For three generations, George Orwell’s “1984” has been the gold standard of dystopian literature. Orwell depicted a society in which the ruling party so heavily censors everything, including thought. Our modern culture has adopted the term “Orwellian” to describe any overreach of freedom of expression.
The 75th anniversary edition demonstrates how the left doesn’t understand what “1984” is really about. In addition to an afterword from an author who wrote a retelling of “1984” from a feminine perspective (try not to roll your eyes too hard), this edition contains a foreword from author Dolen Perkins-Valdez, who won the 2023 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work—Fiction.
A note for clarification: the original publication date of “1984” was June 8, 1949, but I can’t tell if this new edition came out last year or this year. All of the listings I see for it on Amazon and Barnes & Noble use the publication dates of earlier editions. Whether it came out last year or this year, it’s generating some recent controversy.
In her foreword, Perkins-Valdez demonstrates one of the left’s biggest problems: its tendency to read older literature through a presentist lens. She laments the absence of black characters; according to Newsweek, “She writes that ‘a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity.’”
Perkins-Valdez also accuses the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith, of misogyny. She even slaps him with the leftist scarlet letter P — for “problematic.”
"I'm enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story; that is, until Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character," Perkins-Valdez writes. "For example, we learn of him: 'He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.' Whoa, wait a minute, Orwell."
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The things that Perkins-Valdez finds “problematic” weren’t issues in 1949 — they weren’t even major issues in the year 1984, much less the novel “1984.” Yet she reads the book through the prism of presentism. We can’t retcon the art and entertainment of the past, no matter how much the left wants to try.
Last week, novelist Walter Kirn called out Perkins-Valdez and the Orwell estate, which approved the essay, on his podcast “American This Week.” "Thank you for your trigger warning for ‘1984,’" he said. "It is the most ‘1984’-ish thing I've ever f***ing read."
Kirn also compared the foreword to the novel’s Ministry of Truth, remarking, "They're giving you a little guidebook to say, 'Here's how you're supposed to feel when you read this.'"
For our self-appointed cultural betters on the left, there’s only one way to think. And you had better believe that they’re going to tell us what to think and how to feel about what we read, which is part of what Orwell was warning against in “1984.”
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