George Orwell
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 25
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
A first rate essayist, a third rate collection 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.
Giving less than five stars to a work by George Orwell, perhaps the greatest essayist and social critic of the 20th century makes me physically ill. Truly, were I making a determination on the works contained alone, I would want to give it six. Yet, readers should give serious consideration before purchasing this particular volume. While the works contained include some of Orwell's most memorable, the publisher offers zero context, either to the author, the period, or even where the works first appeared.
Some may say argue that it is up to the modern reader to have a sufficient background to understand these works; after all, isn't that what wikipedia is for? Yet the publisher here does not even do the minimum to aid the reader. One need look no further than the fact that the date these works first appeared is given at the end of each essay. Now this follows a literary convention common in Orwell's time, if less so in our own, but it seems feckless indeed to make the reader flip to the last page to determine when a particular work first appeared. Moreover, readers ignorant of the particulars of Orwell's biography and the period might take certain of his assumptions and statements way out of context. Examples abound of this, but lets look at one; in the brilliant and continually relevant "Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War," Orwell contrasts the atrocities of German fascists with Soviet Communists and determines that while both are evil, the former is clearly the worse. Now modern readers may balk at this, or at least be made uneasy thinking it a case not so clear cut. However, were the year Orwell wrote, 1943, at the beginning of the work, or better yet even a sentence or two of context offered to what Orwell knew, the reader would benefit from a far smoother experience.
None of these shortcomings, however, should be taken as Orwell being anything less than brilliant. Indeed, his keen mind and sharp pen eviscerated much of the social and political conventions of his time. For example, his in essay on Rudyard Kipling, the much beloved writer of the jungle book and reviled pro-Imperialist, Orwell balks at the conventional wisdom poking clever holes in the conventional wisdom of his day. Likewise, one wishes in the current milieu their lived an essayist able to write the following "Political language - and with variations this is true of all political parties, Conservative to Anarchist - is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." (Politics and the English Language, 1946). Or consider how much better American political discourse might be if every citizen considered the following "...atrocities are believed in or disbelieved solely on the grounds of political predilections. Everyone believes in the atrocities of the enemy and disbelieves in those of his own side, without ever bothering to examine the evidence....the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world (Looking Back on the Spanish Civil war, 1943).
All of this to say, is that Orwell remains as relevant as ever. One only wishes that this publisher gave him all the attention he is due so that readers can gain from his work the proper and full effect.
Editorial Review:
In this bestselling compilation of essays, written in the clear-eyed, uncompromising language for which he is famous, Orwell discusses with vigor such diverse subjects as his boyhood schooling, the Spanish Civil War, Henry Miller, British imperialism, and the profession of writing.
