Ministry of Reshelving

The Ministry of Reshelving has hatched an idea that seems to be gaining momentum. It originated with Jane McGonigal of the blog Avant Game.

This fall, I hope as many of you as possible will be able to participate in the reshelving project pertaining to Orwell's 1984. It works like this:

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore (available at the Avant Game blog). Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

Although 1984 has arrived 20 years late, its impact has been the same as if it got here right on time. The perpetual war has already begun (although we haven't switched enemies, from Eurasia to Eastasia yet), and the impoverishment of all but the super-rich proceeds apace.

Big Brother's in his Big White House and all's right with the world. As the heretic and traitor (and a shining role model for all of us he assuredly is) Emmanuel Goldstein accurately observed, "At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother is infallible and all-powerful. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from his leadership and inspiration...Big Brother is the guise in which the Party chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a focusing point for love, fear, and reverence, emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization."

(From the Signet Classic Edition, p. 208)