For the next three years, you can wake up every morning with the ghost of George Orwell at your side. He will rub his cold, yellow toes against your ankle under the sheets and then stretch, cough, and roll over to shiver and detox from the night before. After flicking the tips of his fingers at the grizzle of his beard -- and demanding his coffee in louder and louder mumbles -- he will lump over to his computer and make his daily blog post.



"The Orwell Prize, Britain's pre-eminent prize for political writing, is publishing George Orwell's diaries as a blog. From 9th August 2008, Orwell's domestic and political diaries (from 9th August 1938 until October 1942) will be posted in real-time, exactly 70 years after the entries were written.

Orwell's 'domestic' diaries begin on 9th August 1938/2008; his 'political' diaries (which are further categorised as 'Morocco', 'Pre-war' and 'Wartime') begin on 7th September 1938/2008.

The diaries are exactly as Orwell wrote them. Where there are original spelling errors, they are indicated by a dot following the offending word."

For the next three years, using his keen, lucid insights into language and coercion (insights hardened by real, honest labor in coal mines and tanneries) our atemporal correspondent will contemplate the impending fracture of the world into three competing tribes -- capitalist, communist, and fascist -- as they each fight for the future of the world's heart, head, and soul. Each day is a new perspective. Each day is a new challenge.

The war is coming! Wake up every morning and see the world as George Orwell saw it. Black, cold, polluted, and impossible.

Some of his blog posts will be the most important swatches of political rhetoric you will ever read in your entire life.

Others will be about -- you know -- whatever.

"August 26, 1938

Hot. Dense ground-mist early this morning. Many blackberries now ripe, very large & fairly sweet. Also fair number of dew-berries. Walnuts now nearly full sized. Plenty of English apples in the shops."

The diary SEEMS prosaic on the face of it; almost Dorothy Wordsworthian in its obsessive accumulation of daily facts that could never be interesting to anyone. But what secret codes, associations, and correspondences lie in the mind of England's most famous paranoid psychotic?

Bold conjecture regarding today's entry:

Hot = trouble
Ground-mist = Nazis
Blackberries = opportunities to stab Nazis
Dew-berries = working class girls who like to wear lipstick any old day of the week, just to live WRONG AND HARD
Walnuts = bastard children conceived in train cars
English apples = English apples
Shops = hands of decadent intellectuals instead of in the hands of noble workers and artists


Posted by miracle on Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:49:54 -0400 -- permanent link