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[Starver]

I am confused as to what you wrote

The unspoilered bit?  Well, it was intended to be a little Russells's Paradox in composition, so you're excused.

And I'm not going into the spoilered bit.  It was waffle.  And you obviously didn't read to the end, anyway (don't blame you) because "Also you didn't have to be Shakespear [sic] to essentially write his plays." is something I actually pointed out, as is the fact that I also don't consider him a god, so you're not getting an argument from me.  I just happen to like him, feel free to not do so.  (I still think that not liking him is a herd-following behaviour, but I don't live where you live, etc, and individual cattle can easily be making up their own mind to go where the herd happens to want to head to anyway, so you could be an individual who just appears to be going with the apparent flow.)

But there's no mileage to be made of discussing this further, especially about "movies about Shakespeare where his first working draft happens to be the complete play as we read it now", given that the version where there were three milkmaids on the flowery meadow (or whatever) never got handed down, whereas the doubtless later more dramatised version with three witches on the blasted heath is the one that we know and 'love'.  What's can a modern semi-biographical screenplay writer do, though, when portraying this guy?  (Yeah, some make him fall in love, some make him a secret agent for the crown, some just send time-travellers at him to bring out the anachronisms of the favoured medium, and then the scripts are peppered by loads of almost 'brick joke' references, if one were watching the production before actually experiencing his plays.)


Please, don't like Titus Andronicus (or any other of his works, or any at all) just because some people apparently treat him as a god (assuming that's not just your hyperbole).  TA (and most of his works that weren't politically-biased, and even some of them) were always intended as comedy pieces or tear-jerkers or (in TA's case) a bit of a slash-horror precursor, and I doubt he knew we'd just happen to still be putting them on stage, or gutting in order to power one plot-strand or other of a popular TV soap-opera, after so many hundred years.  (Besides, they're all much better "In the original Klingon". )


See what you're doing to me.  I stridently strive to stay neutral, as I feel I should, but your imprecise arguments needle me.  If you're so anti, you must have a wierd Shakespeare cult in your locale, of some kind.  Most of the rest of the people who haven't just been put off by not understanding it either merely like his stuff (or some of it) or are all <meh> about it, in my experience, but in your corner of the world there's doubtless rituals atop castle ramparts as people talk to 'ghosts', suicide pacts conducted in tombs, a policy of horses on demand (for a 'small' fee of just everything one owns), and cross-dressing aplenty (especially amongst identical twins).  Must be a strange place to live.


So, anyway, Eric Blair.  What's your problem with him?  You're one of the ones who would have him burnt at the stake rather than canonised, I presume?

[Neonivek]

Ohh I was just reclarifying what I said to make it clearer.

People have often confused that for me using a circular arguement.

So, anyway, Eric Blair.  What's your problem with him?  You're one of the ones who would have him burnt at the stake rather than canonised, I presume?

Never heard of him... let me see *checks internet*

George Orwell?

No my issue with George Orwell is similar to my issue with "The Divinchi Code" (that I cannot spell and that my spell check cannot correct).

With "The Divinchi Code" my problem was all the people around me claiming the book was "Real" when it never sold itself as anything but a work of fiction.

With 1984 my problem was all the people around me claiming the book "could have happened" or "predicted the future" or "has deep insight into the human psyche". When it
A) Couldn't have happened, at least for a long time (The setting is basically put into a perpetual state of unhappyness due to a pernament war that no one can stop because that situation would be far worse)
B) The ideas and concepts were around at the time (The Lottery being a evil device of control for example is a very old concept)
C) He made a lot of assumptions on human nature that we know was untrue (Language evolves and is organic Orwell...)

[Darvi]

Did you just confound George Orwell with Dan Brown?

[Neonivek]

Did you just confound George Orwell with Dan Brown?

No... Maybe (Dang it confound! you don't just mean confused)

George Orwell wrote 1984

I am guessing Dan Brown wrote Divinchi Code.

[Darvi]

Yeah that post was kinda meta.

[Starver]

I think "To fail to distinguish [between]" meaning of confound was the closest apt from one dictionary source, while another's "to treat mistakenly as similar to or identical with..." from another is perhaps still more on target.

Anyway, if someone doesn't have a high opinion of Orwell, then I don't see a problem them holding a personal view that Orwell is like Dan Brown.  (Or conversely, hold Dan Brown as exceptional, and at a par or perhaps greater than Orwell.)  I wouldn't agree with it[1], but I wouldn't seek to redefine a person's own opinions.

And as the only other direct reference from the OP to grab hold of, I've no idea what (if anything at all) Neonivek thinks of any other historical personages, in the supposed literary/fictional mainstreams that OP might have found to be lauded beyond OP's own opinion.  Ellis Bell?  George Lucas?  Helen Fielding?  Isaac Asimov?  Ronald Searle?  Philip K. Dick?  Geoffrey Chaucer?  Arthur C. Clarke?  Marcel Proust?  H.G. Wells?  Charles Dickens?  Gene Roddenbury?  George Elliot?[3]


There's so many different POVs out there.  I still don't agree that the two originally mentioned people are de facto 'godlike' in a summary of the nearly universal opinion.  Someone's obviously of that opinion in OP's immediate vicinity, to have sparked the apparent rebellion, but I think that's an statistical anomaly, that is all.

(And now for for the footnotes.)


[1] But mainly because Brown's really not that good a read, so much so that I have even avoided the films from his works.  And it'd not be the same as, for example, me comparing Pratchett with Rowling, where I am rather partial to the former[2] yet consider the latter more an Enid Blyton with some Charles Hamilton in her mix... (noting that I haven't bothered to check out her new book to see what she's like outside the constraints of her originally fame-procuring oeuvre, so am open to being updated in my opinion).

[2] Albeit that he's gone a bit dark, hasn't he?  I don't mean Nightwatch dark or even Thud! dark, but the darkness in I Shall Wear Midnight (ostensibly a "young-person's book", yet near the beginning) and it's less a rollicking-good-read in Snuff than it could have been, in the effort to deal with certain social values and attitudes.  I'm part way through Dodger, and he's already entered territory from ISWM.  But then Nation also had some similar level of messaging to the reader and yet I found that came out nicely.  Anyway, so much for the Pratchett review, I just wanted to avoid repeating the name Shakespeare... (oh drat... ).

[3] Being a collection of people of no particular status within my subconscious, save that they came to mind when looking for people that some people might laud and others disparage, and no particular order save that I deliberately tried to interleave the people from 'sci fi' with the ones that might have been considered 'classic' imaginears of one kind or another...  And I've just realised there was only one woman among that lot[4], so I'm adding another two at either end that I should have considered anyway...

[4] It probably looks worse now that I have pointed this out, and so I've deliberately used their respective pen names, only one of which is probably familiar to most people.  This is so that I can now annoy everyone in equally minor ways, and nobody can feel upset at being specially targetted.

[Vattic]

C) He made a lot of assumptions on human nature that we know was untrue (Language evolves and is organic Orwell...)

To be fair he at least seemed to realise this in his lifetime. He was also right to an extent in so much as language is used to control the way people think.

[Shadowlord]

I think y'all may be misunderestimating how much Orwell added to political discourse and to storytelling with 1984 (and Animal Farm, etc).

He popularized the concept of redefining words to change their meaning, and doublethink (holding two contradictory opinions simultaneously, something that many on the right in the US are now adept at doing), and the surveillance society (which effectively now exists in certain 'civilized' places in the world, such as London), although he went further with it than anyone in real life has gone (a TV that watches you and cannot be turned off).

And so on. I'm going to refrain from attempting to remember every literary innovation Orwell had, as that would probably take an excessive amount of time and require re-reading his works. (And I am not familiar with any dystopian works which may have preceded it, unless Fahrenheit 451 did - I read that, but don't remember it particularly well, as it was not particularly memorable)

[Neonivek]

C) He made a lot of assumptions on human nature that we know was untrue (Language evolves and is organic Orwell...)

To be fair he at least seemed to realise this in his lifetime. He was also right to an extent in so much as language is used to control the way people think.

You mean like Freedom Fries? Or the unacceptance of works not adopted by certain dictionaries and thus isolating certain minority groups from both education and the job market?

Also there wasn't a single crazy person obsessed with Shakespeare and Orwell... I got all that from class.

I'm going to refrain from attempting to remember every literary innovation Orwell had, as that would probably take an excessive amount of time and require re-reading his works

It would be better if you did, refrain taht is. The Sheer number of things attributed to him are so vast you could probably throw a dart at his books and find something.

For example he popularised the idea of altering history in order to control the thoughts and ideas of a nation, something still practiced at the time and still practiced today.

Mind you I could talk about how people give him too much credit for that but whatever.

and Animal Farm

Oddly enough I read that too. A simple story that is very jam packed with symbolism involving a slide to horrificness that is so organic it seemed like nothing changed (I am giving a sort of false description but whatever).

I didn't enjoy it but then again "Hopeless hopelessness" isn't something I do enjoy.

Then again I MUST have enjoyed 1984 somewhat because the worst memories of it was another book inspired by it that was absolutely atrocious but everyone loves it so what do I know?

[Snowblind]

Just curious, do you just hate 1984 and Titus Andronicus because of the messages or philosophical/political assertions or depressing plot or what?

What kind of books do you like?