amish drifting

and his resurrection. It was gin
that sank him into stupor every night, and gin that revived him every
morning. When he woke, seldom before eleven hundred, with gummed-up eyelids
and fiery mouth and a back that seemed to be broken, it would have been
impossible even to rise from the horizontal if it had not been for the
bottle and teacup placed beside the bed overnight. Through the midday hours
he sat with glazed face, the bottle handy, listening to the telescreen.
From fifteen to closing-time he was a fixture in the Chestnut Tree. No one
cared what he did any longer, no whistle woke him, no telescreen admonished
him. Occasionally, perhaps twice a week, he went to a dusty, forgotten-
looking office in the Ministry of Truth and did a little work, or what was
called 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 da