I’m writing a short story and I’d like to use a quote by George Orwell in the opening before the story actually starts. Some say this might not be s good idea. I thought I’d ask my literaturess’ before continuing. * The story is an absurd short story with a bit of Dadaism if it helps knowing. dole,
I don't know why some people seem to hate that so much. Like anything in writing, it can be done well or poorly. I'm suspicious of anyone who uses these kind of always\never expressions.
I like quotes at the beginnings of chapters and short stories if they serve to set a scene or hint at what is to come. A former Marine wrote a book about his boot camp and Vietnam experiences (name and title escape me at this moment) and began each chapter with an apt quote from Alice in Wonderland. Alice probably gets overused for beginning quotes, but in this case, the quotes added surrealism to the blunt prose of the narrative, imparting the book with an eerie off kilter realism that made me shiver. Ugh. It's going to drive me nuts until I recall the title of that book. 15 minutes later: HA! Mourning Glory by David J. Regan. Thought that braincell was dead, but it was merely lurking in the dark.
Can you say which quote? My reservation would be that Orwell is on lots of school reading lists and that makes him a difficult author to "bounce off", or cast new light on. Many readers will be able to recognise Orwell is being utilized or referred to without it needing to be signalled with a quote. And most readers will already have a fixed idea of how they interpret him. But having said that... 1. As soon as you go outside of 1984 or Animal Farm there's a huge drop-off in awareness 2. If the story is better with the quote, definitely put it in 'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman - (Harlan Ellison, 1965) springs to mind as a surrealist/dadaist story that references 1984. "So they sent him to Coventry. And in Coventry they worked him over. It was just like what they did to Winston Smith in "1984," which was a book none of them knew about, but the techniques are really quite ancient, and so they did it to Everett C. Marm, and one day quite a long time later, the Harlequin appeared on the communications web, appearing elfish and dimpled and bright-eyed, and not at all brainwashed, and he said he had been wrong, that it was a good, a very good thing indeed, to belong, and be right on time hip-ho and away we go, and everyone stared up at him on the public screens that covered an entire city block, and they said to themselves, well, you see, he was just a nut after all, and if that's the way the system is run, then let's do it that way, because it doesn't pay to fight city hall, or in this case, the Ticktockman." The whole story references 1984 so strongly that baldly pointing it out at the end becomes part of its constant deconstruction of itself. There might be an argument that quoting Orwell at the start of a story isn't anarchical enough
Personally, I think it just depends on the general structure of the story. Plenty of writers can pull it of the same way plenty of them can't. Cervantes talks about his struggle with this question in his prologue from Don Quixote. It's worth reading since he (and his friend) gives quite a bit of insight into the topic.
Does the story need it? Why? I'm not a fan of this practice, but I won't go as far to say it should never be done. It's just if the story is good, it should be good without it. But maybe you've got some reason it's better with it. Just make sure it's a damn good reason and not for anything showy. Also, I don't know, but would you or the publisher need to pay something to use the quote?
