reading in the classroom. last for you, maria, and thank you for coming. i just want to thank you also for and for being and being willing to listen to this extraordinary story that we're going to hear a lot more about. so thank you. for her. uh uh, handwritten or her her, her, her, uh.

and earlier today at the national book festival. book tv sat down with author laura beres to, talk about her book, orwell's ghosts. here's that interview. joining us now on book tv, it's american university history professor laura beres, author of the new book orwell's ghosts wisdom and warnings for the 21st century. laura beres, what does it mean for something to be orwellian? well, i think orwellian is. one of those words that is used and almost more commonly than else. i mean, when we talk about orwellian it's usually both in the sense of kind of a totalizing world of misinformation of social control, of thought policing, to use a term that orwell coined and propaganda. and, you know, i heard dnc described in a right wing newspaper the other day as orwellian kamala harris, where

she was being presented as the big brother figure. certainly there have been no shortage of people critiquing the trump administration as orwellian. and on the flip side, you know, pro-trump supporters critiquing the de-platforming of trump january 6th as orwellian thought and the shutting down of debate. both sides of the political spectrum use the word basically to bash their enemies with more or less accuracy. what did the term orwellian mean in the year 1950? actually pretty shortly after orwell's death and he dies in january 1950, the word enters common parlance. and it has this associate section with the manipulation language, with with thought policing is another orwellian term that comes from his novel, 1984. pretty quickly, they're on i mean, the transformation of orwell from a living author into, you know, an adjective happens fairly after his death. who is?

eric. arthur blair. eric arthur blair is george orwell. orwell actually is his pen name. he takes it when he publishes his first novel, largely so as not to embarrass his parents. you know, he's writing about some vulgar subjects both about his time initially working as police officer in burma. and his disenchantment with the empire. but then being and out in paris and london, as he put it, slumming it in those two metropolitan capitals. and his experience with the unemployed and underemployed of 1930s europe. so he never formally changes his name, though. i mean, his first wife, eileen o'shaughnessy, becomes eileen o'shaughnessy. blair and his second wife takes the last name. but that is not his legal surname. it's a nom de plume. what did he write that first novel and how many novels did he write over the course of his writing career? so he's write seven books, length novels and nonfiction, as well as countless newspaper and

magazine articles. over the course of his career. he starts his first novel, which burmese days. it's not first novel he publishes, but it's the first one he writes in the 1920s, while he's serving as a police officer in burma. and the first book that he publishes is down out in paris, in london, in the early 1930s. and then he has a quick succession of novels and nonfiction works before the two that become commercial successful. first, animal farm in 1945 and then in 1984, which is published in 1949. we mentioned that you're a professor at american university. you teach a class on orwell. the students who to your class, what do they know about? george orwell. when they enter your class? well, that's one of the first things that i asked them when they come into the classroom and there's a wide range are always a few orwell enthusiast who've read beyond the standard animal farm in 1984 and are familiar with some of his essays or his books like homage to catalonia,

the spanish civil war, or the road to wigan pier, which is a really of social inequality and unemployment. 1930s england. but most of them come in having read maybe one, maybe both of animal farm, 1984, in school, in middle school or high school, probably like most people, you know, they're their knowledge is, you know, not an excessive familiarity. and one that comes from a classroom context. but by the time they leave, they're all orwell experts. they read seven book length works. they've read several essays. and they could tell you why the word orwellian as it's commonly deployed is frequently misused. the term thought police also very commonly deployed. what does that mean in today's context? i think in today's context. it's the idea that there is a kind of censorship at within broader society, and that is how orwell was using in 1984. the police are are policing not only what you say aloud but what you think. and orwell talks about the danger of dreaming, particularly

if you have children who he says are likely rat you out. as someone with children, i can sympathize with that. but this idea that you could have no private internal self, that everything that you think you have to train thinking to be in conformity with, what is expected of you and the right you know condemns the woke left as they target of you know i on the grounds that they are engaged in thought. on the flipside you have the right or the left that that the political right you know with their obsession with this kind of what they see as you know fake news in an orwellian you know disinformation is engaged their own type of thought policing and of cult thing. and i think that idea of kind of you know a cult way of thinking around what in 1984 is the cult of big brother is an idea that orwell really develops in 1984 and has become closely associated him. one of the chapters in your book is titled the thought police. i want to read from page 61 and then have you expand on it. it says any discussion of

contribution to debates around the politics of language cannot limit itself to his views on and free speech or truth and falsehood. crucial as these issues were to both orwell's political age and to our own time, he was equally outspoken about the ways in which dishonest politics agents and politics unconsciously but inevitably corrupts political and language more broadly. yes. and one of his best essays, politic in the english language, goes into idea the way that the types of illusions and intentional misrepresentation ends that political language is invariably deploys. so example collateral damage, right? i mean, collateral damage. what do you think about it actually means the loss of significant innocent civilian usually life. right. but it becomes a word that is that in political speak used to say, oh, the mission was achieved. there was some collateral damage and there's an erasure or

oftentimes in terms of social programs, the way we talk about welfare queens to diminish the humanity of people who are receiving welfare. right. and to sort of impute something sinister in them that elides the the nuance of that situation in those lives. and orwell was very conscious of how in his own political time and of course, he's writing when nazi germany, when britain is fighting a war against nazi germany, he's writing during stalin's reign in the soviet union and he's very conscious of how political is manipulated in those regimes, but also how it's manipulated at his own home in britain, the context of the british empire. i mean, he worked in the british empire. he served in the imperial, and he felt that there that censorship, you know, in the british empire was astringent, stringent as it was in many ways in the soviet union. how would you describe his politics? as we understand politics, politics today? well, he termed himself democratic socialist throughout his life. he was identified strongly in his time. the political left, though,

ironically, once he passed away because his novels became iconic text of the war, he was reappropriated frequently by the political right in a cold war context and continues to seen by many on the right, a kind of icon of free speech and an opponent of censorship. but his own politics were very firmly leftist. two more passages from your book it's 150 page, 150 and 153 two sentences. once you start, look for signs of misogyny and in orwell's writing, they become hard to escape. orwell's views on reproductive rights, demeaning manner and writing about women and his seeming casual acceptance of sexual violence cannot simply be dismissed as products of his time. that's a fair statement. i stand by it. i mean orwell's orwell's political writing i have a lot of sympathy for and his, you know, critiques of, you know, of doublethink, of thought policing of, you know, the problems with

political discourse. our modern era, i think, continue to have salience and value. but the way that he wrote about women and gender relations does not stand the test of time. well. i mean, he was despite the fact that he married not one, but two, very accomplished women, both of whom, unlike him, had gone on and had a university education. he stopped schooling after leaving eton is one of the top prep schools in britain. and then joined the the indian police service. but despite the fact that he was married to these accomplished women, he clearly respected and they respected him. he had a default kind of assumption that patriarchy was the natural order society. and you see that in his domestic relations, both of his wives themselves over to furthering his career, but also particularly in his writing where female characters are marginalized as they're not offered a kind of full sense of agency and humanity. one of the most famous lines from, orwell's 1984, is his smith the hero's dismissal of

his lover, julia, as only a rebel. the waist down and feminist, you know, have read that against the grain and said, well, this is actually a recognition of the power of sexual politics and the that the personal is political but. i don't think orwell intended it that way. i mean, the body evidence really suggests that he wasn't someone who accorded women the agency that he to men. i know you teach a class on this but animal farm is a book that's often taught in a middle school in 1984 and in high school. do you think that the misogyny in, his writing gets the attention in how it's taught in america today and in recent decades? well, i mean, as someone i, i went to an all girls high school, which i read 1984. i can tell you that is there is a passage in that book of such startling sexual where winston smith, before he begins his relationship with julia imagines raping and murdering in this kind of violent fantasy during the ritualized two minute hate that takes place every day in

oceania. and that was not a passage that we discussed reading it in high school. i we talked about this idea of what it meant to culturally rebel from the waist down. but we didn't get into all these other. you know, he also fantasize as winston smith about killing his first wife and pushing her off a cliff to her death. that's again, not something we really unpacked and i think it's an awkward i mean for i went to an all girls high school with a male teacher. i mean, there was that inherently problematic dynamic. but i think even when that is not the situation at play kind of unpacking this extent of the misogyny in some of orwell's works. and it's very even in animal farm. i mean, molly, the show pony is kind of the villain of the piece in many ways an animal farm in that she's vain, narcissistic and willing to sell out the revolution from the get go for her own personal gain. but it's it was not something i remember being discussed when i was at school and in terms of my conversations with my students coming into my university level classes. it's not really an angle on

orwell's writing. that's that's being approached today either. one more line from orwell's ghost. you write orwell's novels never end happily ever after. why do you think that is? i think orwell himself know he didn't end happily ever after. died at age 46 of tuberculosis as he has moments of optimism in his writing and his personal life. but i think he was someone who fundamentally was quite pessimistic about society. and i think he had there's a real tension. you see all of orwell's work between a for a kind of better social revolution and social change will improve society and real pessimism about whether human beings are really capable of the type of self-sacrifice and abdication of the will to power that's necessary, secure that kind of social change. i mean you see that writ large throughout 84. and i think that his general pessimism about, human nature sort of shows through in all these novels where the heroine

always a kind of gangly, awkward male like himself comes to a bad end, may come back to the students that you teach george orwell to what's their biggest missing understanding of george orwell when they walk into your classroom? i think there the biggest misunderstanding is very people come in believing they're studying a writer of the political left right. however, orwell is taught today, he's not taught as a socialist writer, but he very much saw himself as a committed socialist revolutionary. and his obituaries, particularly in the united kingdom when he died know talked about his social conscience, talks about and he was described as the wintry of a generation as, someone who was really committed and had integrity, his belief in the need for social. and that's something i think that's been embraced largely from the narrative about orwell in the 21st century. do you have a favorite orwell novel writing or nonfiction wrote nonfiction as well, correct? well, i mean, based on i had to

count up all of my quotation from orwell for the publishers and based just on that back of the envelope, i clearly have a soft spot for the to wigan pier, which is more than anything else. and what's that about the road to wigan pier is a book that he writes. he researches in 1936 when he travels up to the northwest of england to look at coal mining communities and also the lives of the long term unemployed. and the economy in britain and to slump even before the great depression in 1929. so you had people 1936 who'd been out of a job for over years. and he's writing the corrosive impact of lack of opportunity, social inequality on english society, and arguing for the need for dramatic social. and it's just a very moving piece of social investigation and very different from orwell's other writing. you mentioned he died young eric arthur blair is george orwell what appears on his tombstone.

david don't know. i mean, it says it says eric blair on his tombstone. but i there's a there was a time when i knew the epithet and i can't remember it he did have he was atheist but he was an atheist who had a christian. he was he had a fondness for the church of england and for the king james bible. he was a lover of the english language and a lover of the forms of, you know, the social of the church. despite his his own kind of atheist and socialist politics. eric arthur blair is george. the book is orwell's ghost wisdom and for the 21st century. laura beres is the author. thanks to the time on book. thanks for having me on. and we'll return to our live of the national book festival just a moment. but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held at the library of congress. yes, my pants are unreasonably

long. that is the title of my next book. i, i used that bit of humor to stall to. be honest with you. i've done. 900 episodes of my talk show and i am more in this moment than i've ever been in my life. thank you for this honor. thank for this opportunity, dr. hayden. thank you clay. thank you for that green suit and and dr. hayden, you for sharing your mother with me. when i came in earlier, you said my mother in her nineties. and that is a lie. told me that i wants to meet you. i immediately called my own mom and mom. turn it on c-span on tv, as if

i'm not on tv. day. but having our parents celebrate our work and celebrate what we do and look at us and say, i'm proud i saw your mother when we gave you the ovation, she clapped. you said, mom, stop. i'm an investigator. i see everything. it brought me to this moment. my novel watch where they hide is a character manning inspired by my 30 years of being a journalist. and when i went into the publisher and said, i want to write this character, inspired also by the dusty nancy drew books under my bed as a kid, the box set that my 20 year old single mom gave me to build my confidence and to develop my unreasonable curiosity that had all of the nuns at my catholic ready to have me exit the

building like elvis. it was an escape. so when i created jordan manning and i went to publishers and they said, listen, there is not a black female protagonist written by a black female journalist. that's been published. i said, oh, she exists, but sometimes we're not led in the room. so jordan gets to come in this room via me, and she is afforded this opportunity to inspire young women and young people, young journalists. curiosity wins day. that curiosity will take you to places you never imagined. which brings me to my current book a confident cook. in 2008, the man who became my dad. the dad god meant for me to have left this planet. i knew that i would miss so many things about master sergeant

clarence senior, but his sweet potato pie. because it was the last that we talked about before he, became ill. i just started at msnbc. doris and i was the lone person. you might say, and i couldn't go home for holidays. and my dad and i talked over his sweet potato pie. he said, do a dash of this and a little of that. and i'm going, i'm trying for some reason, whatever i pulled out, the oven did not look like anything he'd ever created. when i went to temple university, they i told people i didn't know women could cook. all of my meals were prepared by my military dad. my dad would scurry often to my school to bring me lunch because i said that this doesn't look like what we eat at home. and he would rush in. he retired from the army after nearly 30 years, so i. i would miss his courage. i knew i would miss his

fortitude, knew i would miss his encouraging words. i could do anything and i could be anything in this world. but i never imagined walking into a and saying, dad, where are you? i need you right now. i've never shared this story publicly. after we lost my dad, i came back to visit my mom in burleson, texas and i walked in the kitchen and i prayed that if it was possible for us to see someone after they'd gone that he would stand next to me in the kitchen. that didn't happen. i returned back to new york, where i, the host of the today show, and do the magic an amazing curious journey that we are all able to if we allow ourselves. i said, wait a minute, my dressing room is next. the kitchen at the today show. there's food and there must be

people there can cook. so i walked into the at the today show and i met this lovely woman. she had a radish tattooed on one arm and a carrot on another. and said, dad, are you kidding? because a person with a radish and a carrot means business. these are root vegetables, you understand? most people would you know if hot for sunday. that's what i pick. and so began this incredible journey we detail in a confident cook. i met my friend list styling from wisconsin and she not tamron hall from the today she met tamron and we quickly became like sisters and we currently are only cookbook with a black woman and a white woman on the cover. the only cookbook for the woman who's lgbt and her ally to the

very end. so while we have 79 amazing recipes that will make anyone fall in love with you. we have the incredible journeys. in fact, our book list grew up in wisconsin. as i said, i grew up in texas. i'm a tad bit older than her. and now that i'm approaching 54, we have the exact same haircut and stand up. we have the exact same haircut. now. so through lish, i found my confidence in the kitchen. i found the ability to walk in and smell and discover flavors. and while this is a journey to become more, it is about finding. it's about expressing grief.

but finding new friends. friends who are like family. food is our common thread. we look at our history and we wonder and we discuss the divisiveness. until you take a nice slice of someone's delicious as pie and suddenly you say, that was your grandma mom's recipe. tell about her. food is a common thread. my trip to mexico. the common thread of food and family changed my life as a 12 year old. food is a universal language and through our book i'm so proud that we were able. meet one another and share journey. my hands are shaking, but my is full. i am grateful for the journey of food, of confidence of family

and i hope that as books build us, we recognize that sitting at the table and looking someone in the eye and saying a prayer. a thank you. grace whatever it is, absorbing that moment it brought a kid from wisconsin and a kid from texas together. underdogs. it can change, transform so many. books build us up. food brings us together. lastly will tell you my grandfather was born in 1901. he could not. he was a sharecropper in luling, texas. and now his granddaughter is making her living with words. he could read.

and i am so grateful and love you all. and thank you. and we'll return to our live of the national book festival just a moment. but first, here's a look at last night's opening ceremony held at the library of congress. i trying to look up a word that would describe or best describe my presence on the stage this evening. and i generously found the word implausible. i watched this event last and the computer and david used so beautifully. you love to ask questions in the beginning when you're speaking to the audience and last year. david looked at the audience and he said, who here has read five books in the year and most

everybody raised their hand. and then he said, well, who here has read ten books in the year? at which point i said, oh, no, he's counting up. david dr. hayden, thank you so much from the bottom of my for inviting me here this week. and i'm clearly you did no. don't panic. look, it's not that i don't love books. i do. i very much. i love i love them more than anything. inspire me. i just it's i have such the process of reading them. i have found to be very. more specifically these types of challenges were that i had wish that had been and defied much earlier my life. but that's a different story. one that i'm working on on my own. and that's not. it's not what tonight is about.

i do love books, though i love books because they can tell any story they can be about anything. they can tell anyone story. they can be about anything, even not always wanting to read them. my three picture books appropriately titled i don't want to read this. this book is not a present and i don't want to read this book. all center. the fears attached to reading, the fears of learning differently, the fears of reading a book aloud. you know, are the books that i wish that i had, when i was a kid. and look, if you take them at face value, you might react to them in the same way one gentleman did when i was a reading. and afterwards he said to me, it seems like books are about not wanting read.

to which i said, maybe you should read it again. clearly this man did not get the joke. but to be fair, he looked like the kind of guy that doesn't get any jokes. but that's again that's not what tonight's about. what he failed to recognize, though, is that a picture book is just meant to be read a good picture book. my opinion is to be a bridge to a conversation. thank you. i think about think about who just reacted to what. i just said. this is my audience and who understand me. speaking of those conversations, my son is nine. that's not him. the this is how most of our

conversation go. how was your day? i don't know. we started our our summer as our conversations go. how was your day? i don't know. what do you mean? you know? no. well, what did you do. good. are you now answering the first question? i would say, how can we expect a child articulate their fears around? learning and around reading that same child can't recall the events of the day that just happened. and furthermore, how we expect them to open up to and talk about the anxieties or the anxieties that they may have that exists beyond, reading the thoughts that keep them up at night. this is the conversation we are trying to initiate with night thoughts. my new book that is so beautifully illustrated by james

serafino, the inspiration for this book from my dear friend jordan, who many of you may remember, he wrote, thank. leslie was on this stage not too long ago at this festival, his own book. and he was a dear friend, and the two of us would often talk about our fears and we would list them. and leslie as lists were always far more entertaining than mine. he would say bumblebees, electrical tape, straight man man. maybe this book just got banned. florida. i sure hope so. you, leslie, would love that. but we would openly discuss our fears only to realize that very few of them were things that we were faced with in that moment.

you know, leslie didn't count as a straight man, which i always took as a compliment. but here is an excerpt from book. but then i closed eyes again. i that my brain can be noisy and my thoughts are sometimes. and then i that all that noise and all those thoughts are just in my head. i'm not being eaten by. a robot shark. my toilet isn't overflowing with. and thank goodness there isn't a dentist in sight as far as i can tell, the world hasn't popped into a piece. popcorn. my friend is still here and i'm not falling from cloud right now. everything is okay. and so am i. good night. thoughts? good night. what are the fears that our

children carry around them? what? the thoughts that keep them up at night. it's the books that we as parents as educators as librarians read to them, that initiate these essential conversations. i'm so to be here this weekend, celebrate the possibility those conversations and to celebrate the incredible work of so many and to celebrate all of it with all you. thank you so much for having me. and book tv's of the 2024 national book festival continues. good afternoonnd