1954 • Doubleday Anchor Books
320 pages (paperback)
There is a telling letter written by George Orwell during his work on Nineteen Eighty-Four in which he responds to an offer of employment by Richard Usborne, editor of the Strand literary journal. The letter, which appears in an introduction to the Peter Davison-edited George Orwell: A Life in Letters, seems to indicate that the author had not only distrust of communism but misgivings about the socialism that formed a basis for his political thought. Orwell wrote:
I felt [at the time of The Road to Wigan Pier], as I still do, that there are huge deficiencies in the whole conception of Socialism, and I was still wondering whether there was any other way out. After having a fairly good look at British industrialism at its worst, ie. in the mining areas, I came to the conclusion that it is a duty to work for Socialism even if one is not emotionally drawn to it, because the continuance of present conditions is simply not tolerable, and no solution except some kind of collectivism is viable, because that is what the mass of the people want.
These remarks, which hadn't been published until an anonymous source recently came forward with the letter, seem to completely change the angle at which we can look at Orwell and his political commitments. What effect it will have on the interpretation of his life and works only time will tell. Yet it also reinforces the common idea of Orwell as a strong-willed man in the arenas of politics and ethics: though his faith in left wing movements wavered as the early Twentieth Century progressed, he saw his political path as the only one that could be taken and kept to it. Weaker-willed authors might jump ship in the face of adversity or slide into a bog of abstraction and vagueness, a popular decision for many of the artistically comfortable.
In reading doubts like this, we do have to wonder what was going through Orwell's mind as a writer of essays, where ideologies can't hide for a moment behind the characters and events of a novel. Orwell, who wrote for political magazines or was approached by other journals for his ability to write in a political context, always looked at his topics through a socialist lens. His essays, in fact, are never politically inactive or written with sentimentality; all seek to bring out the injustices of an ailing capitalist system and encourage their readers to push for change, regardless of whether he is writing about European militaries, movies, or Charles Dickens.While Orwell could never have gone to the right, it might be time to examine how much Orwell believed in what he was saying. Did Orwell actually think social revolution in England was possible when it had already failed miserably in Spain, a country where true revolution seemed to be happening? And as a respecter of English traditions - so much that he asked to be buried under the auspices of the Anglican Church - did he really envision England's economic strata to come down in such a rigid society? Questions like these, in light of new sources, make it worth reading Orwell's essays again.
The 1954 paperback release of Orwell's major essays by Doubleday Anchor is a comprehensive set that includes writings from the 30s, 40s, and 50s. There are 14 in all, opening with his memoir à clef 'Such, Such Were the Joys...' on English boarding school life and ending with his equally personal 'Why I Write,' written towards the end of his life in 1947. Also included are his famous essays on Dickens and Kipling, his psuedo-memoir of British policing in Burma 'Shooting an Elephant,' his writing treatise 'Politics and the English Language,' and 'England Your England,' a love-hate evaluation of English life written in the thick of World War II.
Anyone who has read Orwell's novels but not his essays may be surprised by the difference in style. While Orwell continues to use a simple yet eloquent language, his essays do not have the same compactness or liveliness of his books. Most are dry, gradual reads with a unique kind of organization. He will often begin a topic and then introduce other points that seem incongruous, eventually connecting the threads at some point. The reader needs a good deal of patience as his arguments unreel like a tape deck.
Not coincidentally, the most memorable of his essays are first-person narratives with the vivid detail of his novels. In 'Shooting an Elephant,' Orwell brilliantly puts himself in the middle of Burma, flanked on one side by an elephant who has just stomped a villager and on the other by a swarm of people who have come to perhaps watch the animal being rifled. In 'Marrakech,' written after Orwell's visit to Morocco, things are just as gruesome. The essay begins with a group of men carrying a dead person to the town graveyard in a single rag, winning the attention of flies from a restaurant they are passing.
There are other cases like the opening essay, 'Such, Such Were the Joys...,' that pack a similar wallop in describing social injustices of Orwell's time. 'Such' is an essay that was left by Orwell in manuscript upon his death and describes his time as a boarding student at St. Cyprian's in East Sussex. Orwell, who attended on free tuition due to his family's lower income, paints a brutal picture of dirty living conditions, sexual repression, and constant shame from the husband and wife who administered the school. Not mentioning the school or its people by their actual names, he begins with a deadpan first sentence that is typical of Orwell's first-person writing: "Soon after I arrived at Crossgates [i.e., St. Cyprian's]...[ ]...I began wetting my bed."
Perhaps what adds to the draw of Orwell is that he can't straight away be called a genius, or at least a genius in the traditional sense. Orwell's approach to thinking has a sheer practicality about it, even if he's a more emotionally complicated man than first assumed. While broad in perspective and offering a look into both popular culture ('The Art of Donald McGill,' 'Raffles and Miss Blandish') and socioeconomic dilemmas, none of Orwell's writing gives a whiff of stuffy intellectualism.
His thoughts were also considerably flawed at times, which allows us to loosen our collars and stop viewing his work as suspiciously clean. Orwell, for instance, has too much to say on certain topics he doesn't know enough about, one glaring example being American history. His opinions are appropriately inaccurate for a man who has never been to the U.S. (unfortunately, American slaves did experience the breakup of families, unlike what he seems to think in 'Looking Back on the Spanish War').
Orwell argues in 'Why I Write' that no piece of writing is genuinely free from political bias, even works that are decidedly apolitical. Because of this and his commitment to socialism, he will look at film, magazines, education, sports, and other areas of life from within this mindset. His political rhetoric often gets in the way of social observations that would be far more enlightening without it. While written for obvious reasons, even 'Boys' Weeklies,' an informative essay on boys' story magazines, turns into the politics of their publishers.
And are these kinds of weaknesses damaging to a major author's reputation? Not really, since those who appear right all of the time are more likely standing behind a veneer: they simply look too neat.
Orwell is more often talked about than read nowadays despite his work not being hard at all to read. Hopefully, there will be enough open minds left to revisit Orwell, which is essential after how much we already owe him for Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, the touchstone novels on western totalitarianism. Even if his political image looks different in the future, his contributions to human freedom and decency will not.
