CHANGING THE TEXTS… OF GEORGE ORWELL
For some time I've been warning of the danger of e-book platforms like Kindle and Nook and so on, which to my mind surrender undue influence and control over texts to corporations which, with their record of supporting political correctness and other kinds of tom-foolery, could be a bad thing. Repeatedly I've warned that e-books, like any cyber system, are not really secure, and that anyone could hack into them and change the text of books to suit their political or cultural agendas. Over and over I've warned that e-books would be like the old Soviet Encyclopedia, on steroids, this year Yezhov is in the picture with Stalin, next year he isn't, because he's been purged. Or, imagine e-book versions of the Book of Common Prayer or other Christian or, for that matter, any other religious text. It would be a theological revisionist's dream come true; troublesome texts could be revised, disturbing traditions could be expunged, at the push of a button. No need for cumbersome "ecumenical councils" like Vatican II to do the dirty work. My other big problem with the whole concept has been that ebooks change formatting... and what happens to scholarship if pages numbers of particular passage keep fluctuating? How does one cite an ever-fluctuating, mutating text?
Well, K.M. spotted this article in the New York Times, and it seems that my warnings are coming true to a certain extent:
As the article points out, some books are presuming to "improve" on an author, in this case, George Orwell:
Most of the distorted texts are likely due to ignorance and sloppiness but at their most radical the books try to improve Orwell, as with the unauthorized “high school edition” of his 1933 memoir. The editing was credited to a Moira Propreat. She could not be reached for comment; in fact, her existence could not be verified.
“Down and Out” is an unflinching look at brutal behavior among starving people, which makes Ms. Propreat’s self-appointed task of rendering the book “more palatable” rather quixotic. An example of her handiwork came when Charlie, a boastful rapist, described how he lured a young woman into his clutches:
“‘Come here, my chicken,’ I called to her.”
Ms. Propreat’s version:
“‘Come here,’ I called to her.”
It’s unlikely that Orwell, a finicky master of English prose, would have appreciated this editing — nor the fact that all the French in the book is rendered in capital letters, which makes it seem like the writer is shouting at the reader.
As one can guess, most of the article is concerned with false or faked copies of famous literary works being offered by sellers such as Amazon, and with Amazon's alleged lack of proper curation of the texts it is selling. But it's difficult to imagine how Amazon, or any other company, can keep track of the hundreds of thousands of titles it is selling. As an author, for me part of the problem of curation lies with the consumer, and to that end, I've publicly and repeatedly stated that the only canonical text of my books are the hard copy books that come directly from my publishers. More recently, I've taken to self-publishing, partly in order to maintain my own personal oversight of the actual text of my works. I do not, and will never, recognize any e-book platform of any of my books as canonical, and have prohibited my publishers from offering any further books as e-books, should I choose to publish with them again.
Notably, the NY Times article mentions this very point as a growing concern:
The Authors Guild said that in the last two years, the number of piracy and counterfeiting issues referred to its legal department has increased tenfold. Counterfeit editions are a blow against the authority of the book and accelerate a dangerous trend toward misinformation.
“During most of human existence, facts have been hard to pin down and most of knowledge was oral history, rumor and received wisdom,” said Scott Brown, a prominent California bookseller. “We have spent our whole lives in a fact-based world and while that seems how things ought to be, it may prove to have been a temporary aberration.”
Mr. Brown noted that the news was now mostly digital. “Who can really say what an article really said when it was published? There’s rarely a printed — and therefore hard-to-change — version to refer back to,” he said. “The past is becoming unmoored and unreliable.”
One of the Orwell books I bought was a copy of “Animal Farm” issued by Grapevine India. On the copyright page it declared, “The author respects all individuals, organizations & communities, and there is no intention in this novel to hurt any individual, organization [or] community.” (Emphasis added)
But it goes further, specifically highlighting the "formatting" problem I've been warning about with respect to e-book platforms:
The large publishers, which have remained mostly mute since they were on the losing side of an antitrust clash with Amazon over e-reading, are now finding their voice again. Their trade group, the Association of American Publishers, just filed a heavily researched analysis with the Federal Trade Commission that is remarkably blunt.
“The marketplace of ideas is now at risk for serious if not irreparable damage because of the unprecedented dominance of a very small number of technology platforms,” the report concluded.
Meanwhile, the books are mutating. A reader recently tried to sound the alarm about a different dystopian classic he bought on Amazon.
“This is not the real Fahrenheit 451,” he wrote. “The wording is different, the first chapter is not properly titled, they used the first sentence of the chapter as the title in this book. There are typo’s and spacing issues. They need to advertise that this is not an authentic book.”(Emphasis added)
In other words, the formatting of e-book platforms can become an actual "content changer". I've also warned about the ability of corporations to reach into your virtual e-book library, and literally erase the text, and sure enough, that has happened too:
How it treats Orwell is especially revelatory because their relationship has been fraught. In 2009, Amazon wiped counterfeit copies of “1984” and “Animal Farm” from customers’ Kindles, creeping out some readers who realized their libraries were no longer under their control.(Emphases added)
Bottom line: technology is not the be-all and end-all, especially when it comes to the preservation of texts and traditions, especially in an age when radical political and cultural agendas are everywhere to be seen, especially in corporations. These people are simply not to be trusted because they are attempting to own the culture by owning the means and platforms to change the past at the push of a button.
So in case you missed my two favorite axioms: (1) own the culture, and (2) the only canonical form of my books are the hard copies coming directly from the publishers. And that means part of the responsibility for maintaining those texts lie with the consumer. That means that if you buy the e-book version, or an online pdf, or a version not from a reputable publisher, you're part of breaking the chain of transmission of a tradition and text. Best not to buy the Soviet Encyclopedia at all.
See you on the flip side...
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Speaking of revisions in history:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ndN78HuaI8
Rep Ayanna Pressley on Israel’s Ban: “Bigoted, Short-Sighted and Cruel”
These are sjw voices that we’ve heard lately that suddenly are not being called antisemitic by the aipac owned establishment? Even aipac is quoted in this clip supporting the squad. This is odd and bodes of a political crack the whip tactic. Is some disaster capitalism inside Israel as well as inside the US being planned? From all indicators, post Apartheid SA is not so wonderful a place. Mandela’s first financial minister was Harvard trained and imposed the harshest central bankster austerities on an already economically crushed country even as the wealthiest fled with all the financial, technical and intellectual capital the country had. Talk about John Galt.
I dunno. Seems like tempest in a couple teapot domes. I just wanna be like Robert Duval in THX 1138 and come home to my properly drugged girlfriend and watch the robot cops kicking crap out of some prole on my 3d holographic tv. Wait. Didn’t that girlfriend have braces in the original movie? Oh no, wait that was Dolly in MoonRaker. Dang, we’re all getting so thoroughly Mandela’d. Hm you don’t think that’s why and where that psy-op came from do you?
Almost sounds like Burning Alexandria, again, or an attempt at recovering from literary loss. That ancient library that was a focal point of much ancient knowledge that could have been better dispersed to foster a more intelligent and informed human presence it seems instead of deliberately reduced to ash and soot. There may be a danger to places and people where knowledge arrives but so are its losses.
One can almost picture later date monks in cubicles copying away copies of what they considered important literary accomplishments only to learn of their tedium intensive work of many moths being put to flames in seconds because they were considered a threat to the powers that were.
Today, downloaded books reduced to binary files are fodder for peta sniffers scooping up text translated. And people thought the electronic cloud was such a time and money saver and easily taken on tours or vacation. Some folks who have something to say and prefer to imprint what they said in text in electronic form for monetary savings is a good thing but keeping several original hard copies stashed and unaltered is also a good thing provided that electronic text does not get intercepted from original source and end re-compilation.
Back in the 90’s there were some folks on the east coast who were soliciting ideas from geek forums about how to alter word processor typing on computers electronically linked when the “Baud was Boss.” One warned them about certain security repercussions coming out of that euphemism then known as Langley. This interested forum member wanted to catch the wife at home on a connected machine and real-time-type a message on her machine as she typed as a joke, sort of. Sounds an awful lot like changing electronic text, eh? via remotely. To expand on that type editor tactic with today’s blog entry, it would be similar to nefariously altering (editing if you like) cloud-based binary-code later translated into text on a remote viewing reader device. Web sniffers delight in electronic form. “One Drive,” can be considered a threat, but then, by checking that little box to use software from the vendor, essentially waives away any concern or rights about privacy breaches by state sponsored security apparatuses. Ed may not have given out the file keys to the general public, but he did, from many angles of view, release the knowledge of awareness that will not be forgot. . . One prefers hardcover and audio in tandem anyway. It may be limiting needing both together but one’s reading irregularity benefits from it.
Manifesto’s a-la-mode, a-la-carte, and to go, altered to suit the immediate conditions, seems the fad of the day but not a mystery to the wiser. Personally, one finds it important to know something of the presence of that time ancient texts were iterated, carved, painted, and chiseled. Unique brush strokes of the orient or quill’n’ink of medieval Europe tell a tale that typed text translated will not unless there is a follow-on explanation through description and added lexicon, some of it seeming to be newly constructed while translating at the time of translation. That space saver (at the time) “Zero” was such a character formulated when Latin and Arabic were in use and translated long ago. Guess they had to do something about that null space spoken with numerals, letters, and calligraphy strokes. One thing seems sure is that paper and movable type from China and with the expedience of Gutenberg’s press, text took on a life of its own.
Hard copy seems best, along with handwritten, disk format, audio recorded or any combination which allows for some form of permanence that is durable and resistant to nefarious deeds of the literal kind. Although, data searching the digital is certainly time saving despite its potential for infringement.
Hi Richard, Have you considered that those monks transcribing ancient scripts were doing the same thing kindle is doing now?….not that the church would have any interest in a few revisions when it comes to things like, say, ways that would allow people to have direct access to communication with a higher power?…
good point.
Hello, guitardave. . That the monks by candlelight would be duplicating as Kindle does now, when one now needs to purchase a license and device, leaving public libraries and bookstores aside for now, does seem to raise several overlapping conditions as to whom do the words used belong. One suspects it is not as easy as that as the words do render thought-forms within the receiver – A hidden treasure beholden to the reader presumably. Today’s writers know of the monetary price some folks will pay for a copy of well written text, but also know the price of reproducing that literary privilege and the logistics required in its distribution. Back to the monks.
Although not one to misinterpret or imply what the monks purpose and end goals were, and in ones humble opinion, would suggest that the monks purpose was to spread the word of their savior while maintaining something of their philosophic and religious backgrounds and personal experiences as they sought redemption. Only they knew for sure of their specifics, of course, but given how elaborate and intricate some of their reproduced work was and remains preserved, their working with gold leaf must have been quite an experience and a learned discipline, of sorts. Having seen photocopies and historian accounts of some of their reproduced works-of-art – they were literal works of art, priceless by any of today’s standards – they are a sight to behold no matter one’s orientation to faith or what they say. Stunning replications of symbol, artistry, and verse to the observing mindset, most of them.
It’s not much of a leap to wonder what a thief then and now might do with that commandment of (to paraphrase) . . “Thou shall not steal.” One does have certain reservations about whether words of any kind from any source expression belong to anyone and must be purchased for a fee to be useful or must undergo some ritualized initiation to receive access. But then one was not the progenitor who made the many languages and their confusion for the masses or insisted that duplication be written and copied and sold anymore than evolving a monetary system that provides an exchange for goods and services.
Those thieves then (and now) would likely be more interested in the monetary wealth gold represents than what profits of another might be. The Fifth House of representation, from those lands now Italy, The Lawyers, were not the ignorant ones sometimes portrayed. They knew something of commerce and consistently covered settling disputes, for a fee, of sorts, according to the agreements arrived. Today money / currencies are used in place of those ancient Fifth House Lawyers agreements as an agreement or as an exchange of goods and services in this case. Needless to say, it’s become a complicated set of rules of fair trade from those ancient days of trade and barter systems. It’s also referred to as regulation with a slight stretch.
It would seem that that widening crack of discontent between fees and ownership most folks argue about today has become so convoluted that one needs to be independently wealthy just to explain why copying one’s own work for profiting, let’s say, without permissions or agreements about royalties is stealing and coveting thy neighbors literary works. Or in the case with one financially endowed might take liberties and electronically replicate printed words. Royalties – there’s something about that word when noting monetary issues.
Our leaders are sanitizing all the harmful literature, guns, his/her pronouns, and other aspects that; in fact, are ridiculing us. Why not star ate the apex of harm; the harmful system in place that creates this toxic leadership?
Is there a special intelligence department that has morphed into The Ministry of Truth. I mean besides the googles, youtubes, and other information monopoly platforms?
LOL! We have spent our lives in a fact-based world! ???
More like an Alice In Wonderland world where one runs like heel to stay in the same place!
Fahrenheit 451 is the perfect example the widespread digitized clean burns spreading throughout publishing digital platforms.
Robert,
“More like an Alice In Wonderland world”….and even worse, the current SJW Humpty-Dumpty world, where “words mean whatever i want them to mean”….
but lets not open that “definitions” can-o-worms.
For contemplative reading, I prefer physical books.
But the glory of the digital edition is that you can data mine with Search and find any and all the instances. How many times have you tried to remember where you read some phrase or reference in the pile of books on our shelf? Damn hard when you want to research.
Thus wherever possible I get a digital version, and for keepers, a physical.
Using Copernic or DTSearch one can have thousands of books and references at hand, and spend happy hours branching through oceans of prose.
For Kindle etc e-books, get free Calibre software, which strips out DRM. Now the files cannot be altered by Amazon, even when on a tablet that connects to the net.
When I find a deep website, I download the entire site via spidering software. Now I have hundreds of lost sites to draw from, even when the net is down, censored, edited etc.
If no digital copy can be found, and the index is spotty, I will even take a razor, cut out the pages, scan and OCR the book.
And finally, you can burn to archival quality data discs. They won’t last hundreds of years like paper or hemp, but what value (except aesthetic or investment) is a library of hundreds of books where you cannot find the passage you want?
This is an old problem you are familiar with abridged books. The ebook is the ministry of truth wet-dream of down the memory hole just wondering if Eric Blair was writing 1984 today how he would use this technology in that novel.
reminds me of being a kid and finding out that readers digest abridged books. and then finding out they were based in Rochester, NY. and that they were See Eye Ay.
As a poor boy there is no way I could have afforded all the books I have read which would fill my house with no room for me , let alone have instant access via a local search (Recoll for Linux) that I now have that Kings and Scholars could not have dreamt of. One could go further the other way and say that only books memorised can be preserved under Tyranny, ala Fahrenheit 451.
A greater danger is that in using electronics, and develping a greedy, shallow, approach to learning, one is exposed to potential and direct mind control, or more mundanely, outright distraction. Plus they get the statistics on our behaviour. Who reads books now anyway in the general population.?
(Lamentation for the day: even Duckduckgo is ignoring my search requests, try putting a + in front of a search term and see how many links have no such term in them – compare to the ancient and yahoo’d/google’d/dodo’d https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altavista which you could do quite advanced searches with almost regex )fashion.)
https://entireweb.com
been doing better with this lately. although for how long?????????
To build upon my reply to Goshawks, it is imperative that we “those who defend the old traditions and the sanctity of humanity” start buying en masse, old dictionaries. Really anything older than 1950 (In my opinion, the last year that curriculum was not tainted by the “Rockerfellian” dissolving of the public education apparatus) will work (however pre-1900’s is best). It is important to have modern dictionaries to do necessary comparisons as the “duplicitous benefactors” have altered or completely changed the meaning of some words (“word sophistry”/”word magick”). It is rather disconcerting to say the least.
…to the point above, I agree with Dr. Farrell’s analysis of (and I paraphrase): “Bored billionaire busy bodies that have nothing better to do than destroy.” Elana Freeland’s comment (again paraphrase): “Small children like to build things up (they take great pride in that), however, they take more pride in destroying what they had just built. There is a gleeful playfulness and overall wanton to see who will get to destroy the very thing they took so long to build…”. This is very accurate statement. My wife and have the (un)fortunate task of “educating” (inculcating and surreptitiously deconstructing the programming and deceit) students and dealing with “behavioral pedagogy”. If you want to label the “benefactors” they are like malevolent children that receive great joy and satisfaction through their subterfuge. They are entertained by their treacherous mechanisms and by fiat (a decree that is of some other entity’s making and that they believe that they control – i.e., Lucifer and Luciferianism) that exempts them from the consequences (in their “thought stream”) of manipulating humanity, nature and the universal axioms of morality, to their own perverse designs. To the point, Dr. Farrell made a another comment to Elana Freeland (concerning the Tower of Babel and the meaning behind it) and again, I paraphrase, “If humanity would have completed the Tower of Babel and ascended to the top, they would have been granted anything that their imaginations desired….”. That chilling statement holds so much gravity in conjunction with humanities current state. Our collective folly (and spiritual decent) is based on three very old concepts (in my opinion these dictate all human behavior): 1.) Avarice (Insatiable greed; gluttony); 2.) Nepotism (Showing preferential bias to blood relations AND close friends); 3.) Pride (Hubris/Narcissism/Vanity). These three “desires” or “lacks” (because of our impermanence) are the motivating factors (again, subjectively speaking) behind the historical iniquity of this universe. However, I digress…
I really miss real dictionaries.
I have an old tattered copy that I continually use.
Oh, I do too friend. It is unbelievable how much they can taint through digitizing everything. Moreover, thirty-five and under (I am thirty eight and barely made it…ahaha…thankfully I have an “old soul”) do not really care to have tangible books nor do they know how to use them when they do have them. But yes, my wife and myself are buying up old books (currently 19th century – anything pre-19th century is very expensive and we just cannot afford it presently). We feel it is about knowing, loving, and caring about history, epistemology, cosmology, ethics, aesthetics and most importantly HUMANITY. This is humanity’s soul essence we are talking about (as well as the actual planet we live on). It goes beyond skin color, nationalism, progeny, legacy, immortality projects because those things will be superfluous if we as a collective do not awaken from our intellectual and spiritual state of obtusity.
Joseph’s arguments cannot be disputed. That’s the way it is. However there is a slightly better possibility with e-format if it is a text file, pdf, whatever that resides on your hard drive or saved to a DVD rom or equal. Trusting Amazon and others of the same ilk is really not an option and they have recently shown their true colours in more ways than one.
“They call it kindle for a reason!” Dr. Joesph Farrell
I quit e(vil)books after I heard that. Now I buy used paper books and the oldest ones I can find.
I bought the Blavatsky classic Isis Unveiled a while ago. The current edition in print is “edited”. I bought a 1980 edition since it was the oldest/most expensive one I could justify and it claimed to be an exact reprint of the original. An 1870’s first edition goes for around $15,000.
A wise move Scott!
Loved it!
“They call it kindle for a reason!”
Blavatsky is an odd bird. Too easy to associate her with Lucius Trust and David Icke and all.
A year or so ago Harper’s did an article on this. They had stated that Obama’s past speeches were changing as time moved forward. It doesn’t take much to know that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
May as well call e-books your continuous just in time novels; you can reread them for different .endings, just like your DVD movies.
White Rabbit.
The surprising part about the Harper’s admission is: it’s an admission. One cannot have our “beloved first _____ (insert any adjective you like because with this man there are several firsts) president” appearing to be a babbling, bungling, unsympathetic, irrelevant, irreverent, radical, extreme, divisive speaker. I remember listening to his speeches, then looking up the transcripts, and thinking, “either this is an ad-lib after abandoning his teleprompter, or someone changed the text to convince us he didn’t actually say what we heard him say. Or, did I miss something?” For our posterity’s sake, former President Obama must be portrayed as one of the finest orators in the presidential tradition since our beloved Abraham Lincoln. His legacy must remain inviolate as a man of the people and for the people. In our children’s history books, perhaps his memory will be preserved in the same saccharin, idyllic manner as that of our beloved log-splitter from Kentucky. Some of us will remember both as the men they truly are based on our observation of consequence of their policies–not the rhetoric of their speeches. To this end, some editing of the speeches must occur to distance each from their baser, coarser discourse.
Maybe I need to change careers. Maybe there is still sufficient room for yet another Brooklyn Bridge salesmen in the political commentary guild.
They’ll never stray from the Obama as an angel script.
Obama enjoys a continuous digitized historical face-lift; not one discouraging profile is accepted for the history books and mainstream presentations.
Here’s a digital history that survives[for now at least]:
https://stephenlendman.org/2011/11/obamas-legacy-of-shame/
]
I’ve used both technologies–digital and printed form. Without question I prefer the printed material. Its mine! If someone takes it without permission it’s theft. If someone defaces it without permission its defacing privately owned property. These are crimes. Corporations beware!
When I purchase digital I know I own nothing. These purchases are either because the material cannot be obtained any other way–or the material should be purchased in both forms for convenience sake. All of Dr. Farrell’s works in digital form I own as well as physical form because I want him to benefit for every dollar spent. It’s his intellectual property. He may not be able to copyright the ideas, but he is able to establish some literary ownership over the arrangement of the ideas in printed form–or does he? In printed media I would have to say, “yes.” In digital?
The problem I see with digital media is the original author loses “ownership” of the intellectual expression of ideas to third parties with corporate relationships. It seems to me that the legal framework that protects “canonical” texts does not apply to “digital copies”. Alteration of the digital versions may be considered exceptions to this legal framework because they can be sheathed within the framework of “publication or transcription errors” rather than “plagierism” or “intellectual theft”. The only thing they cannot get away with is altering the author’s name. It may be all about copyrights and royalties in the end–and altering a digital copy slightly is a way to evade payments or to reduce the amount via a defective product. The only way to leverage proper e-book transmission is to bind the e-book copy to the printed edition and require both from the same publisher. Even that may not wash in the end.
But I must say that Dr. Farrell is right on cue on this one. The decision ultimately rests with the author whether to publish on an e-book platform. If he or she refuses contractually, the maintain leverage over the intellectual property. If enough authors follow suit the e-book platform will eventually solve this problem! It will take a revolt to solve it–and a few lawsuits. (Don’t count on those. Remember the rulings in favor of Microsoft over Apple over the whole concept of the graphical interface in 1994? Remember the case of Microsoft vs Netscape? E-book publishing platforms will use those rulings in their cases and probably win citing precedent. The lawsuits are legion.)
Reminds me of Catherine Austin Fits doing printed reports/books for her members.
Dr. Farrell, Fitts, and others in their shoes,
practice what they preach.
Thank you Dr. Farrell, for all your hard work. I stumbled upon you last February, and am amazed, stunned, and forever grateful that you do what you do … thank you. There was what I consider, a golden age of the Internet. It was very short, yet the days when one could type in a search term and get some wonderfully obscure sites to explore, are sadly, over. By observing the changing landscape of the digital world, one begins to see a window letting one view the workings of the vast psy-op of big money – it’s not a pretty picture and I cannot help but think, this is version 665.0, yet today, these folks aren’t really concerned about even hiding their crimes anymore. It’s, “ yes, and just what are you going to do about it”?
This control over a narrow channel of how information is spread across the world spells trouble for the rest of us. I do not doubt, whether the attack comes from aliens, the sun, terrorists, or Canada, that electricity and all digital data will disappear(maybe forever) and if one wishes to save anything for the future – make hard copies.
One has to wonder at the control matrix of the publishing business at all. Since printing has allowed typesetters to ‘interpret’ original manuscript texts, some ‘reinterpretations’ can slip through the net. Think of the ‘Bad Bible’ of 1631 where the Seventh Commandment is rendered as ‘Thou SHALT commit adultery’. Was that a genuine accident or a bit of social engineering?
We can infer from such Hollywood output as ‘Wag the Dog’ that the libraries of record, The Library of Congress, The British Library, Le Biblioteque Nationale etc, may not be totally reliable if the powers that be which to slip in something or other into the stacks!
My own interests have led me to the suspicion that celebrated myth collectors such as those as WB Yeat’s (Golden Dawn, Freemason etc) and ancient Irish folk stories, and Arthur Ransome (British secret intelligence) and Russian folk stories, are the collectors censors of ancient folklore and oral history which has been edited by the gatekeepers of the publishing cabal.
Dr. Michael Hudson’s latest book on Forgive Them Their Debts has an interesting take on those commandments being related to debt.
Because the 2nd Calic Rune has to be deduced from of the Ruthwell Cross, by means of The Dream of the Rood, I have attempted to get a paper edition of “Stone, Skin, and Silver” by professor Richard J. Kelly.
Surprisingly, it is nowhere to be found. A pdf copy can be downloaded, though, from Kobe University in Japan, and printed out. The 2nd Calic Rune symbolizes “heaven on earth”, by dividing the corners of the world.
This is very mysterious, indeed.
http://www.lib.kobe-u.ac.jp/products/kelly/e-index.html
Interesting. Thank you.
“Moira Propreat” just has to be a scrambling of something. On a whim, I put ‘moirapropreat’ into an anagram-solver. An 11-letter word popped-out: paratrooper (with mi left-over). So, “the unauthorized ‘high school edition’ of [Orwell’s] 1933 memoir … credited to a Moira Propreat [who] could not be reached for comment; in fact, her existence could not be verified” might be an anagram of ‘paratrooper mi’ or paratrooper me . Have fun assembling your own:
https://www.thewordfinder.com/anagram-solver/
(Another source says “Moira Propreat” is an obvious pun on the phrase “more appropriate.”)
And yes, the digital world definitely has its dark underbelly. That starts not only with the ability to change or delete published works, but to ‘mess with’ every computer in the world…
Like button. Like button.
yep.
Just my thought…
The name “moira” literally means “fate”.
Propreat has no meaning however…
In French propre à means “own” (as in ownership) or “peculiar”
So, “Moira Propre à” could mean “Fate Peculiar” or “Fate Own” or reversed “Peculiar Fate” or “Own Fate”…
I do not claim to know any language outside of my native tongue (although I am have some proficiency with Spanish, French, Old English, Latin – though if you want to look, and take it for it is worth, here is a link):
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/french-english/propre-a?q=propre+%C3%A0+
This morning, my subconscious popped-up another variation of “Moira Propreat”: ‘im paratrooper’. With an implied apostrophe, it becomes: I’m paratrooper . All 13-letters used, and it even makes sense…
In a sense we are going back a few centuries to the pre-copyright age, when there were just printers and not publishers in the modern sense. And texts could be changed due to political and religious agendas. So a book about the papacy first printed say, in the 1500s, would be reprinted in the 1600s with alterations imposed by Counter-Reformation editing.