Turn the pages to 1984
by H.D.S. Greenway, Boston Globe

It Is becoming increasingly depressing to reread ''1984," George Orwell's prophetic, mid-20th-century novel about what life might be like in a future where the state listens in on every conversation, in a world where prisoners had ''simply disappeared," and in which Britain and the Americas are in a state of perpetual warfare with either ''Eastasia" or ''Eurasia." Orwell didn't think of calling it ''the long war," as the Pentagon now likes to call the ''war against terror," which by definition is a war that can never end.

Orwell did, however, write of ''Newspeak," an abbreviated language that would replace ''Oldspeak," or standard English. In Orwell's world, English socialism is '' Ingsoc." Individualism becomes ''ownlife." Today one reads of ''Tirannt," the Pentagon abbreviation for ''theater Iran near term," which itself is an Orwellian term for planning a full-scale war with Iran in the near future.

It wasn't just politics that Orwell satirized, however. It was the debasing of arts and letters that also worried Orwell. His fictional ''Ministry of Truth" dealt with all things concerning ''news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts." In our day market, forces are working hard to consolidate what Orwell's imagined state achieved.

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