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/lit/ - Literature

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15448676 No.15448676 [Reply] [Original]

Why is Orwell more known than Huxley?

>> No.15448680

Orwell is the superior writer

>> No.15448691

>>15448676
Anti-Soviet sentiment and the introduction of Animal Farm into high school curricula.

>> No.15448693
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15448693

Brave New World is an actually challenging dystopian fiction novel that requires the reader to think.
1984 is a goofy hyperbole of the average westerner's stereotyped imagining of how the USSR works. It got promoted heavily in the west so that people would dismiss communism despite the book failing to actually challenge communism.

>> No.15448713

>>15448676
He's just more pleasant to read.

>> No.15448722

>>15448676

Orwell is more down to Earth. Huxley's prose is a little flowery and purple, different audiences I guess.

>> No.15448743

1984 is actually one of the best novels ever.
Brave New World has not aged well at all and reads like a shitty YA book. The whole thing with everyone having the surnames of Trotsky and Marx was beyond cringe.

>> No.15448752

Huxley was a novelist of ideas, and what this means is that, while he was a much deeper thinker than orwell, his stuff is pretty hard to read. Huxley was also way more out there, politically as well as "religiously", than Orwell. His LSD Buddhism probably alienated him from a lot of readers. But here's the thing: Huxley writes far better prose than Orwell on the rare occasion when he's not being didactic about Buddhism or something. So like: "Eyeless in Gaza" is one of the most beautiful literary works of post-ww1 lit but everyone just reads bRaVe NeW wOrLd which has some of the most godawful storytelling known to man. If you can sit through long didactic passages and enjoy the ideas themselves in their depth, Huxley slaps. He's one of my personal favorite writers. Read "Island" to get a sense of the strengths and potential weaknesses of his style.

>> No.15448753

>>15448676
is he?

>> No.15448906

>>15448676
ironically, i never read 1984 or Animal Farm and school actually required us to read Brave New World.
>>15448693
nah, the message of BNW was pretty clear. it had some weird parts but the overall message is spelled out for you in the book.

I imagine 1984 is the same way based on what I've heard about it here.

>> No.15448936

>>15448693
Kill yourself commie

>> No.15448980

>>15448752
>much deeper thinker than orwell
citation needed

>> No.15449016

>>15448743
As if Winston Smith isn't right on the nose.

>>15448693
Huxley is more challenging only in the sense that he tricks midwits into thinking he's not creating a dystopia. It's like catcher in the rye - a pleb filter. And his prose sucks.

>> No.15449057

>>15449016
>Huxley is more challenging only in the sense that he tricks midwits into thinking he's not creating a dystopia
i don't know why I see this sentiment everywhere. From what I remember, huxley made it very clear that it was a dystopia. isn't there a whole scene where the main character is running away from the authorities who are trying to give him feel good drugs beacuse he was thinking and saying too much? i don't remember any tricks or any needing to read between the lines.

>> No.15449343

i loved Island so much, lads

>> No.15449832

Because Huxley predicted coonsumerism and you cant go against that

>> No.15449843

>>15449832
Unironically this. It’s the same reason they let the democrats circlejerk “the green new deal”. They know it’ll never come to fruition. But the minute you mention nuclear, or Huxley in this case, the whole thing has to immediately be shut down because that is the actual solution

>> No.15449914

>>15449057
I'll bite. If you read Chrome Yellow, where he introduced most of the ideas he'd flesh out in BNW, it's clear that this is at least one person's view of a utopia. Beyond that the fact that it is genuinely stable. There's a functional escape valve so the genuinely brilliant get to leave and work to improve the society. Everybody actually can be happy and it isn't a doomed world. The only people who suffer are egoists who get a sense of superiority from deliberately suffering.

That, at least, is A reading. Compared to other distopias, it does improve quality of life for nearly everyone and doesn't necessarily doom humanity. One could make the argument.

>> No.15450365

>>15448680
>fpbp
Huxley is good but Orwell is legendary

>> No.15450394
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15450394

The Road To Wigan Pier:
>I habitually allowed myself, for instance, to be dressed and undressed by my Burmese boy. This was because he was a Burman and undisgusting; I could not have endured to let an English manservant handle me in that intimate manner. I felt towards a Burman almost as I felt towards a woman. Like most other races, the Burmese have a distinctive smell–I cannot describe it: it is a smell that makes one’s teeth tingle–but this smell never disgusted me. (Incidentally, Orientals say that we smell. The Chinese, I believe, say that a white man smells like a corpse. The Burmese say the same–though no Burman was ever rude enough to say so to me.) And in a way my attitude was defensible, for if one faces the fact one must admit that most Mongolians have much nicer bodies than most white men. Compare the firm-knit silken skin of the Burman, which does not wrinkle at all till he is past forty, and then merely withers up like a piece of dry leather, with the coarse-grained, flabby, sagging skin of the white man.
>The white man has lank ugly hair growing down his legs and the backs of his arms and in an ugly patch on his chest. The Burman has only a tuft or two of stiff black hair at the appropriate places; for the rest he is quite hairless and is usually beardless as well.

>> No.15450416

>>15448676
Because the Zionist Trotskyites took over America, so they then allowed the publishing Anti-Stalinist material, which doubles as a criticism of Hitler. However, Brave New World is more true to the nature of communism which has a believable illusion of freedom

>> No.15450452

>>15448752
Island is terrible

>> No.15450483

>>15448676
When Huxley died his wife injected him with LSD and they tripped while he died.

>> No.15450493

>>15450452
thank you for your input. enlightening

>> No.15450561

1984 is more accessible in its writing and less challenging in its message. You never have people debating whether 1984 is actually a utopia for instance.

>> No.15451564

>>15448676
Cause Huxley was a bad writer, he was just an ideas guy

>> No.15451595

allforadiary,
allforeadiary.

>> No.15451908

Is 1984 a remake of Book of Job?

>> No.15451928

>>15449057
the book ends with everyone having a big hedonistic orgy, literally everyone left alive is happy and healthy, the only people who suffer are expelled or die. if you are a utilitarian, there is literally no way to argue that it isn't a Utopia

>> No.15451938

>>15451928
>the book ends with everyone having a big hedonistic orgy, literally everyone left alive is happy and healthy,
You should reread the last page of the book.

>> No.15451980

>>15451938
do you think I don't know he killed himself? I said everyone left alive for a reason; the savage isn't alive, he doesn't factor into the utilitarian calculation post-necking

>> No.15453221

>>15448676
Because stupid people outnumber intelligent people.

>> No.15453810

>>15451938
But the savage killed himself because his old-world self-hating, superstitious thinking left him unable to live with himself in the hedonism of the new world. HE is what makes him unhappy not the people around him. Probably that's the idea behind soma, too. People are only unhappy because they are built to feel anxious, angry, bitter, etc. These are useless emotions in the society they live in, since there is no significant danger or anything to be gained by disrupting the social order. They can live happy, peaceful lives only if you get them out of their own way.

>> No.15453936

Orwell copied Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We"

>> No.15453948

Bnw is an easy read unless you're retarded.
Mainstream don't like it because it's not anti-commie propaganda like 1984.
For laughs go to le Reddit or Twitter and search for 1984 "China" and read all the cringe comments from smooth brain mouth breathers.

>> No.15453957

>>15449843
>the minute you mention nuclear
Read Ted K.

>> No.15453968

>>15448676
Churchill.

>> No.15453982

>>15448676
Because Huxley's work represents a biting critique of the kind of liberal managerialism that was and is the consensus view of the capitalist class and western political elites. Orwell fits neatly within the liberal paradigm.

>> No.15454404

>>15453936
No, it's just that We built the bases of dystopia as a genre.