THIS WARN YOU
Docs after in oldspeak. Untruth, make-ups only. Make-ups make THOUGHTCRIME. Careful. Supervisor rank or not to read. This read warn you. THOUGHTCRIME in docs after. SEXCRIME in docs after. Careful. If self excited, report. If other excited, report. Everything report. Withhold accurate report is INFOCRIME. THis warn you. Are you authorised, if no stop read now! Make report! We know. Careful. Any resemblance, living or dead, is ungood. Make report. If fail make report, is INFOCRIME. Make report. If report made on failing to make report, this paradox. Paradox is LOGICRIME. Do not do anything. Do not fail to do anything. This warn you. Why you nervous? Was it you? We know. IMPORTANT: Do not read next sentence. This sentence for official inspect only. Now look. Now don’t. Now look. Now don’t. Careful. Everything not banned compulsory. Everything not compulsory banned. Views expressed within not necessarily those of publishers, editors, writers, characters. You did it. We know. This warn you.
– “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier”, opening warning text, written by Alan Moore.
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I’d ask what this guy’s been smoking, but clearly it’s “1984″. And clearly, he’s still not tired of making hit-you-over-the-head political statements everyone who’ll care has heard a million times before.
The logicrime-thing was mildly funny though. ^^
29. September 2008 @ 16:06 ( Permalink )
Orwell’s great. However, this isn’t that. Just tries very hard.
Worth a little smile anyway.
30. September 2008 @ 05:41 ( Permalink )
Tsk, tsk, Loki. Everyone knows Alan Moore doesn’t smoke ANYTHING. He’s a straight-up hallucinogenic kind of guy.
This quote isn’t actually representative for the entire book, which is intermittently quite the work of a genius but he gets too lost in his own ideas (which I’ve noticed he’s beginning to do a lot of in his later work) and unhandy prose style some times and it takes away a lot of my enjoyment. There really isn’t a lot of Orwellian stuff going into this book aside from some off-page stuff about a “Little Brother” government that was cast down after WWII. The art is great though and it’s incredibly refreshing to read a graphic novel that isn’t shy to depict nudity. Marvel should really do more MAX series…
But do you know the best part of “The Black Dossier”? Towards the end there are twenty-something pages that require you to wear 3-D glasses (included in the book). Seriously awesome stuff, though perhaps more so in an aesthetic way than a literary one.
30. September 2008 @ 10:30 ( Permalink )
Glad you enjoyed it a bit. I actually ordered it (among other things) as a surprise for someone just a few days ago, so it would be a shame if it wasn’t worth the trouble.
Øyunn, yeah, that’s exactly what I tried to say, too…
30. September 2008 @ 16:12 ( Permalink )
I actually preferred this paragraph to the whole of 1984; at least Moore manages to be amusing through his hyperbolic intertextual parody. Sure, it’s a little dull (”oldspeak”? sheesh, how about just dating the damn document “November 11, 1984, or something…), but 1984 was *all* dull.
2. October 2008 @ 00:22 ( Permalink )
Would be hard to do since the book was written after WWII and before the end of the 1950s.
2. October 2008 @ 02:25 ( Permalink )
I would never have finished “1984″ on my own accord, so no, but I have to admit that that’d be mostly because it’s too grim for me, and only slightly because it’s not super-entertaining. It’s still probably by far the best book I’ve ever been forced to read in school, college or university, though. “A Christmas Carol” being a distant second. So I don’t agree it was all dull.
2. October 2008 @ 02:47 ( Permalink )
That “all” there might have been a tinsy bit hyperbolic, come to think of it. “Predominantly” or “mostly” might have been more precise, as there were parts of it I enjoyed. The overall impression, though, is one of rather imposing dullness.
On the other hand, my impressions of it are hardly trustworthy, as I read it second year in high school, and as frequently noted I have problems remembering what novels I read last week were like.
What *really* bugs me about 1984, though, isn’t really related to it at all, as it’s how it has been used to death as a reference point in discussions about surveillance and such things. It has been used so often in that field, it has lost all argumentative force, and in fact become a ridiculous hyperbole which causes me to stop reading the second I discover that someone is referring to it. Rather than contributing to constructive discussions, such fearmongering only serves to alienate the disuccing parties further, and to undermine any rhetorical legitimacy the writer had with readers outside of his little chorus of believers. Which is annoying, as anti-surveillance people usually have fairly good points. Sadly, though, it’s not exactly uncommon for the “left” (not all who argue in favour of privacy protection are leftists, of course, but leftists are more likely to commit The 1984 Fallacy) to torpedo itself through dogmatism when they’re making a pragmatically good point.
Ahem, that was a bit rant’y of me. Apologies.
18. October 2008 @ 03:03 ( Permalink )
You’re forgiven.
I only agree insofar as to the term “Big Brother”, though. Everything else that’s taken from the book I’ve never found to be overused. Well, except for in the quote that started this thread, of course.
18. October 2008 @ 03:14 ( Permalink )
Ah, I’m sorry, sometimes I forget that I am the only person I know who reads (is that the correct agreement, by the way? I’m too hungry to decide what NP that verb refers to) Klassekampen.
And in those kinds of milieus (English really doesn’t have a good term for this) references to “newspeak”, for example, abound. “2+2=5″ is fairly common. “1984″ occurs almost on a weekly basis. And so on.
Not to mention, of course, that Orwell himself was a socialist.
18. October 2008 @ 03:20 ( Permalink )
Hm, maybe “those kinds of crowds”? Or, in a rephrase, “that kind of discourse”.
And, Terje, honestly, I’ve never so much as glanced at the inside of a copy of Klassekampen, but I wouldn’t really be surprised by any kind of hyperbole in such a dreadfully dramatically and anachronistically named newspaper.
18. October 2008 @ 05:08 ( Permalink )
“Hm, maybe “those kinds of crowds”? Or, in a rephrase, “that kind of discourse”.”
Better.
“such a dreadfully dramatically and anachronistically named newspaper.”
Yeah. The name could be said to be a case of institutional lag, as they’re not as revolution-happy as they apparently used to be, but they do have a flair for the dramatic hyperbole. (Although, perhaps surprisingly, not more so than most mainstream tabloid newspapers. They’re actually quite sombre in most cases.)
18. October 2008 @ 05:19 ( Permalink )
I don’t think “most mainstream tabloid newspapers” is the most flattering basis for comparison, dude, no matter how fair and relevant.
18. October 2008 @ 08:04 ( Permalink )
Hehehe, no, it isn’t. But it must be fun for the tabloids to contemplate that they’re usually less thoughtful and nuanced than the supposedly rabidly dogmatic Marxist-Leninists of Klassekampen.
18. October 2008 @ 08:40 ( Permalink )
I suspect that the people involved who’d actually care already know.
18. October 2008 @ 09:07 ( Permalink )