Lori Perkins - 1984 in the 21st Century: An Anthology of Essays

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Digital ISBN: 978-1-62601-359-9

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Individual copyrights held by the authors. All essays printed with permission from the authors.

George Orwell and the Self-Preventing Prophecy by David Brin, first publication Through Stranger Eyes, Nimble Books, 2008. Reprinted with the authors permission.

How 1984 Can Decode Trumps First 100 Days by Alexander J. Urbelis first appeared on CNN Opinion in February 2017. Reprinted with permission from CNN.com/Opinions.

Are We There Yet? by Sean Fitzpatrick originally appeared in Crisis Magazine, August 2013. Reprinted with the authors permission.

Teaching After Trump by Melissa Febos originally appeared in Granta Magazine January 2017. Reprinted with the authors permission.

Feminism in George Orwells 1984 By Tara Lighten Msiska originally appeared on the blog Slutocracy.com, July 2013. Reprinted with the authors permission.

Trumps Not Orwellian: Hes the Distractor-in-Chief by Matt Bai originally appeared on Yahoo News, February 2017. Reprinted with permission from Yahoo. 2017Yahoo.

Why Orwells Sudden Bestseller 1984 is More Applicable to Obama Than Trump by Jay Strongman originally appeared in HeatStreet, February 2017. Reprinted with the authors permission.

Orwell in America by Joseph Sutton, copyright 2015. Reprinted with the Authors permission.

First Edition April 4, 2017

By Lori Perkins

There are books that you read that mark you, and stay with you forever. 1984 was one of those books for me.

I read it was I was 12. I grew up in Washington Heights, a decidedly middle class New York City neighborhood, then-populated with the largest residency of Holocaust survivors in the world (I had seen the concentration camp numbers tattooed on my friends parents forearms), and immigrants who had left warm-weather dictatorships to bring their children up in a land that offered freedom from what they had escaped. And yet, even at 12, I knew that freedom was subjective and fragile, as Watergate unfolded around me, and scared the shit out of me.

War is Peace was the unstated slogan of the Vietnam War.

Freedom is Slavery we were told as we were fought for civil and womens rights.

Ignorance is Strength was interchangeable for me with Reganonics.

That was my youth.

I reread 1984 every year until I graduated from college, and became a journalist (I became a journalist because of Watergate). As life got more demanding, I read it every other year. Then I stopped.

I married, had a son. Sent him to the same high school where I had studied 1984 (and Brave New World, Walden Two and Fahrenheit 451) in my junior year. I gave 1984 and Lord of the Flies to my son when he was 12, and he came back from a summer at camp to tell me that they were now his favorite books, beating out Orson Scott Cards Enders Game. I was a very proud momma.

My son was a junior in high school in 2008, years after the year 1984 had come and gone, post-9/11. 1984 is no longer taught in high school. It is not taught at all (unless its an elective in an advanced high school English dystopian fiction class or a college course).

This became painfully apparent to me recently when I bought a new smartphone at my local Verizon store where an extremely pleasant and technologically bright young man was helping me to upgrade. He noticed that one of the questions on my profile asked, What is your favorite book? and thought I had typed in a mistake when I filled in 1984.

Is that a real book? he asked.

I proceeded to give him a synopsis, to which he replied that he had never heard of it, and that he thought he might read it. He typed in a note on his cell phone, but, like one of the authors in this anthology, I happen to be in possession of quite a few dog-eared paperbacks of the novel, so the next time I went by the store, I dropped off a copy for him.

It made me wonder if 1984 was still relevant today.

I had asked myself that same question a few months before when I was in London and was surprised, and thrilled, to see that 1984 was playing on the London stage. I wondered if it might actually be the musical that included those 1984 songs by David Bowie (We Are the Dead and 1984) from his Diamond Dogs album (Bowie tried to get permission from Orwells widow to do a musical, and she turned him down saying it would be in bad taste.)

But I was able to secure tickets to the production (which offered a number of seats at each performance for the clever price of 19.84). I thought it was an opportunity to see a time piece, a relic from another era. I was astounded at how it still resonated, and that was way before Donald Trumps election as the 45th President of the United States.

Flash forward to November 9th, when I wrote in my journal (I have kept a long-hand journal since I was 12), I went to bed with visions of a Brave New World, and I woke up in 1984.

As soon as Kellyanne Conway uttered her now infamous line about alternative facts, I knew that I had to put this anthology together.

And then, of course, the world seemed to agree with me as 1984 made its surprise return to the No. 1 spot on the Amazon bestseller list.

As the London production of 1984 makes its way to Broadway, Town &Countrys Caroline Hallemann asks, If Hamilton was the Musical of the Obama Presidency, Is 1984 the Broadway Hit of the Trumps?

It certainly is time to reread that book, or read it for the first time if you always meant to do so, or read it to or with your kids.

Or join thousands of other Americans on April 4th, 2017 as they go to 180 (and counting) movie theaters throughout the country where a one-time screening of the 1984 version of 1984, is being shown though the organizational work of the UnitedStateofCinema.com.

Now to be fair, Donald Trump is not the first politician to scare us into 1984 analogies. I am sure there were plenty of them during the Nixon Administration. And I know Obamas record on privacy and Freedom of Information documents release was far from stellar. Just who is Big Brother and who is Emmanuel Goldstein is up to the interpretation of the reader, or maybe theyre one and the same? All the more reason to reacquaint yourself with this powerful book.

There are 25 essays in this book and they span the spectrum from academic treatises to personal reminiscences to political rants and screeds, and even fiction and theater. I think this collection truly shows just how the themes, language and messages of 1984 were part of the zeitgeist of the second half of the 20th Century. Their relevance to this new century seems pretty obvious.

1984 is a classic that should never be retired, and should always be taught. Many people thought it was a book about the future of the past. The future is now.