work. He had been appointed to a sub-committee of a sub-committee
which had sprouted from one of the innumerable committees dealing with
minor difficulties that arose in the compilation of the Eleventh Edition of
the Newspeak Dictionary. They were engaged in producing something called an
Interim Report, but what it was that they were reporting on he had never
definitely found out. It was something to do with the question of whether
commas should be placed inside brackets, or outside. There were four others
on the committee, all of them persons similar to himself. There were days
when they assembled and then promptly dispersed again, frankly admitting to
one another that there was not really anything to be done. But there were
other days when they settled down to their work almost eagerly, making a
tremendous show of entering up their minutes and drafting long memoranda
which were never finished -- when the argument as to what they were
supposedly arguing about grew extraordinarily involved and abstruse, with
subtle haggling over definitions, enormous digressions, quarrels --
threats, even, to appeal to higher authority. And then suddenl