New '1984' foreword includes warning about ‘problematic' characters

Miami Herald

5 hours ago

The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's novel 1984, which coined the term 'thoughtcrime' to describe the act of having thoughts that question the ruling party's ideology, has become an ironic lightning rod in debates over alleged trigger warnings and the role of historical context in classic literature.
The introduction to the new edition, endorsed by Orwell's estate and written by the American author Dolen Perkins-Valdezm, is at the center of the storm, drawing fire from conservative commentators as well as public intellectuals, and prompting a wide spectrum of reaction from academics who study Orwell's work.
Perkins-Valdez opens the introduction with a self-reflective exercise: imagining what it would be like to read 1984 for the first time today. She writes that 'a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity,' noting the complete absence of Black characters.
She also describes her pause at the protagonist Winston Smith's 'despicable' misogyny, but ultimately chooses to continue reading, writing: 'I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story.'
'I'm enjoying the novel on its own terms, not as a classic but as a good story; that is, until Winston reveals himself to be a problematic character,' she writes. 'For example, we learn of him: 'He disliked nearly all women, and especially the young and pretty ones.' Whoa, wait a minute, Orwell.'
That framing was enough to provoke sharp critique from novelist and essayist Walter Kirn on the podcast America This Week, co-hosted with journalist Matt Taibbi. Kirn characterized the foreword as a kind of ideological overreach. 'Thank you for your trigger warning for 1984,' he said. 'It is the most 1984ish thing I've ever f***ing read.'
Later in the episode, which debuted on June 1, Kirn blasted what he saw as an imposed 'permission structure' by publishers and academic elites. 'It's a sort of Ministry of Truthism,' he said, referring to the Ministry of Truth that features prominently in the dystopian novel. 'They're giving you a little guidebook to say, 'Here's how you're supposed to feel when you read this.''
Conservative commentator such as Ed Morrissey described the foreword as part of 'an attempt to rob [Orwell's work] of meaning by denigrating it as 'problematic.'' Morrissey argued that trigger warnings on literary classics serve to 'distract readers at the start from its purpose with red herrings over issues of taste.'
But not all responses aligned with that view.
Academic rebuttal
Peter Brian Rose-Barry, a philosophy professor at Saginaw Valley State University and author of George Orwell: The Ethics of Equality, disputed the entire premise. 'There just isn't [a trigger warning],' he told Newsweek in an email after examining the edition. 'She never accuses Orwell of thoughtcrime. She never calls for censorship or cancelling Orwell.'
In Rose-Barry's view, the foreword is neither invasive nor ideological, but reflective. 'Perkins-Valdez suggests in her introduction that 'love and artistic beauty can act as healing forces in a totalitarian state,'' he noted. 'Now, I find that deeply suspect... but I'd use this introduction to generate a discussion in my class.'
Taibbi and Kirn, by contrast, took issue with that exact line during the podcast. 'Love heals? In 1984?' Taibbi asked. 'The whole thing ends with Winston broken, saying he loves Big Brother,' the symbol of the totalitarian state at the heart of the book. Kirn laughed and added, 'It's the kind of revisionist uplift you get from a book club discussion after someone just watched The Handmaid's Tale.'
Perkins-Valdez, a Black writer, Harvard graduate and professor of literature at American University, also noted the novel's lack of racial representation: 'That sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity at all.'
Kirn responded to that sentiment on the show by pointing out that Orwell was writing about midcentury Britain: 'When Orwell wrote the book, Black people made up maybe one percent of the population. It's like expecting white characters in every Nigerian novel.'
Richard Keeble, former chair of the Orwell Society, argued that critiques of Orwell's treatment of race and gender have long been part of academic discourse. 'Questioning Orwell's representation of Blacks in 1984 can usefully lead us to consider the evolution of his ideas on race generally,' he told Newsweek. 'Yet Orwell struggled throughout his life, and not with complete success, to exorcise what Edward Said called 'Orientalism.''
Keeble added, 'Trigger warnings and interpretative forewords... join the rich firmament of Orwellian scholarship-being themselves open to critique and analysis.'
Cultural overreach
While critics like Kirn view Perkins-Valdez's new foreword as a symptom of virtue signaling run amok, others see it as part of a long-standing literary dialogue. Laura Beers, a historian at American University and author of Orwell's Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century, acknowledged that such reactions reflect deeper political divides. But she defended the legitimacy of approaching Orwell through modern ethical and social lenses.
'What makes 1984 such a great novel is that it was written to transcend a specific historical context,' she told Newsweek. 'Although it has frequently been appropriated by the right as a critique of 'socialism,' it was never meant to be solely a critique of Stalin's Russia.'
'Rather,' she added, 'it was a commentary on how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the risk to all societies, including democracies like Britain and the United States, of the unchecked concentration of power.'
Beers also addressed the role of interpretive material in shaping the reading experience. 'Obviously, yes, in that 'interpretive forewords' give a reader an initial context in which to situate the texts that they are reading,' she said. 'That said, such forewords are more often a reflection on the attitudes and biases of their own time.'
While the foreword has prompted the familiar battle lines playing out across the Trump-era culture wars, Beers sees the conversation itself as in keeping with Orwell's legacy.
'By attempting to place Orwell's work in conversation with changing values and historical understandings in the decades since he was writing,' she said, 'scholars like Perkins-Valdez are exercising the very freedom to express uncomfortable and difficult opinions that Orwell explicitly championed.'
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