Blogging Orwell

George Orwell’s diaries are being published as a blog, posted in realtime exactly 70 years after the entries were written.  Incredible.

From the 8/11 entry:

This morning all surfaces, even indoors, damp as a result of mist. A curious deposit all over my snuff-box, evidently residue of moisture acting on lacquer.

posted 8/14/08 at 8:43am to Politics, Writing · 0 replies · permalink

Parker’s notes

Parker's journal

Parker Dundee wants to know what his father’s job really was.  He’s going to have to find Mr. Abernathy first.

(Previously.)

posted 8/13/08 at 3:14pm to Writing · 0 replies · permalink

Sleepworking

Random Items On Top Of My Dresser This Morning:

  • tube of cortisone cream
  • laser pointer
  • roll of gaffer tape
  • crumpled dollar bill
  • 1 SR44 battery

I really want to know what kind of scary things Nighttime Me is up to.

posted 8/9/08 at 7:11am to Slightly Too Long For Twitter · 1 reply · permalink

Blood on the clearcoat

posted 8/5/08 at 3:55pm to Me me me, Slightly Too Long For Twitter · 0 replies · permalink

Utopia

1748 plan of New Haven, via the Beinecke Library @ Yale

The Beinecke Library has an interesting web exhibition about the American history of the Utopian dream, from the establishment of New Haven in 1638 to modern sustainable communes like Twin Oaks.

The exhibit has a comprehensive list of the most important “utopian” communities in the US1, with manuscripts and documents from the library’s collections.

Also included are short lists of Utopian and Dystopian literature from the collection2.  It’s a neat set of images and facts, if you’re interested in the subject and haven’t seen an overview of it presented in such a way.

Two nitpicks that I have, though: 1) The sentence “the goal of removal from the heart of civilization to the wilderness” in the intro text is misleading as a blanket statement - More’s original Utopia was one of social and political perfection, rather than one based on any pastoral or nature-based ideals; and 2) it would be nice if all the manuscript/ephemera page images enlarged into higher-res versions.

  1. The most well-known being, arguably, the PA Germans and the New Harmony colony.
  2. I think two titles that should have been on the Dystopian list are Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here” (1935) and Heinlein’s “If This Goes On-” (1940). I have to believe their exclusion is only because Beinecke does not have 1st edition copies of these books in their collection.
posted 8/5/08 at 11:14am to Books, History · 0 replies · permalink