Overview

This book presents full history of the origin of Orwell’s Animal Farm, as well as a translation of the Russuian/Ukranian source work. Has George Orwell lost his saintly luster? In The Never End, rabble-rouser, dogged investigator, and consummate literary stylist John Reed collects two decades of subject-Orwell findings previously published in Pank, Guernica, Literary Hub, The Brooklyn Rail, The Rumpus, The New York Press, The Believer, Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review. Reed’s treatment of Orwell is corrective and peerlessly contemporary; he views Orwell in a twenty-first century global context, considering Orwell’s collaboration with Cold War intelligence operations—US and UK—with unfaltering objectivity. It’s hard to imagine that Orwell—in our own moment of global doublethink—wouldn’t have wanted his devotion to contrariety applied to the literary legacy he left behind. The Never End is atonce a hatchet job and a celebration. Animal Farm, based on a previously unknown Russian short story? Animal Farm, deployed by the CIA, MI6 and the Congress for Cultural Freedom? Orwell, turning over blacklists in a McCarthy-esque act of betrayal? The Cold War? Does it last forever? Russia, the “Axis of Evil,” and now China? But. Orwell. Course syllabi. Literary laurels. Snitch. Why do we keep coming back? For the wrong reasons? Or because we know Old Benjamin would want us to know the truth?

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9789819907670

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“The Never End covers twenty years of work, we get a variety of tones. ... For those interested in both, though, The Never End is essential ... .” (Zoe Berkovitz, Rain Taxi, raintaxi.com, Vol. 29 (1), 2024)

Author Information

John Reed is the author of A Still Small Voice; The Whole; the SPD bestseller, Snowball’s Chance; All The World’s A Grave: A New Play By William Shakespeare; Tales of Woe; Free Boat: Collected Lies and Love Poems; A Drama In Time: The New School Century; and The Family Dolls: A Manson Paper + Play Book. He's contributed to, among other venues: Guernica, ElectricLit, The Brooklyn Rail, Tin House, Paper Magazine, Artforum, Hyperallergic, Bomb Magazine, Art in America, The Los Angeles Times, The Believer, The Rumpus, Observer, PEN Poetry Series, The Daily Beast, Gawker, Slate, The Paris Review, The Times Literary Supplement, The Wall Street Journal, Vice, The New York Times, Harpers, and Rolling Stone, and he's been anthologized in (selected) Best American Essays. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and is an associate professor and the current director of the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School University.

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