如果你能注意到的话, 这标题放在贵国, 不是一般的不和谐. 这标题也不是我想出来的, 是我在贵国一本杂志封面上看到的. 可以想象, 当时我就震惊了.

后来一翻杂志内容, 发现原来是标题党, 文章也不过是隔靴搔痒, beating about the bush而已, 介绍了关于该书以及奥威尔的一堆轶事, 结果啥都没说. 不过因为这事, 我终于想起了要去读《一九八四》. 应该说, 我不去读这本书才奇怪吧, 比较了解这本书以及了解我的人应该会这样想 (笑)

该篇文章提到, 英国的一项调查显示, 最多人pretend to have read的书就是《一九八四》. 这个我这样理解: 这本书对后世的遗毒太深了, 留下的heritage传播甚广, 渗透到了日常的生活谈话中, 以至于人们想不pretend to have read it都很难. 出自此书而流传至今的有趣的专有名词太多了, 当时我还为此去狂翻过一阵wikipedia, 结果我还很找抽的顺便看了剧情概要, 无情地被剧透了..  如今读起这书来顿发觉少了许多乐趣.

以下是今天读到的让我比较震撼的一段:

[…]
His mind slid away into the labyrinthine world of doublethink. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it, to believe that democracy was impossible and that the Party was the guardian of democracy, to forget, whatever it was necessary to forget, then to draw it back into memory again at the moment when it was needed, and then promptly to forget it again, and above all, to apply the same process to the process itself — that was the ultimate subtlety: consciously to induce unconsciousness, and then, once again, to become unconscious of the act of hypnosis you had just performed. Even to understand the word "doublethink" involved the use of doublethink.

"doublethink"即是该书自创的专有名词之一. 具体它是什么意思, 作为一个贵国公民我估计理解起来不太困难.

好吧我也觉得, 剥离了上下文这个读起来可能不怎么震撼. 不过半个多世纪年的文字能让如今的我们, 让一个社会以至一个国家身不由己地对号入座, 你得承认, 是挺神奇的.

考虑到印有"每一年都是《一九八四》"的那本杂志还能大模大样地躺在书店里, 我必须说, 我们活在一个比1984要好的年代. 当然, 也有可能是该书在贵国影响太小, 以至于我们的有关职能部门不经意地忽略了它. 希望不是.