John Reed (born February 7, 1969) is an American author and novelist. His novel Snowball's Chance, a parody of George Orwell's Animal Farm, received international press attention.

Quotes

• You get energy from [being hated]. The idea that one side of the political spectrum is more right than the other is ridiculous. Pretty much every issue in this country could be settled with a reasonable compromise. Then we could move on to the next thing. We could move on to the real question which is world domination. … We do have to take over or at least adopt a few more states or something.
  • Interview with Suicidegirls.com^{[dead link]}

• Orwell's defenders always look to contextualize Orwell's shortcomings in a historic moment. Whatever his infraction, he was a victim of circumstance—times were different then, and, for example, Hitler was looking really good for a minute there. Orwell never meant that his books should be employed to stultify schoolchildren. And yet that's what "Animal Farm" is—an educational missile aimed at any healthy impulse towards reform. The argument that "Animal Farm" is a generalized indictment of totalitarianism is simply unsupportable by the text or any existing presentation of the text. Rather, the intelligence of the pigs as opposed to the stupidity of the other animals, and the ultimate hopelessness of revolution, renders "Animal Farm" a de facto endorsement of the status quo.
  • Saint George and the Damn Truth

Quotes about John Reed

• As the World Trade Center massacre was happening, all New Yorkers probably formed ideas about who was responsible. But I suspect John Reed was the only one who blamed George Orwell.
  • John Strausbaugh, "Return to Animal Farm", New York Press, 8 October 2002