Dennis Glover
Autor de The Last Man in Europe
Sobre El Autor
Dennis Glover is a professional speechwriter for some of Australia's most prominent political and business leaders, and an academic historian of oratory. He is a graduate of Monash University, and he took a PhD in History at Cambridge University. He has worked on the staff of three federal Labor mostrar más Party leaders and written speeches for two prime ministers. mostrar menos
Obras de Dennis Glover
Obras relacionadas
Etiquetado
Conocimiento común
- Fecha de nacimiento
- 1964
- Género
- male
- Nacionalidad
- Australia
- Educación
- University of Cambridge (PhD - History)
Monash University (BA First Class Hons) - Ocupaciones
- speechwriter
policy advisor
non-fiction author
essayist
Miembros
Reseñas
By April 1947, Eric Blair, whom the world knows as George Orwell, conceives what he believes will be the book that will fix his reputation for all time. However, at age forty-three, he’s fighting the tuberculosis that keeps him bed-ridden, so writing becomes nigh impossible. But even if you didn’t know Orwell from Adam—and didn’t read the jacket flap—you’d still know what happens. He’ll finish Nineteen Eighty-Four, which will indeed cement his reputation, but the effort will kill him.
This framework, not quite a premise, sounds almost Greek in its tragic outline, yet The Last Man in Europe, though interesting, never rises anywhere close to that level. I can’t blame Glover; he’s writing a novel with an ending too famous to be a surprise, about an author whose thinking is as relevant now as then, if not more. “Big Brother” and “doublethink” have entered the language; saying, “What they’re doing is like 1984!” evokes a police state.
As a novelist, then, how do you create tension in a foregone conclusion? Answer: The journey, which could involve several questions. How does Orwell manage, despite his illness? How do his ambition and political passion lead him to ignore his doctors’ advice? What life experiences have brought him to his dystopian vision?
Glover gets partway there. He excels at the essential, dwelling on the politics, as Orwell himself would have preferred. You understand how he thinks, how he’s always trying to observe, the political atmosphere that shapes him, and how he reacts to whatever he finds false or hypocritical. Glover’s prose, like Orwell’s, is absolutely lucid, sharp, and direct.
What an adventurer Orwell is, and not just as a writer intent on verbal and intellectual provocation. He descends into a coal mine, en route to writing The Road to Wigan Pier, his description of depression-era, working-class struggles, and feels self-conscious as a decidedly middle-class person. He enlists in the war against Franco and is nearly killed twice, once by his own side, events that inform Homage to Catalonia.
Along the way, Glover tells you how his protagonist has gathered the bits and pieces that wind up in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Buying black-market razor blades, submitting to excruciating medical treatments, staying in a farmhouse overrun by rats—all those scenes, and more, find expression in the masterpiece, literally or in essence. Though Glover handles many of these clues in subtle fashion, sometimes the treasure hunt feels like wink-wink, nudge-nudge, inside jokes.
Even so, I still like the dinner with an aging, cantankerous H. G. Wells, or a school classroom where the adolescent Eric Blair has a back-and-forth with his teacher, Aldous Huxley, about what the most crushing type of dictatorship would look like. (From the earliest age, Orwell seems to come in contact with everybody in British literary circles.)
But I still want to know who Eric Blair is when he’s not thinking or writing politics, and Glover doesn’t show me. Since we know that Orwell can’t die in Spain, for instance, the plot, if there is one, consists of episodes that exist to provide political subject matter. Much as I admire Nineteen Eighty-Four and many of his other works, I want to see the man behind them, not just the political man.
How does he really feel in his “open marriage” when his wife sleeps with someone else? It zips by in one sentence, as does guilt over his own love affairs. Glover gives us mostly surfaces, and maybe Orwell didn’t want anyone to probe him any deeper. But if so, why? And if you probed anyway, what would you find? That’s what’s missing, here.
The mask does slip toward the end, as Orwell races against his mortality, physical limitations, and his publisher’s prodding. I glimpse the yearning for fame and money that has largely eluded him (Animal Farm excepted), and the frustration that so little time remains, leaving no room for error or hesitation.
Some Orwell enthusiasts will be delighted with an (almost) purely political depiction and enjoy the revelation of sources for his magnum opus. But from this polished treatment of one of the most polished writers of the twentieth century, I come away unsatisfied.… (más)
This framework, not quite a premise, sounds almost Greek in its tragic outline, yet The Last Man in Europe, though interesting, never rises anywhere close to that level. I can’t blame Glover; he’s writing a novel with an ending too famous to be a surprise, about an author whose thinking is as relevant now as then, if not more. “Big Brother” and “doublethink” have entered the language; saying, “What they’re doing is like 1984!” evokes a police state.
As a novelist, then, how do you create tension in a foregone conclusion? Answer: The journey, which could involve several questions. How does Orwell manage, despite his illness? How do his ambition and political passion lead him to ignore his doctors’ advice? What life experiences have brought him to his dystopian vision?
Glover gets partway there. He excels at the essential, dwelling on the politics, as Orwell himself would have preferred. You understand how he thinks, how he’s always trying to observe, the political atmosphere that shapes him, and how he reacts to whatever he finds false or hypocritical. Glover’s prose, like Orwell’s, is absolutely lucid, sharp, and direct.
What an adventurer Orwell is, and not just as a writer intent on verbal and intellectual provocation. He descends into a coal mine, en route to writing The Road to Wigan Pier, his description of depression-era, working-class struggles, and feels self-conscious as a decidedly middle-class person. He enlists in the war against Franco and is nearly killed twice, once by his own side, events that inform Homage to Catalonia.
Along the way, Glover tells you how his protagonist has gathered the bits and pieces that wind up in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Buying black-market razor blades, submitting to excruciating medical treatments, staying in a farmhouse overrun by rats—all those scenes, and more, find expression in the masterpiece, literally or in essence. Though Glover handles many of these clues in subtle fashion, sometimes the treasure hunt feels like wink-wink, nudge-nudge, inside jokes.
Even so, I still like the dinner with an aging, cantankerous H. G. Wells, or a school classroom where the adolescent Eric Blair has a back-and-forth with his teacher, Aldous Huxley, about what the most crushing type of dictatorship would look like. (From the earliest age, Orwell seems to come in contact with everybody in British literary circles.)
But I still want to know who Eric Blair is when he’s not thinking or writing politics, and Glover doesn’t show me. Since we know that Orwell can’t die in Spain, for instance, the plot, if there is one, consists of episodes that exist to provide political subject matter. Much as I admire Nineteen Eighty-Four and many of his other works, I want to see the man behind them, not just the political man.
How does he really feel in his “open marriage” when his wife sleeps with someone else? It zips by in one sentence, as does guilt over his own love affairs. Glover gives us mostly surfaces, and maybe Orwell didn’t want anyone to probe him any deeper. But if so, why? And if you probed anyway, what would you find? That’s what’s missing, here.
The mask does slip toward the end, as Orwell races against his mortality, physical limitations, and his publisher’s prodding. I glimpse the yearning for fame and money that has largely eluded him (Animal Farm excepted), and the frustration that so little time remains, leaving no room for error or hesitation.
Some Orwell enthusiasts will be delighted with an (almost) purely political depiction and enjoy the revelation of sources for his magnum opus. But from this polished treatment of one of the most polished writers of the twentieth century, I come away unsatisfied.… (más)
When political speechwriter Dr Paul Richey suffers a very public nervous breakdown and develops an "allergy" to the modern world he thinks his life is over. He moves to Hobart, which since the closure of the only economically viable business, the "Gallery of the Future/GOFA" has become a technological dead zone. But then out of the blue, eccentric billionaire and former GOFA owner Dundas Faussett returns to town to set up a new project.
Welcome Factory 19, where every day is 1948. Dundas establishes an old-fashioned post-war factory, replete with typing pools, tea ladies, mechanical workshops, and traditional shipping. There's a job for everybody and a purpose-built 1948 style town. Dundas creates what he considers to be the ideal society, with 1940s everything, but with some elements of modern thinking (gender equality for example). What could go wrong?
Readers familiar with recent Australian politics and social history will recognise some of the characters in this very entertaining and highly amusing satire.
The story is set in the near future and is narrated by Paul, who describes the development of Factory 19, and the lives of all within. The book is easy to read, entertaining, and often funny. There are many moments where you almost wish that you were living with them back in 1948...but then again...… (más)
Welcome Factory 19, where every day is 1948. Dundas establishes an old-fashioned post-war factory, replete with typing pools, tea ladies, mechanical workshops, and traditional shipping. There's a job for everybody and a purpose-built 1948 style town. Dundas creates what he considers to be the ideal society, with 1940s everything, but with some elements of modern thinking (gender equality for example). What could go wrong?
Readers familiar with recent Australian politics and social history will recognise some of the characters in this very entertaining and highly amusing satire.
The story is set in the near future and is narrated by Paul, who describes the development of Factory 19, and the lives of all within. The book is easy to read, entertaining, and often funny. There are many moments where you almost wish that you were living with them back in 1948...but then again...… (más)
Factory 19 is an audacious novel: Dennis Glover is channelling George Orwell!
Written in the same style of unadorned prose (but not quite with Orwell's economic word count), Glover's satire on nostalgia for the old economy might have the Occupy Movement in its sights, but it's also an unabashed critique of the way we have become trapped in the digital economy.
The story is this: in the setting of a very near future, Dundas Faussett a.k.a. D.F., a charismatic man of extreme wealth sets up Hobart as a model economy, based entirely on how things were in the pre-digital age which he has designated as 1948. (Yes, the inverse of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). His fiefdom has no laws, only his vision and his powerful will. (Which is eventually challenged by an increasingly fractious wife who is less tolerant and more wary of subversion than he is). The new society at Factory 19 operates like an idealised version of the postwar era: everyone has a job in his factories—which use materials and methods from 1948, to make products from 1948, for people who work in the old hierarchical worker-and-boss structures... with pay and conditions that can only be dreamed of in today's gig economy.
The story is narrated by Paul Richey, who was recovering on lo-tech Bruny Island after a nervous breakdown caused by working for a politician in the always-available relentlessly-digital demands of the 24/7 news cycle.
And what was GoFA? Reminiscent of Hobart's MoNA and the dependence of Tassie's tourism industry on it, GoFA is D.F.'s Gallery of Future Art, the plaything of this whimsical uber-wealthy man who became bored with making money which is obviously how a lot of billionaires problems begin.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/11/03/factory-19-by-dennis-glover/… (más)
Written in the same style of unadorned prose (but not quite with Orwell's economic word count), Glover's satire on nostalgia for the old economy might have the Occupy Movement in its sights, but it's also an unabashed critique of the way we have become trapped in the digital economy.
The story is this: in the setting of a very near future, Dundas Faussett a.k.a. D.F., a charismatic man of extreme wealth sets up Hobart as a model economy, based entirely on how things were in the pre-digital age which he has designated as 1948. (Yes, the inverse of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four). His fiefdom has no laws, only his vision and his powerful will. (Which is eventually challenged by an increasingly fractious wife who is less tolerant and more wary of subversion than he is). The new society at Factory 19 operates like an idealised version of the postwar era: everyone has a job in his factories—which use materials and methods from 1948, to make products from 1948, for people who work in the old hierarchical worker-and-boss structures... with pay and conditions that can only be dreamed of in today's gig economy.
The story is narrated by Paul Richey, who was recovering on lo-tech Bruny Island after a nervous breakdown caused by working for a politician in the always-available relentlessly-digital demands of the 24/7 news cycle.
Surrounded by my wind-up mechanical clock, AM-FM radio, vinyl long-playing records, cassette player, books and the weekly printed broadsheet they flew in for me from overseas, my mind slowly recovered. Like a soldier back from war, I still had the occasional nightmare. For example, I would sometimes kick out in my sleep against imaginary robotic vacuums that were cornering me. But the simple therapy of living as my grandparents once had worked wonders. And after three years of such safety — I'll skip over that almost entirely uneventful period to save the reader — I found myself ready to return, tentatively, to civilisation. I couldn't yet live surrounded by the digital economy, so rather than send me to a modern city, they sent me to Hobart.
Before I offend any residents of that fine city, now recovering from all the trouble that followed, I'd better explain what I mean.
After Dundas Faussett closed GoFA, it caused the city's economy to fall like a Concorde with empty fuel tanks. The sort of decline that had taken a couple of decades to ruin the world's once-great industrial cities wrecked Hobart in a matter of months. (p.28)
And what was GoFA? Reminiscent of Hobart's MoNA and the dependence of Tassie's tourism industry on it, GoFA is D.F.'s Gallery of Future Art, the plaything of this whimsical uber-wealthy man who became bored with making money which is obviously how a lot of billionaires problems begin.
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/11/03/factory-19-by-dennis-glover/… (más)
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Estadísticas
- Obras
- 7
- También por
- 2
- Miembros
- 167
- Popularidad
- #127,264
- Valoración
- 3.8
- Reseñas
- 7
- ISBNs
- 27
However, I wasn't a big fan of the modern story with Missy Simpson. Although the effects of global warming on Antarctica were interesting and disturbing, I couldn't connect with Missy even though she was a strong female protagonist.
With mystery, romance, danger and adventure, "Thaw"was a quick, interesting read but not a great one.… (más)