A letter to the _Anderson Valley Advertiser_:
*** The references to "Orwell" in the opening paragraphs of Noam Chomsky's in yr. issue of Aug. 10 [1988]: I think it's a common misconception that Blair aka Orwell was a prophet in the popular sense of predicting the future, when he was actually a prophet in the more proper sense of having insight into his own experience. In _Homage to Catalonia_, published long before _1984_, Blair/Orwell extensively documented the invention of "history" by the journalists reporting the Spanish Civil War in which he served on the side of humanity; he never thought that he was inventing the process of the official defacement of reality that he wrote about in _1984_.
As for the rest of the distortions in Chomsky's short article, it would take more than the 5 cent psychoanalysis to sort them out, which might seem like a pity w/o the examples of the "Orwells" (such as they are). Chomsky seems to be well unbalanced in the right (no, proper) direction.
Yr. Ob'd'nt Servant, &c., &c.,
Wanda Tinasky
P.S.: RE: The use of the term WASP by Alexander Co__burn in the same issue: After all these years, has the redundancy not become apparent, or has somebody really seen a BASP? ***
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