ALL WISDOM ABOUT ORWELL BEGINS...:

-REVIEW ESSAY: Such, Such Was Eric Blair: a review of Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays by George Orwell, compiled and with an introduction by George Packer; All Art Is Propaganda: Critical Essays by George Orwell, compiled by George Packer, with an introduction by Keith Gessen; and Why I Write by George Orwell (Julian Barnes, 3/12/09, NY Review of Books)

It would surprise, and doubtless irritate, him to discover that since his death in 1950 he has moved implacably toward NT status. He is interpretable, malleable, ambassadorial, and patriotic. He denounced the Empire, which pleases the left; he denounced communism, which pleases the right. He warned us against the corrupting effect on politics and public life of the misuse of language, which pleases almost everyone. He said that "good prose is like a window pane," which pleases those who, despite living in the land of Shakespeare and Dickens, mistrust "fancy" writing. He distrusted anyone who was too "clever." (This is a key English suspicion, most famously voiced in 1961 when Lord Salisbury, a stalwart of the imperialist Tory right, denounced Iain Macleod, secretary of state for the colonies and member of the new reforming Tory left, as "too clever by half.")

Orwell used "sophisticated" and "intellectual" and "intelligentsia" as terms of dispraise, hated Bloomsbury, and not just expected but hoped that the sales of Uncle Tom's Cabin would outlast those of Virginia Woolf. He was scathing about social elites, finding the ruling class "stupid." In 1941 he declared that Britain was the most class-ridden country on earth, ruled by "the old and silly," "a family with the wrong members in control"; yet he also recognized that the ruling class was "morally fairly sound" and in time of war "ready enough to get themselves killed." He described the condition of the working class with sympathy and rage, thought them wiser than intellectuals, but didn't sentimentalize them; in their struggle they were as "blind and stupid" as a plant struggling toward the light.

Orwell is profoundly English in even more ways than these. He is deeply untheoretical and wary of general conclusions that do not come from specific experiences. He is a moralist and a puritan, one who, for all his populism and working-class sympathies, is squeamish about dirt, disgusted by corporal and fecal odors. He is caricatural of Jews to the point of anti-Semitism, and routinely homophobic, using "the pansy left" and "nancy poets" as if they were accepted sociological terms. He dislikes foreign food, and thinks the French know nothing about cooking; while the sight of a gazelle in Morocco makes him dream of mint sauce. He lays down stern rules about how to make and drink tea, and in a rare sentimental flight imagines the perfect pub.

He is uninterested in creature comforts, clothes, fashion, sport, frivolity of any kind, unless that frivolity—like seaside postcards or boys' magazines—leads to some broader social rumination. He likes trees and roses, and barely mentions sex. His preferred literary form, the essay, is, as George Packer observes, quintessentially English. He is a one-man, truth-telling awkward squad, and what, the English like to pretend, could be more English than that? Finally, when he rebranded himself, he took the Christian name of England's patron saint. There aren't too many Erics in the lists either of saints or of national treasures. The only Saint Eric is Swedish, and he wasn't even a proper, pope-made saint.

...with the recognition that Keep the Aspidistra Flying is his battle cry.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 20, 2009 9:21 AM