George Orwell: C/D, S/D

S: nonfiction
D: fiction

So many great (and largely unknown) essays written between England's entry into WWII and 1946.

I know he's not real popular 'round here these days, but Hitchens' Orwell thing (still his best recent book) expertly nails a guy who could think his way through his ambivalences and take principled moral stands; he nails why Orwell's misunderstood by the left and right.

What, because Orwell is closer to a pragmatist than an idealist?

He's a pragmatist as only a disillusioned idealist can be. How can you not be when you've lived through the collapse of several ideologies in the course of ten years?

orwell was a man of principle, which is quite a different thing from being an idealist.

Sure, but he was both! The man of principle, as shown in "Shooting An Elephant" and Homage to Catalonia, has an innate sense of decency; but in the mid thirties, just before Stalinism crushed remaining sympathy for Soviet-style communism, the man of principle believed in a couple of ideals.

> "Shooting An Elephant" and Homage to Catalonia

Two of my favorite things evar.

Yes, you read his essays and you can see him giving up his ideals a hair later than he probably would have liked in retrospect, but much sooner than most of his peers did.

But if that was Hitchens' point then he might be misreading both the left and right.

Hitchens argues that left and right are besotted with ideals at the expense of principle.

Isn't there a Sontag essay where she bags on Orwell and Camus (moreso the latter) for being moral/intellectual weaklings because their 'principled stands' were too easy or something?

(nb: love Orwell & Camus, don't particularly care about Sontag)

But doesn't Hitchens' logic seem a bit off there? The ideals of individuals, put to the test in the real world, tend to get tempered by pragmatism, or else nothing usually gets done. But the ideals of groups that are defined by those ideals, especially when those ideals are mainly expressed in rhetoric rather than action, those can remain idealistic. You can suggest that someone like Clinton gave up ideals but also did badly with principles, but I'm not sure "the left" or "the right" exist except as a repository for ideals.

am i missing many of orwell's essays if i only own the big hardcover everyman's library collection? is it worth buying all four volumes of that 'collected works' if i don't care much about reading his letters?

Penguin Classics do a collection of his essays with his main works included.

^^^ devoured that book, including the long thing about late-1930s british boys' magazines

His best essays are ultra-classics. Many of them are already mentioned in this thread.

My favorite of his books was Down and Out in London and Paris, which I read perhaps four times before I was 35. Homage to Catalonia is also ace, for its mix of personal experience and the precision with which he was able to disentangle the politics of the Spanish Civil War from within. Given how convoluted those politics were, it was a major feat of clear thinking and clear writing.

The Road to Wigan Pier is not as good, mainly because it is a report of an experience lived less intensely and more resembles a sociological document.

His fiction is readable, but a bit meh. His two best known, Animal Farm and 1984 are also his best fiction. Both are somewhat wooden, but because fables and allegories are allowed to be heavy handed this becomes less of a blemish in that context. It was cold war politics that elevated them to the status of classics, not so much their intrinsic merit as novels.

orwell was a man of principle, which is quite a different thing from being an idealist.

otm

Is he the most misused/misappropriated figure in literature? I was thinking about this in light of the last edition of the NOTW, as well as thousands of semi-literate 'libertarians' ans Republicans.

i used to be really down on 1984 because it's didactic and kinda boring and then i realized that pretty much every concept or plot point or invented vocabulary word in it is now used all the time to describe things we didn't used to have words for, which is an achievement.

xp there was something on the corner the other day about evil liberals trying "to claim orwell for the left".

Apparently, writers on the corner are pompous idiots. (oh wait. I knew that already.)

kinda boring!

I only read 1984 a couple of years ago. In my lifetime I've known a couple of O'Brien's.

i think 'a hanging' is probably the orwell that affected me most -- very hard to be in favor of the death penalty after you read that.

really enjoying this pasting:

https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/11/20/ive-enough-george-orwell/

orwell was a bit of a twat.

he considered anyone who brought up race and racism to him in the context of leftist spaces as being "anti-white" and would bristle at the temerity of suggesting that his whiteness and their racialized status could have any bearings on their interpersonal relationships.

famously wrote 1984 on an estate on the beautiful land historic island of jura. hated scottish people.

joined the home guard because he thought that WWII would precipitate revolution and the home guard would be a leftist militia or something equally as daft.

his writing is not beautiful.

Saw this yesterday:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQ8l6HSCWBw

Reminded me of Chris Marker's Grin Without a Cat in scope, although I prefer the Marker film. Lots of clips from both 984s, plus a television production of it. Found the concluding thought a little specious.

1984s...

I hope it covers his activities as a grassing nark cunt who worked for British SIS, that is an element to him that is fatal to ignore imo

It wasn't quite worded that way, but yes, that was in there; also his time working for the BBC. (All the narration was Orwell's own words, I believe.)

sorry if I sounded a bit rude, but really detest this guy and the respect afforded his legacy. The older I get the more keenly I feel he was just basically the Paul Mason of the 1940's (with slightly less embarrassing essays and novels) and just a grotesque cryptofascist cunt who (if being honest) would have congratulated the Nazis for murdering Greek communists etc.

uhh, he fought in an anarchist militia in spain, didn't he?

yes, but also he became a right-wing, reactionary SIS agent nark.

well Catalonia really expresses his growing contempt for the soviet advisors and party members on the Republican side, which I guess he expanded on in 1984

It's probably a stretch comparing him to Mason who started out being really oddly weird in 2015 by being funded by some Mi6 group to deal with Russian disinformation. But then just went all in on bringing down Corbynism instead, and then years later made an insane, amphet and spice addled dynamic chart that showed how anyone Corbyn adjacent was part of a pro-Putin network of anti-Nato, anti-Western terrorists.

I guess Orwewll's brain melted in a similar way when he was a pathetic withered dying man with nothing more than a will to grass up communist and socialist activists to the British secret services.

I hate his stupid fucking books as well

I've only read two--1984 and Down and Out... and they were both incredible.

Wait. Because Orwell never congratulated the Nazis for murdering Greek communists, to your way of thinking this just proves he was dishonest?

Meant to write "and thought they were both"--I generally try to frame such gradiose statements subjectively.

Or grandiose...focus, clemenza.

1984 & Animal Farm are actually the oddball fantasy books in his catalog... most are pretty astute social commentary, and his collected essays have some interesting things in there as well (though my paperback copy is literally falling apart in my hands)

He was also a colonial, born in empire and I think that informs some of his opinions as well

xp

Just saying if you are dobbing up UK communists and socialists to the fascist UK state secret police in the 40's, then yes, you are ultimately a fascist. There is no complexity there. The British secret services never tried to get agents into the British Union of Fascists. Because they were considered a pro-monarchy, counter-insurgent political force. But without fail they have always penetrated left-wing groups, communist groups, anti-war groups etc.. Orwell was never on any of these people's sides because he was a lame fucking posh kid who liked to talk about how hard it was to be a part of a colonial police force, just for likes and clicks!

Orwell had an understanding of the empire from the inside which he expresses well in his essay about killing an elephant. He wrote extensively about his experiences in 'public' (i.e posh private) schools because he knew this training was integral to the imperial machinery. He entered adulthood with a well-founded and well-developed critique of imperialism/capitalism and a strong belief in socialism.

What broke his theoretical constructs around socialism was the reality of Stalinism, especially as it affected the anarchists he fought with in the Spanish Civil War. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact only confirmed those experiences and solidified his complete rejection of Stalinism as a perversion and betrayal of socialism. His choices circa 1940 were to retreat from politics, or choose among the players in the vast global power struggle that was WWII. Once the Nazis were militarily defeated, he turned his attention toward Stalinism. He died before Stalin did. It's hard to say how he would have reacted to the long Cold War. It was a hard time to be a man of principle then, just as now.

yeah but he never really had any principles. A grass/snitch/nark is someone who is devoid of principles and that is something posh people can argue about the vagaries of. But people like me who grew up in the poor parts of England, we just know the guy was a pure piece of shit and will back at his legacy askance, like just wondering why anyone would take such an obvious state actor so seriously.

fuck Animal Farm

lol state actor is probably the entirely wrong term. But just basically a total cunt

Came across this quote someone felt fit to put on a tea towel.

https://radicalteatowel.co.uk/media/catalog/product/cache/f3020b7489dcfc4d1d147cf4dad07b7f/1/3/134-tea-towel-george-orwell__80349.jpg

What a load of bollocks, it means loads of things before that.

He's just saying it is undeniably one of a constellation of rights that must be included in the concept of freedom. He doesn't place that right at the very top of some hierarchy of rights.

so basically you need to desire oppression to hear what evokes liberty??? what wwhat what Right. OK. This guy really is a dumb fucking cunt.

you need to desire oppression to hear what evokes liberty?

say what?

thanks Aimless, for reminding why in your inimitable fucking style why76 I never read your fucking posts!

76 was a typo!

as we can see, he's always a polarising figure

I'm not sure you britishers understand freedom of speech in the same way we amerikaners do.

he was an Mi5 asset, so that might be a bit disqualifying re: FOS. Your type of amerikaners also thought Obama was a good guy. Also disqualifying, because he was also an evil lying piece of shit.

I used to think Homage To Catalonia was his Great Work until I was disabused of that by Paul Preston on this Alexei Sayle podcast - https://audioboom.com/posts/7891227-a-is-for-anarchy

1. do we even know that's a real quote
2. what is a tea towel
3. nothing stopping anybody from using it as a dog pee towel

I could swear Bob Marley said that

Things you like that are not socially acceptable to like

1. they have nothing to do with tea
2. they aren't used as towels
3. british people get them as standard souvenirs as you might a tote bag

https://radicalteatowel.co.uk/george-orwell-tea-towel

what are they used for? the only limit is your imagination

I'm just glad that George Orwell died, lie down snitch. Tea towels are the UK equivalent of erm.. god knows ... I dry dishes and cups with them after not even being sure if they actually are tea towels.

(Had no idea there was a whole leftist tea towel scene)

Americans call them dishrags

... and mine are filthy

Politics and the English language except only the latter

filthy bloody dishrags (hugh grant voice) I'm just ready to commit suicide over these filthy bloody dishrags

It was from the (unoriginally published) preface to Animal Farm. In the context of some of the left being uncomfortable with (barely veiled) criticism of the USSR in the '40s I don't understand the fuss.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/orwell/1945/preface.htm

er, originally unpublished

He belongs in British hell, his propagandistic books belong in the bin.

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/a-nice-cup-of-tea/

Possibly as close as he got to addressing the issue of tea towels?

Exactly the kind of sternly whimsical rules-based wank that makes me want to leave this country again ASAP

Remember this Spanish girl in a class with me at Birkbeck who said the most confusing thing about England was how everyone insisted there was a "proper" way to do almost anything (the module was Intercultural Communication so this wasn't an unsolicited comment)

lol, in my admittedly minimal experience that definitely tracks

i do know what a dish towel is!