It’s not easy working on a book that you believe no publisher will ever touch. There are morale issues with such an endeavor. It can get tough to summon the energy and dedication to create something that may never see the light of day due to societal pusillanimity. We live in the age of cowards, dear reader, which is wrist-slittingly depressing for some of us. American society needs this book, but they are too afraid to even crack it. Of course, if it does get published, it will be pretty revolutionary, if I may say so myself.
Here’s the thing about literary revolutions – they usually happen on Tuesday afternoons when nobody’s paying attention, involving men with bad lungs and worse attitudes toward authority. Which brings us, in that meandering way that all good stories eventually stumble toward their point (assuming they have one, which this one does, I think), to August 15th, 1945, when a certain skinny Brit named Eric Blair – though you probably know him by his pen name, the infinitely more ominous George Orwell – unleashed what might be the most savage takedown of totalitarian bullshit ever disguised as a children’s book about barnyard animals. Animal Farm. Two words that would make commissars shit themselves for decades to come. Now, you might be thinking (and who am I to stop you from thinking, though the habit has become dangerous since this shitty decade began): “What’s so revolutionary about talking pigs?” First you need to understand that this isn’t your average Charlotte’s Web situation. This is literary napalm wrapped in the deceptively simple packaging of a fairy tale, which is exactly what makes it so goddamn brilliant.
Dig, if you will, this picture: It’s the middle of World War II, and here’s Orwell – already establishing himself as the kind of writer who looked at power structures the way an entomologist looks at particularly disgusting insects – crafting this razor-sharp allegory while the world burns around him. The man had seen the writing on the wall (literally, considering his later work), and that writing spelled out the uncomfortable truth that maybe, just maybe, our glorious Soviet allies weren’t the freedom-loving champions of the proletariat they claimed to be.
But here’s where it gets interesting (and by interesting, I mean the kind of publishing nightmare that would make modern literary agents reach for the bourbon): Nobody wanted to touch this thing. Publishers circled it like it was radioactive – which, in a sense, it was. Political sensitivities were running higher than a meth-addled bat, and here comes Orwell with his talking pigs basically calling out Stalin as just another power-drunk pig in a different trough.
The rejection letters must have been poetry in their own right. “Dear Mr. Blair, while we admire your allegorical approach to critiquing totalitarian regimes through the lens of barnyard democracy, we feel that now might not be the optimal time to publish what amounts to a literary assassination attempt on our wartime ally’s political system. Also, talking animals are weird. Sincerely, Cowardly Publishing House.”
But Orwell, bless his stubborn soul, kept pushing. Because that’s what real writers do when they’ve got something to say: they say it, consequences be fucked. The man had already taken a bullet fighting fascists in Spain (literally, through the throat), so a few nervous publishers weren’t about to stop him from exposing the porcine nature of power.
And then, finally, August 15th, 1945. Secker and Warburg – publishers with enough testicular fortitude to recognize genius when it came wrapped in barnyard satire – released this literary dirty bomb into the world. The timing was almost poetic: Japan had just surrendered, the war was ending, and suddenly everyone was free to start asking uncomfortable questions about what exactly they’d been fighting for.
The beauty of Animal Farm…the sheer, devastating brilliance of it…is how it works on multiple levels simultaneously. Kids can read it as a simple story about farm animals. Adults can appreciate it as a scathing indictment of Soviet totalitarianism. Political scientists can analyze it as a meditation on the corruption of revolutionary ideals. And cynics (like yrs. truly) can admire it as proof that sometimes the best way to tell the truth is to dress it up as a lie.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” If that line doesn’t make you simultaneously laugh and want to burn down the nearest government building, you might want to check your pulse.
The book’s impact was immediate and massive. Here was someone finally saying what a lot of people had been thinking but were too polite (or terrified) to articulate: that power corrupts absolutely, regardless of the ideology used to justify it. That revolutionary leaders have an unfortunate tendency to become the very thing they overthrew. That the pigs, quite literally, end up indistinguishable from the humans.
What makes this whole story even more tasty is the context: while Orwell was writing this devastating critique of Soviet communism, the Western world was still largely enchanted with Stalin and company. The man was essentially committing literary treason against the prevailing narrative, and he did it with such style and wit that by the time people realized what he was doing, it was too late to stop him.
The book became a phenomenon – banned in Soviet countries (natch), embraced by Western readers hungry for someone to finally call bullshit on the whole utopian communist experiment, and studied in schools worldwide as an example of how literature can be both entertaining and subversive as hell.
So raise a glass (or 12) to George Orwell, literary badass and professional pain-in-the-ass to tyrants everywhere. The man who proved that sometimes the most revolutionary act is simply telling the truth, even when – especially when – nobody wants to hear it. He gave us talking pigs that tell us more about human nature than most humans ever will.
And that, dear reader, is how you stage a literary revolution.
Because in the end, we’re all just animals in someone else’s farm. The question is: are we going to be the sheep, or are we going to be the ones exposing the pigs?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need another drink. All this talk of revolution and talking pigs has left me thirsty for desk bourbon and suspicious of barnyard animals.
N.P.: “My Angel” – Binary Park
