Orwell’s ‘1984’ Becomes #1 Seller on Amazon After Kellyanne Conway’s ‘Alternative Facts’ Comment

0
.
>>Follow Matzav On Whatsapp!<<

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, called easily disproved claims made by White House press secretary Sean Spicer “alternative facts.”

A bewildered Chuck Todd responded, “Alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”

While the phrase “alternative facts” reminded many of the terms “falsehoods,” “lies” and “untruths,” it reminded many others of George Orwell’s dystopian, politically-charged novel “1984.”

Not only were people inspired to tweet about that, they wanted to purchase a copy. By early Wednesday morning, the novel was the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

“We put through a 75,000 copy reprint this week. That is a substantial reprint and larger than our typical reprint for ‘1984,’” a Penguin spokesperson told CNN.

Sales of the novel also enjoyed a marked spike in 2013 – one edition experiencing a 10,000 percent jump in sales – following the leak of NSA documents.

Many quotes from the book especially resonated with readers following Conway’s remarks.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command,” for example, brought to some minds Spicer’s argument that Trump’s inauguration had record-breaking crowds, despite obvious evidence to the contrary.

That this particular novel – a mainstay in high school classrooms – would be so thoroughly referenced in the past week makes sense as the book is a powerful political statement against an all-seeing, untrustworthy government.

Its plot follows Winston Smith, an everyman living in a society controlled by an omnipresent, totalitarian power, which distorts the truth, erases and alters evidence of the past and essentially controls its subjects. Throughout the novel, readers are introduced to a litany of inventive phrases describing this government’s actions, such as “doublethink” (believing contradictory things), “newspeak” (ambiguous, political propaganda), and “Big Brother” (the controlling government).

Much like “gas-lighting” (from the 1944 film Gas Light,) “Catch-22″ and “Manchurian Candidate,” these terms derived from fiction have endured as cultural shorthand to describe government actions such as false propaganda and belief systems – understood even by those who never read a page of Orwell’s prose or seen the movies.

While 1984’s spike is particularly notable, the book’s popularity has been rising for many years. The Orwell’s estate’s literary agent Bill Hamilton said in 2015, “Interest in Orwell is accelerating and expanding practically daily . . . We’re selling in new languages – Breton, Friuli, Occitan – Total income has grown 10 percent a year for the last three years.”

Orwell wrote the book at the end of his life, as he was stricken with tuberculosis living reclusively on the Scottish isle of Jura. He died at 46 just six months after the book’s publication in June 1949, thinking of the book as a critical and commercial success.

It was, but three years later the novel had fallen out of fashion. Only about 150 copies were purchased each month, barely enough to keep the book in print.

It remained that way until 1954, when the BBC produced and distributed a filmed “horror” adaptation of the novel. The network was quick to add a disclaimer: “This is one man’s alarmed view of the future.”

It was an instant hit.

(c) 2017, The Washington Post · Travis M. Andrews 

{Matzav.com}


LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here