9 ms·

Letter from Orwell to his publisher regarding 1984

133 points by alexholehouse 15y ago

heat_miser 15y ago
I'm always surprised to find out that even great writers were skeptical of their masterpieces. I wonder if it is false humility, or genuine lack of self efficacy
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  I think you would find the same phenomenon in any creative endeavor, be it writing or composing or coding. A work on any medium is an imperfect representation of how it exists in our minds, and any creator with the degree of perfectionism required to produce a great work would surely be dissatisfied with the result of any attempt to bring it to fruition. How many times have you finished a program but known it could be better, if only you had more time? A little optimization here, some refactoring there... The necessities of producing actual works prevent us from ever giving them the degree of polish we feel they deserve.
- runjake 15y ago
  It's normal. It's the Hanselman Principle in effect: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx
- MaxGabriel 15y ago
  I read this quote yesterday on Bret Victor's site, it very nicely fits "I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolutely dissatisfied" "The trick is to realize that there's no real contradiction here. You want to be optimistic and skeptical about two different things. You have to be optimistic about the possibility of solving the problem, but skeptical about the value of whatever solution you've got so far. People who do good work often think that whatever they're working on is no good. Others see what they've done and are full of wonder, but the creator is full of worry. This pattern is no coincidence: it is the worry that made the work good. If you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will drive a project forward the same way your two legs drive a bicycle forward. In the first phase of the two-cycle innovation engine, you work furiously on some problem, inspired by your confidence that you'll be able to solve it. In the second phase, you look at what you've done in the cold light of morning, and see all its flaws very clearly. But as long as your critical spirit doesn't outweigh your hope, you'll be able to look at your admittedly incomplete system, and think, how hard can it be to get the rest of the way?, thereby continuing the cycle." -Paul Graham
- Homunculiheaded 15y ago
  I think behind almost every successful endeavor (no matter the scale) you'll find someone driven by personal dissatisfaction with their work. For example I think most good software comes from people who go to bed a little concerned about issues with their code or product features. On the more grand scale, when Michael Jackson released Thriller, the first album I believe to outsell the Beatles, all those around him thought his next album should be just a simple collection of covers so he could take a break, but he was determined to out do it, dissatisfied with his current success (which would seem absurd even to most HNers, you just outsold the Beatles, you can give yourself a pat on the back) Success is the balance of dissatisfaction with your own work combined with a drive to push forward. The drive without the dissatisfaction just leads to a bunch of mediocre half done projects, the dissatisfaction without the drive will just end in depression. I think truly great people are nearly torn apart by these clashing drives, but that's what leads to true masterpieces. On a personal note I think it's important to find the level of dissatisfaction that works best for you. It my be great to make Thriller, but paradoxically if you're the person that makes Thriller you won't be able to accept its greatness. At the same time you never want to be in a state of comfort such that your life is spent playing xbox all day. Of course some (Buddhists being one group) would argue that true happiness is elimination of both the drive and the dissatisfaction, they may be right but I'm too driven in my personal work to follow that path ;)
  - masklinn 15y ago
    > On the more grand scale, when Michael Jackson released Thriller, the first album I believe to outsell the Beatles, all those around him thought his next album should be just a simple collection of covers so he could take a break, but he was determined to out do it, dissatisfied with his current success It's unclear whether you're talking about Thriller itself or about Bad, but Thriller was definitely driven by dissatisfaction with himself (he was extremely lonely according to his bios) and with the world at large: Jackson was frustrated by Off The Wall not having gotten Album of the Year (and felt it was unfair), and he was annoyed that the music industry and its press did not care about black people in general and him in particular (e.g. in 1980 Rolling Stone refused to do a cover story on him).
  - ComputerGuru 15y ago
- jgw 15y ago
  Others have pointed out the phenomenon, but I like this concrete illustration of it in action. Slashdot once interviewed The Filthy Critic, and he talked about a friend who had spent time in the writing rooms of a few sitcoms. The writers working on shows that were really pretty poor thought their work was hilarious. They couldn't get enough of their own jokes. He contrasted it with The Simpsons's writing room: full of frustrated, self-loathing writers who didn't think what they were doing was any good at all.
revorad 15y ago
Priceless just for the last paragraph.
- rudiger 15y ago
  Which of Sartre's book is he referring to?
  - harscoat 15y ago
    "Reflections on the Jewish Question"
    - Natsu 15y ago
      To save people who haven't read it the trouble, here's the wiki article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew
- rmk 15y ago
  Haven't read Sartre's book in question, but I do know that Orwell was quite antisemitic himself, so this looks like his prejudice showing through.
  - hubb 15y ago
    that's unfortunate. do you have any references to Orwell's antisemitism?
    - ctchocula 15y ago
      Having read "Down and Out in Paris and London" recently, I didn't notice anything too appalling. Just some stereotypical views of Jews, which I thought Orwell wrote with the purpose of describing a typical Brit from the early 20th century in order to criticize their antisemitism, but some googling suggests he expresses similar views in his diaries too, which is a bit more disconcerting. > One could ignore this, just possibly, if it existed in a single book. And yet for 10 years the abstract figure of "the Jew" makes regular appearances in Orwell's diaries. Out tramping in the early 30s, he falls in with "a little Liverpool Jew, a thorough guttersnipe" with a face that recalls "some low-down carrion bird". Watching the crowds thronging the London underground in October 1940, he decides that what is "bad" about the Jews is that they are not only conspicuous but go out of their way to make themselves so. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/13/biography.highereducation http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/13/biography.higher...
fennecfoxen 15y ago
If you like this, you may also be interested in reading Orwell's book review of C.S. Lewis, _That Hideous Strength_, which appeared well before the publication of _1984_. The review itself is titled "The Scientists Take Over" and may give some insight into the mindset of the day. A copy is here: http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ The Lewis book itself is remarkably little-read (the traditional C. S. Lewis fan may not appreciate its atmosphere, I suppose) and will probably surprise most people who have preconceptions about the man's philosophy and what he was capable of writing. But I digress.
- MartinCron 15y ago
  However, by the standard of the novels appearing nowadays this is a book worth reading. It's good to think that in 1945, just as now, people felt that the golden age of literature was behind us.
  - dextorious 15y ago
    Actually not that good, when you realize that they are/were right about that in both eras. Not much has appeared since 1945 that really is comparable to the "golden age of literature" (that would be around 18xx-1940, I guess) --just a few exceptions to prove the rule, and tons of crap. 1984 itself, is a minor work, literary wise.
    - bloggergirl 15y ago
      In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon. And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison. Them's fighting words.
      - dextorious 15y ago
        """In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon.""" It mostly has political (in the broad sense) importance, not actual literary one. ("Brave New World" is even worse in this regard, but it also has the same kind of importance). """And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison.""" I said there are "a few exceptions to prove the rule". Nabokov could be one, true, but surely not DeLillo, Franzen and Morrison, and not crap like Rothman, Pynchon et al.
gcb 15y ago
First world problems. I read it all scrolling sideways back and forth on my phone... To find out a transcript after the image
arundelo 15y ago
"D.V." = "Deo volente" = "God willing". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deo%20volente http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deo%20volente
- user24 15y ago
  "MS" = Manuscript. "TB" = Tuberculosis. Reading his little abbreviations, it's like some kind of new language or something... ;)
  - kristopolous 15y ago
    I was hoping TB was actually a disused hallucinogen, popular during the 40s.
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
  Interesting fact: that's still a phrase very much in-use in certain parts of the world (South America and the Middle East come to mind) in everyday layman talk.
  - nwatson 15y ago
    Portuguese: 'Se Deus quiser' == 'If God wills' ... very common in Brazil. Even more common: 'Oxala' (oh-shah-LAH) taken from Arabic 'in sha lah' meaning the same thing.
udp 15y ago
Amusing that when referring to a possible typist, it was automatically a "she". :-) "On the other hand a skilled typist under my eye could do it easily enough. If you can think of anybody who would be willing to come, I will send money for the journey and full instructions. I think we could make her quite comfortable. There is always plenty to eat and I will see that she has a comfortable warm place to work in"
- user24 15y ago
  well, it would have been a she, especially in post-war England.
bloggergirl 15y ago
I love that he thought Sartre was "a bag of wind". Do any writers really, truly like other writers?
- access_denied 15y ago
  I am a writer and I like many of them. Satre wasn't he more of a philosopher?
- canop_fr 15y ago
  Sometimes, yes. Sartre, speaking of him, had friends and followers, among them Vian and Camus, who liked him more for his role as moral mentor full of wisdom (he was older and lead a different and less animated life) than only as a writer.

133 points by alexholehouse 15y ago

I'm always surprised to find out that even great writers were skeptical of their masterpieces. I wonder if it is false humility, or genuine lack of self efficacy

redthrowaway 15y ago
I think you would find the same phenomenon in any creative endeavor, be it writing or composing or coding. A work on any medium is an imperfect representation of how it exists in our minds, and any creator with the degree of perfectionism required to produce a great work would surely be dissatisfied with the result of any attempt to bring it to fruition. How many times have you finished a program but known it could be better, if only you had more time? A little optimization here, some refactoring there... The necessities of producing actual works prevent us from ever giving them the degree of polish we feel they deserve.
runjake 15y ago
It's normal. It's the Hanselman Principle in effect: http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ImAPhonyAreYou.aspx
MaxGabriel 15y ago
I read this quote yesterday on Bret Victor's site, it very nicely fits "I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolutely dissatisfied" "The trick is to realize that there's no real contradiction here. You want to be optimistic and skeptical about two different things. You have to be optimistic about the possibility of solving the problem, but skeptical about the value of whatever solution you've got so far. People who do good work often think that whatever they're working on is no good. Others see what they've done and are full of wonder, but the creator is full of worry. This pattern is no coincidence: it is the worry that made the work good. If you can keep hope and worry balanced, they will drive a project forward the same way your two legs drive a bicycle forward. In the first phase of the two-cycle innovation engine, you work furiously on some problem, inspired by your confidence that you'll be able to solve it. In the second phase, you look at what you've done in the cold light of morning, and see all its flaws very clearly. But as long as your critical spirit doesn't outweigh your hope, you'll be able to look at your admittedly incomplete system, and think, how hard can it be to get the rest of the way?, thereby continuing the cycle." -Paul Graham
Homunculiheaded 15y ago
I think behind almost every successful endeavor (no matter the scale) you'll find someone driven by personal dissatisfaction with their work. For example I think most good software comes from people who go to bed a little concerned about issues with their code or product features. On the more grand scale, when Michael Jackson released Thriller, the first album I believe to outsell the Beatles, all those around him thought his next album should be just a simple collection of covers so he could take a break, but he was determined to out do it, dissatisfied with his current success (which would seem absurd even to most HNers, you just outsold the Beatles, you can give yourself a pat on the back) Success is the balance of dissatisfaction with your own work combined with a drive to push forward. The drive without the dissatisfaction just leads to a bunch of mediocre half done projects, the dissatisfaction without the drive will just end in depression. I think truly great people are nearly torn apart by these clashing drives, but that's what leads to true masterpieces. On a personal note I think it's important to find the level of dissatisfaction that works best for you. It my be great to make Thriller, but paradoxically if you're the person that makes Thriller you won't be able to accept its greatness. At the same time you never want to be in a state of comfort such that your life is spent playing xbox all day. Of course some (Buddhists being one group) would argue that true happiness is elimination of both the drive and the dissatisfaction, they may be right but I'm too driven in my personal work to follow that path ;)
- masklinn 15y ago
  > On the more grand scale, when Michael Jackson released Thriller, the first album I believe to outsell the Beatles, all those around him thought his next album should be just a simple collection of covers so he could take a break, but he was determined to out do it, dissatisfied with his current success It's unclear whether you're talking about Thriller itself or about Bad, but Thriller was definitely driven by dissatisfaction with himself (he was extremely lonely according to his bios) and with the world at large: Jackson was frustrated by Off The Wall not having gotten Album of the Year (and felt it was unfair), and he was annoyed that the music industry and its press did not care about black people in general and him in particular (e.g. in 1980 Rolling Stone refused to do a cover story on him).
- ComputerGuru 15y ago
jgw 15y ago
Others have pointed out the phenomenon, but I like this concrete illustration of it in action. Slashdot once interviewed The Filthy Critic, and he talked about a friend who had spent time in the writing rooms of a few sitcoms. The writers working on shows that were really pretty poor thought their work was hilarious. They couldn't get enough of their own jokes. He contrasted it with The Simpsons's writing room: full of frustrated, self-loathing writers who didn't think what they were doing was any good at all.

revorad 15y ago

Priceless just for the last paragraph.

rudiger 15y ago
Which of Sartre's book is he referring to?
- harscoat 15y ago
  "Reflections on the Jewish Question"
  - Natsu 15y ago
    To save people who haven't read it the trouble, here's the wiki article on it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Semite_and_Jew
rmk 15y ago
Haven't read Sartre's book in question, but I do know that Orwell was quite antisemitic himself, so this looks like his prejudice showing through.
- hubb 15y ago
  that's unfortunate. do you have any references to Orwell's antisemitism?
  - ctchocula 15y ago
    Having read "Down and Out in Paris and London" recently, I didn't notice anything too appalling. Just some stereotypical views of Jews, which I thought Orwell wrote with the purpose of describing a typical Brit from the early 20th century in order to criticize their antisemitism, but some googling suggests he expresses similar views in his diaries too, which is a bit more disconcerting. > One could ignore this, just possibly, if it existed in a single book. And yet for 10 years the abstract figure of "the Jew" makes regular appearances in Orwell's diaries. Out tramping in the early 30s, he falls in with "a little Liverpool Jew, a thorough guttersnipe" with a face that recalls "some low-down carrion bird". Watching the crowds thronging the London underground in October 1940, he decides that what is "bad" about the Jews is that they are not only conspicuous but go out of their way to make themselves so. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/13/biography.highereducation http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/aug/13/biography.higher...

fennecfoxen 15y ago

If you like this, you may also be interested in reading Orwell's book review of C.S. Lewis, _That Hideous Strength_, which appeared well before the publication of _1984_. The review itself is titled "The Scientists Take Over" and may give some insight into the mindset of the day. A copy is here: http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ http://www.lewisiana.nl/orwell/ The Lewis book itself is remarkably little-read (the traditional C. S. Lewis fan may not appreciate its atmosphere, I suppose) and will probably surprise most people who have preconceptions about the man's philosophy and what he was capable of writing. But I digress.

MartinCron 15y ago
However, by the standard of the novels appearing nowadays this is a book worth reading. It's good to think that in 1945, just as now, people felt that the golden age of literature was behind us.
- dextorious 15y ago
  Actually not that good, when you realize that they are/were right about that in both eras. Not much has appeared since 1945 that really is comparable to the "golden age of literature" (that would be around 18xx-1940, I guess) --just a few exceptions to prove the rule, and tons of crap. 1984 itself, is a minor work, literary wise.
  - bloggergirl 15y ago
    In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon. And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison. Them's fighting words.
    - dextorious 15y ago
      """In whose 'literary' eyes is 1984 a minor work? It's an important piece in the 20th C. literary canon.""" It mostly has political (in the broad sense) importance, not actual literary one. ("Brave New World" is even worse in this regard, but it also has the same kind of importance). """And you've completely discounted the post-modern literature of post-WWII, including Nabokov (!), DeLillo, Franzen, Morrison.""" I said there are "a few exceptions to prove the rule". Nabokov could be one, true, but surely not DeLillo, Franzen and Morrison, and not crap like Rothman, Pynchon et al.

gcb 15y ago

First world problems. I read it all scrolling sideways back and forth on my phone... To find out a transcript after the image

arundelo 15y ago

"D.V." = "Deo volente" = "God willing". http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deo%20volente http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deo%20volente

user24 15y ago
"MS" = Manuscript. "TB" = Tuberculosis. Reading his little abbreviations, it's like some kind of new language or something... ;)
- kristopolous 15y ago
  I was hoping TB was actually a disused hallucinogen, popular during the 40s.
ComputerGuru 15y ago
Interesting fact: that's still a phrase very much in-use in certain parts of the world (South America and the Middle East come to mind) in everyday layman talk.
- nwatson 15y ago
  Portuguese: 'Se Deus quiser' == 'If God wills' ... very common in Brazil. Even more common: 'Oxala' (oh-shah-LAH) taken from Arabic 'in sha lah' meaning the same thing.

udp 15y ago

Amusing that when referring to a possible typist, it was automatically a "she". :-) "On the other hand a skilled typist under my eye could do it easily enough. If you can think of anybody who would be willing to come, I will send money for the journey and full instructions. I think we could make her quite comfortable. There is always plenty to eat and I will see that she has a comfortable warm place to work in"

user24 15y ago
well, it would have been a she, especially in post-war England.

bloggergirl 15y ago

I love that he thought Sartre was "a bag of wind". Do any writers really, truly like other writers?

access_denied 15y ago
I am a writer and I like many of them. Satre wasn't he more of a philosopher?
canop_fr 15y ago
Sometimes, yes. Sartre, speaking of him, had friends and followers, among them Vian and Camus, who liked him more for his role as moral mentor full of wisdom (he was older and lead a different and less animated life) than only as a writer.