CTR Episode 1 - Winston

BOOK REVIEW:  2024: A Graphic Novel by Ted Rall (2001 NBM Publishing)



CAPTION:  (Left) Frederick Theodore "Ted" Rall (b. 1963), (Right) the graphic novel 2024.

[This is an old book review of mine published in a terrible college newspaper. I happen, however, to like this book and my exposition of it.]

2024: A Graphic Novel by Ted Rall (2001 NBM Publishing)

Five Full Stars of Insight into Orwell and Our Times
This outstanding book brings out a forgotten side of the Orwellian nightmare, that is how it is not so much state terror or surveillance that gives us irrational and vicious governments as the unthinking and narrow time horizon of the captives. At bottom the citizens of idiotic systems allow the rulers to rule.

The Orwellian slogans of this book are:

ASSUMPTIONS PERMIT IMAGINATION, 

KNOWLEDGE IS IMPOSSIBLE, 

and 

EXPLOITATION IS BENEVOLENCE. 

These mind-killing notions all flow from Nineteen Eighty-Four's theme of "2+2=4. Once that is granted all else must follow", meaning that liberty and good living depend upon an honest and general commitment to reality. Rall then has the guts to point to the biggest threat of totalitarianism in the world today, postmodern philosophy. Rall playfully calls it "Neo-post-modernism", and then shows in serious detail how it can rob working stiffs of certainty, language, and purpose. With foundations of knowledge cut out from underneath us, we are all ripe for media manipulation by unscrupulous leaders.

Rall out-Orwells Orwell by cutting out reference to physical police state torture and "tortures" the protagonist Winston through rounds of non-thrilling entertainment. In short, this is a perfect rendition of the vain, stupid dot com corporate culture of our upper middle class and mass media. It is smart people without knowledge, culture without content, money without wealth or productivity, a libertine lifestyle without freedom, and directed, meaningless passions.