Rebooting Orwell

'The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell's 1984' by Dorian Lynskey (Picador, 2019)

You know a book's big when it has its own biography.  I recently re-read 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' in preparation for 'The Ministry of Truth', Dorian Lynskey's story of the origins and afterlife of George Orwell's most famous novel.

'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is one of the most well-known yet enigmatic speculative fiction novels of all time.  Part of a prestigious pantheon of utopian / dystopian novels, it has been condemned and worshipped, reinterpreted and misconstrued, banned by some and made a bestseller by others.  In 'The Ministry of Truth', Dorian Lynskey explores why the book remains so influential and how our understanding of it has changed in the past seven decades.  Lynskey delves into Orwell's life and motivations and considers how the writer's experiences were dismantled, mulled over, and reassembled to create his great final novel - literally identifying where the author's ideas (probably) came from.  Orwell died just 227 days after the book was published, but his words lived on to shape artistic thinking and political rhetoric for years to come.  Creatives from David Bowie to Margaret Atwood, Alan Moore to Terry Gilliam have all drawn upon 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' to produce their own seminal works, and there have been radio, TV, film and stage adaptations to sate public hunger for the story.  'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and its author are quoted and misquoted whenever human rights and freedoms are seen to be under threat, and it is the first book sought whenever the world starts to look at all 'Orwellian'.  Seventy years after publication, 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' is still alive and kicking, and 'The Ministry of Truth' aims to understand how and why.

'The Ministry of Truth' is densely researched but remains highly readable.  Lynskey has clearly done his homework and the text is interwoven with pertinent and well-chosen illustrative quotes.  It's a credit to his writing style that the book doesn't feel like a slog through an essay that got out of hand.  Neither is it a fan boy's celebration.  Instead, it's clearly driven by a desire to understand rather than to show off or exalt.  The only thing that worries me is that it's so comprehensive no student will ever have to go to the effort of researching or writing an original essay about 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' or Orwell ever again!

A large part of the book is dedicated to a summary biography of Orwell himself, covering his participation in the Spanish Civil War, time at the BBC during World War II, relationships with other writers and eventual success with 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four'.  This remains focussed on the book in hand throughout and does well not to stray into a wider narrative, tempting though it must have been.

The rest of the book is broadly split into two topics; the way the politics of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' have been argued over and used to attack both the left and right since the start of the Cold War, and the influence the book - or more often than not what people think they know about it - has had on Anglo-American popular culture.  Lynskey has cherry picked examples from advertising, music, film and literature to demonstrate the latter, but it does feel a little like some are given more time than others and, although the depth of the impact is explained, I'm not sure about the breadth.  To be fair, though, it could be that the cultural impact of the novel would make a whole separate book.  Perhaps that's what's coming next!

Overall, if you enjoyed or are interested in 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' and its role in the political and cultural landscape, I'd thoroughly recommend this book.  In fact I am, regularly at the moment!  'The Ministry of Truth' is intelligent and readable and adds new depth to a novel we thought we all knew.

Now, what next...?

This post is based on the hardback edition of 'The Ministry of Truth' by Dorian Lynskey, published in 2019 by Picador.  The book is due out in paperback in early 2021.  Assuming we make it that far.