Read Online Burning Down George Orwell's House by Andrew Ervin - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew Ervin
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marketed to so constantly and so effectively that he stopped noticing itâuntil he read
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Orwell had revealed how the world really operated. Winston Smithâs ordeal at the hands of the totalitarian state stayed with Ray for weeks; he couldnât stop thinking about that terror and about how he might live his own life without becoming equally enslaved by the system. That was when he declared amajor in advertising, where his talent for inventionâor his âgenial wise-assery,â as his father called itâcould be put to lucrative use. The decision was more than financial, however. Ray knew that some key to his self-preservation sat hidden among the now dog-eared pages of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
.
The bookâs pseudo-academic appendix âThe Principles of Newspeakâ served as a detailed linguistic analysis of Big Brotherâs state-mandated language. By changing the official language to Newspeak, the government of Oceania sought to eliminate unnecessary and redundant words, to make the citizensâ vocabulary smaller in order to limit what kinds of thoughts were even possible. The people couldnât revolt if they couldnât even conceive of the word
revolution
. Ray wanted to apply the same concept to advertising. Consumers didnât really want to make choicesâthey wanted the illusion of choice. By changing the way people thought, he could also alter their behavior, especially their spending habits. It sounded so easy, and it was.
A career in advertising would also allow Ray to escape the growing claustrophobia of small-town life for good. Living away from home in the dorms had rekindled his childhood curiosity. The world intimidated him with its vastness, but he still needed to see all of it. Every inch.
U PON GRADUATION HE MOVED to Chicago and in the fall he started his paid internship with the ad agency Logos. The company was known worldwideâit had been responsiblefor some of the biggest campaigns in recent advertising history. They had popularized Japanese cars in the American-manufacturing Midwest and convinced vast swaths of the electorate to vote against their own best interests in a presidential election. They had proved that choosing one brand of shitty cola over another was a statement of personal identity. He read articles and highlighted the important info, which he then converted into bullet points. The work was tedious, but easy.
He lived in an otherwise Bosnian enclave on the far North Side. The local community center brought in a wild Balkan orchestra from time to time, and Ray learned how to dance the kolo, albeit with some moves of his own invention mixed in. After he had spent another weekend drinking too much and making out with any number of Yugoslavian girls with lots of
j
âs and
z
âs in their names who pretended not to understand his English, he crawled back into his cubicle one Monday morning to find an email summoning him to his managerâs office. Someone in the elevator had no doubt smelled the homemade rakija still seeping from his pores and dimed him out. Was he still drunk? It was certainly possible. His clothes reeked.
His boss Theodore âBudâ Jackson was one of six executive vice presidents. Ray had gone out drinking with him a few times at a dive where a former Miss Ukraine tended bar. They watched her wash beer glasses for hours and that was far more entertaining than another stupid ballgame on TV. Budâs career had been a tumultuous one. He had started out as a specialist on mail-order marketing and on his way up thecorporate scaffold impregnated an entry-level data enterer who returned to her native Korea. Once a year she mailed him a portrait of his daughter, who he had never met in person. She had to be nine or ten already.
The US consumer marketâs evolution from analog to digital technologies had required Bud, like everyone else, to diversify his skill set. By age forty, he had
Nineteen Eighty-Four
. Orwell had revealed how the world really operated. Winston Smithâs ordeal at the hands of the totalitarian state stayed with Ray for weeks; he couldnât stop thinking about that terror and about how he might live his own life without becoming equally enslaved by the system. That was when he declared amajor in advertising, where his talent for inventionâor his âgenial wise-assery,â as his father called itâcould be put to lucrative use. The decision was more than financial, however. Ray knew that some key to his self-preservation sat hidden among the now dog-eared pages of
Nineteen Eighty-Four
.
The bookâs pseudo-academic appendix âThe Principles of Newspeakâ served as a detailed linguistic analysis of Big Brotherâs state-mandated language. By changing the official language to Newspeak, the government of Oceania sought to eliminate unnecessary and redundant words, to make the citizensâ vocabulary smaller in order to limit what kinds of thoughts were even possible. The people couldnât revolt if they couldnât even conceive of the word
revolution
. Ray wanted to apply the same concept to advertising. Consumers didnât really want to make choicesâthey wanted the illusion of choice. By changing the way people thought, he could also alter their behavior, especially their spending habits. It sounded so easy, and it was.
A career in advertising would also allow Ray to escape the growing claustrophobia of small-town life for good. Living away from home in the dorms had rekindled his childhood curiosity. The world intimidated him with its vastness, but he still needed to see all of it. Every inch.
U PON GRADUATION HE MOVED to Chicago and in the fall he started his paid internship with the ad agency Logos. The company was known worldwideâit had been responsiblefor some of the biggest campaigns in recent advertising history. They had popularized Japanese cars in the American-manufacturing Midwest and convinced vast swaths of the electorate to vote against their own best interests in a presidential election. They had proved that choosing one brand of shitty cola over another was a statement of personal identity. He read articles and highlighted the important info, which he then converted into bullet points. The work was tedious, but easy.
He lived in an otherwise Bosnian enclave on the far North Side. The local community center brought in a wild Balkan orchestra from time to time, and Ray learned how to dance the kolo, albeit with some moves of his own invention mixed in. After he had spent another weekend drinking too much and making out with any number of Yugoslavian girls with lots of
j
âs and
z
âs in their names who pretended not to understand his English, he crawled back into his cubicle one Monday morning to find an email summoning him to his managerâs office. Someone in the elevator had no doubt smelled the homemade rakija still seeping from his pores and dimed him out. Was he still drunk? It was certainly possible. His clothes reeked.
His boss Theodore âBudâ Jackson was one of six executive vice presidents. Ray had gone out drinking with him a few times at a dive where a former Miss Ukraine tended bar. They watched her wash beer glasses for hours and that was far more entertaining than another stupid ballgame on TV. Budâs career had been a tumultuous one. He had started out as a specialist on mail-order marketing and on his way up thecorporate scaffold impregnated an entry-level data enterer who returned to her native Korea. Once a year she mailed him a portrait of his daughter, who he had never met in person. She had to be nine or ten already.
The US consumer marketâs evolution from analog to digital technologies had required Bud, like everyone else, to diversify his skill set. By age forty, he had
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