AMERICAN NOTES: The Unyear

A reader, leafing through a lengthy study on the world food situation pre pared for next month's U.N. World Food Conference in Rome, might well be struck by a singular oddity: the many projections contained in the study all refer to the period between now and 1985.

And yet, one might muse, would it not have been more reasonable, since the conference is being held in 1974, to have made it an even ten-year period between now and 1984? Ah, but that puts an al together different connotation on the pronouncements.

It is a little early to tell, of course, but there does seem to be some evidence of an Orwellian irony in the making: be cause of the negative symbolic value of George Orwell's frightening vision of the future as contained in his novel 1984, a good many professional prophets would just as soon not refer directly to the year of the same name. No bureaucrat, how ever, is ready to confess such fears. A TIME correspondent went last week to that great clearinghouse of U.S. Government statistics, the Office of Management and Budget, and was told, "No body has anything against 1984; 1985 is a good round date, that's all."

Perhaps. But now that 1984 is well within the sights of the medium-range planners, what technocrat would care to prejudice his findings by observing, "Between now and 1984," as if he were say ing, "Between now and Armageddon . . ."? As it comes ever closer, the year 1984 may well become, like the 13th floor on the elevator bank, a rubric best bypassed.