Aldous Huxley vs. George Orwell

A decade or so ago, I had the chance to read George Orwell's 1984 for the first time in French. It made a very strong impression on me. The World that he described so well and with immense talent looked like a possibility that we "humans" are capable of "committing".

A few weeks ago, while chatting with my friend Rodolfo, he pasted a link to a cartoon by Stuart McMillen called Amusing Ourselves to Death. In this cartoon, the author "transcribes" the writings of Neil Postman's book which has the same title.

From what I understood from the cartoon and could infer from the Wikipedia entry regarding this book (I plan to read it and I didn't want to be spoiled by the contents of the Wikipedia page), Neil Postman compares George Orwell's 1984 with Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World. Guess what? While Huxley's name rings a bell or two, I didn't know he wrote such a book. My unculture will always amaze me. So I decided to commit thoughtcrime and read these three books in a row beginning with Orwell's in its original edition (I'm almost done reading it and it is making an even stronger impression than the first time I've read it about ten years ago), then Huxley's and finishing my plusculture saga with Postman's. Thanks Rodolfo, not only you are helping me feed this brain of mine but also adding to Amazon's bottom line (from which I ordered all three books) ;-)


Stuart McMillen's cartoon is featured below. I hope it will make a strong impression on you as it did on me and let you consider the path of plusculture or, may I say, doubleplusculture: