Neil Downing

Neil Downing (b. 2 January 1935 in Skibbereen, Ireland) is an Irish writer and musician best known for reworking classic dystopian literature into the cultural context of the hippy culture, and anti-war protests in particular, of the late 1960s.

Influences

Dystopian Literature

Downing was primarily influenced by two of the most famous British dystopian authors of the 20th century, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell. His two best known novels are reworkings of those authors' most famous tomes, Huxley's Brave New World and Orwell's 1984, called Goodly Creatures and 1967, respectively.

Philosophy

His philosophies were probably framed by the American philosopher Andrew Spencer, with whom he lived in Limerick, Ireland for a brief period between 1956 and 1957. Like Spencer, Downing was concerned with the human condition and the changing nature of masculinity in the face of economic and social development.

Music

During his formative years, Downing was heavily influenced musically by the Delta blues movement, but it was the music of the late '60s hippy culture, such as Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix that would have the most profound effect on his musical work, which can be found packaged with his literature in the first pressing of each of his publications. He maintains that only 50 copies of each recording should be circulated, for reasons discussed in the essay "From Hand to Head", which deals with the organic nature of music and the power of "word of mouth". He also had a love in later years or the music of Big Tom and Joe Dolan which helaped influence his later novel "Spit on me dickie,a night with the showbands",which was deemed his greatest work to date.

Works

Novels

• 1967 (1976), in which Downing reworks George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984. Note that, as Orwell had switched the last two digits of the year in which he wrote the book, 1948, to get 1984, so Downing turned 1976 into 1967. The significant difference is that, while Orwell's novel was a foray into the possible future, Downing's was a look back at how he envisaged the social change of the late sixties, with particular reference to the Summer of Love. The Ministry of Truth is present in 1967 but in this case it deals primarily with music, rather than newspapers and fiction, and alludes to professional pop songwriters churning out sub-standard songs to satiate the mass market. The most popular album in the novel's world is titled Prolefeed, a reference to the literary output of Orwell's Minitrue.
• Goodly Creatures (1979) was Downing's take on Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. The obsession with promiscuous [...] and [...] use in Brave New World allows for easy comparison with '60s hippy culture, but Downing focussed on the positive elements such as cultural diversity, art and literature, which are not present in Huxley's world. Downing compares family planning centres to Huxley's Department Of Hatcheries and Conditioning.
• Peninsula (1982) is Downing's reworking of Aldous Huxley's Island. As The Title suggests, the world of Peninsula is not as far removed, physically, from the Western world as Huxley's Pala is from Contemporary society. Indeed a major theme of the work is the relationship between inhabitants of the pseudo-utopian commune and the "invaders" from "the Outside". In contrast with Island, Peninsula's main protagonist, Billy, seeks to find common ground between the two worlds, unlike Will Farnaby of Island, who cannot see how the Palanese and Greater Rendang cultures could possibly cohabit peacefully.

Short Story Collections

• The Most Bizarre Thing Ever (1983)
• You Do Get That (1987)

Trivia

• Downing's educational background did little to set him up as a writer and musician: he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Limerick.
• While studying at the University of Limerick, he lived with the American philosopher Andrew Spencer.
• Goodly Creatures takes its title from the same speech by Miranda in Shakespeare's The Tempest from which Huxley's Brave New World is taken.