|
A review of Orwell's book 1984.
"The largest section of the RECORDS DEPARTMENT, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction."
"The hunting-down and destruction of books had been done with thoroughness and it was very unlikely that there existed anywhere in Oceania a copy of a book printed earlier than 1960. Books were recalled and rewritten again and again, and were invariably re issued without any admission that any alteration had been made. Even the written instructions never stated or implied that an act of forgery was to be committed: always reference was to slips, errors, misprints, or misquotations which it was necessary to put right in the interests of accuracy. But actually it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head."
|