A BRIGHT COLD DAY IN APRIL: So I feel kind of dumb, but I just realized last night that the “Golden Country” in 1984 is the contrast to “the place where there is no darkness,” where Winston Smith and O’Brien meet. I think that contrast is part of what makes the book more than a political tract–something a little more uncanny, subtle, and lasting.

(I note, too, that while I don’t remember Orwell writing about CS Lewis and I expect that if he had the review would have been very unfavorable, the Golden Country/place without darkness contrast is very, very Lewis-like. In some ways with more power than similar moments in Lewis because subtler and more unexpected, more insistent and elusive; in some ways with less power because less well-written in terms of basic prose than many other parts of 1984, and less fleshed-out in imagery than much of Lewis’s work.)