the Hard Bop Of Authoritarianism edition

NF, One L
Issue #20

1. I'm going to go right out on a limb here and wager $20,000 at 20-1 odds that you are not, as you read this sentence, let alone as I type it, listening to the mighty tenor of Mr. Hank Mobley halfway through his iconic runaway-cement-truck of a song "No Room For Squares" on a 1975 Pioneer RT 707 reel-to-reel player driven by a 1984 Panasonic RX-7000 "The National" boombox (with faux-wood side panels, the exact model, although different unit, that I had through most of high school), both of which are situated within/atop a 19th century Burmese/British Officer's Club wireless radio cabinet that somehow did indeed come all the way to California from the country of Burma, probably on a swank Cunard Liner, cushioned by dozens of hand-woven antimacassars and lush mink stoles, in a leather-bound steamer trunk festooned with the brightly-colored stamps of Industrial Revolution-era Subcontinental Asian travel.

2. Mr. George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) is a personal hero. It’s unlikely but not inconceivable that before Burma-became-Myanmar, as it is presently known and run by one of the three most oppressive military juntas that claims to be a Parliamentary Republic in the world, Orwell himself tipped open the delicate glass door of my cabinet and peered at the hi-fi equipment carefully displayed within.

3. Mainly because he served as a Regimental Policeman in Burma from 1922-27 and was dispatched to such colonial hotspots as Maymyo, Mandalay, Myaungmya, Twante, Syriam, and Katha.
4. While I would be a fool to deny that my inner spiel of improbable fantasy and elaborate confabulation is aggressively weird, if not advisedly medicate-able, while listening to music emanating from the Sony/Panasonic situation I often do envision that Orwell once sat in front of it himself, taking in the BBC World News on the wireless. In fact, I can see him, this very moment, in the corner of the Wellington Arms officer's club in, say, Yangoon (formerly Rangoon), decked in olive mufti, with a rakishly angled pith helmet and round spectacles, taking notes in a Moleskine pad while sipping a sweaty gin-and-quinine under the dappled shade of the Shwedagon Pagoda.

5. Nearly everyone is familiar with “1984” and “Animal Farm,” and rightly so, because they’re brilliant, but those are daring conceptual works full of colorful swagger and cuttingly satirical metaphors that are less obvious today (hint: Snowball is Trotsky) than they were during the Cold War, but I find his early work to be more alluring. “Keep The Aspidistra Flying” and “Road To Wigan’s Pier” for instance are both fascinating guides to turn-of-the-century English life, as well as a precision instrument horologist’s look at the gears and springs of the author that Eric Arthur Blair was destined (but not predestined, we’re all secular here) to become.
6. On the other hand, “Homage To Catalonia” is pretty much a martinis-and-Hallmark Channel beach read. Oh wait, no, it’s actually the memoir that recounts Orwell’s volunteering to fight as part of the Socialist uprising during the Spanish Civil War, the cruel and bloody battles waged against Republicans/Fascists and Communists/Stalinists, and his inevitable hospitalization (should have died 19 times) where he lay on a cot for months on end and ruminated about many of the themes, including Winston Smith’s loathing of rats, that would gestate and froth and ultimately spill over into his two most famous books.

7. George Orwell, unlike, say, Augustin Burroughs or James Frey, lived six fascinating lives and all of them were daring, courageous, fascinating, eccentric, difficult, depressed, resigned, full of fury and fight. It’s entirely possible that he is the greatest writer of the 20th century.

8. He also stood for something very specific, whether you agree with him or not, and at enormous personal peril proved it repeatedly, rarely taking the easy way out but never compromising his morals or ethics. It’s interesting how this is more or less the anti-description of virtually every politician, business leader, statesman, and public figure in America in 2025.

9. "Down and Out In Paris And London" was a book I carried around a lot during my 20s. It's about Orwell's time living on the streets of (clever twist) Paris and London, mainly working as a "plongeur" (dishwasher) and viewing the world up from the curb, a penniless but "free" writer cast aside by the culture at large, which I very much aspired to be, although with more pennies, beer, a place to sleep, lice-free Levis, and non dish-wrinkled hands. So, not like him at all. But still like him.

10. I bought that Burmese Radio Cabinet in San Francisco in the early 90s, only a few years after Burma became Myanmar, and not long after I read Orwell’s “Burmese Days”, and let’s be honest, even though it’s cool and all, the Orwell connection was the main reason that I shelled out $300 for it on the spot, especially at a time when $300 was enough money to keep me awake for many consecutive nights running, but I think even then I intuitively knew that well-wrought artifacts keep us centered in our own history, and that the writers who report history with style and courage are, in a way, always commenting on the present. And I wanted a piece of that.

11. Interestingly, you could read “Animal Farm” tonight in the bathtub and replace the Napoleon character (Stalin) with Fish-Stick (The Grifter), and Squealer (the Soviet Propaganda machine) with Epstein (The Grifter’s co-rapist), and not really have to change another word for the novel to seem like a brilliantly astute satire written last weekend.

12. That should tell us all something.

13. Even if only a timely warning not to drink the fascist bathwater.