Sometimes I wonder if people in power have never read any dystopian literature or science fiction. Or, perhaps more likely, they have ready too much of it.
George Orwell’s 1984Â is even more urgent today, sixty-five years after its publication. Our current surveillance society has been Orwell’s warning look like an instruction manual.
What better way to fight that culture of secrecy and surveillance, though, than to expose it publicly?
That’s the spirit of an upcoming event organized by the Washington DC Public Library.There will be a live, marathon public reading of 1984 with special guest readers.
I’ve been invited to read, and I’m really looking forward to it.
The event is Wednesday, Jan. 21, 2015, starting at 10 a.m. in the Great Hall at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (I’m scheduled to read at 7:20 pm).