalistic work, just finished The Road to Wigan Pier. I wonder - who is Orwell of today? Specifically, his willingness / ability to cut deep into his own ideology (socialism). The only name I can think of is Ezra Klein...

In connexion with 1984, I recommend "Such, Such Were the Joys"

> willingness / ability to cut deep into his own ideology

the Pythons' Life of Brian? "What have the Romans ever done for us?" "You're all individuals" "Where's the fetus going to gestate?" etc. etc.

Off topic but I just randomly, on one of the rare occasions I do, skateboarded with a friend and was immediately hit with a skateboarding ad while reading this article afterwards.

And I certainly appreciate the irony of this happening while I'm reading an article about Orwell rofl

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