Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell ebook

I'm not sure how to review George Orwell's fugitive pieces. He's one of my favorite writers, not necessarily for political reasons but because of his gumption and the clarity of his prose. On the other hand, few general readers will be interested in the specifics of what he discusses -- ideas, books and events that were topical even at the time, and that are forgotten now by all except those with a special interest in the topics. Personally, I've read and reread this four-volume collection many times since it was published. But that's me.

One of the best investments I've made as a writer. I've become acquainted with George Orwell as if having a daily conversation with him over breakfast or while crossing town on the bus. His struggles, frustrations and victories are all collected here from published essays to personal letters salvaged from one-of-a-kind carbon copies. I would love to have this series in my digital library, too.

ESSENTIAL...even david brooks, the arch conservative running dog, says that to learn to write, read orwell.

I bought it new, but what came in the mail was definitely old

fine

Orwell is popularly remembered as a novelist, due principally to the Anglo-Stalinist dystopia "1984". This popular memory does him a disservice. "1984" is gradually disappearing from the schoool curriculum; it's typical of our America that it began to go out of date after the annus notabilis in which the English-speaking world turned out to be listening to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, not Big Brother. I rather suspect that Huxley's "Brave New World" has turned out to be closer to the mark. "1984" remains of great value, but only when read with a keen sense of intellectual history. This isn't so common in modern America.

Reading Orwell's essays could change that. His essays (using that term loosely) are among the greatest topical pieces written in our language. Reading them, as I did in my early twenties, is an education in politics, history, and what clear, effective and truthful writing is like. Read just about anything dealing with current affairs today, then read a brief piece written by Orwell. You'll be struck by the clarity of Orwell's style and logic, and the clarity of his moral thinking. There is a relentless differentiation between right action, wrong action, and what circumstances render expedient. These are never confused, but there is no assertion of a bogus "moral clarity", that poison of modern America.

Orwell's peculiar genius, it seems to me, is that he throws relentless light on the intersection of private and public thought. We make intellectual and moral decisions based on our own knowledge, acquired by study and accident, and by our sense of right and wrong, again developed through individual effort and the (accidental) background of our home culture. Orwell readily reveals experiences and thoughts that many would have not dared to reveal, but only in the service of clarifying the intellectual and moral decisions we all must make if we are to behave in a way worthy of civilization and ourselves; there is nothing exhibitionist about his method, so different from what we frequently encounter today in America. Absolute honesty, personal and social, is indispensable for making these moral decisions. Yet Orwell remains a thoroughly private person; much of his life remained hidden. For me, the word "Orwellian" suggests this absolute but judicious honesty. It has nothing to do with double-talk dystopias.

There are several collections of Orwell's essays, and it may be that readers should start with one of those. But there is much to be gained by reading this collection which includes brief pieces published in daily newspapers and personal letters. The consistency of Orwell's thought and writing is astonishing. Every piece is worth reading.

This is the final volume in a four-volume uniform set of Orwell's occasional pieces, some of them of monumental literary and intellectual value, for all of their seeming simplicity. All four volumes justify throwing aside whatever else you might happen to be reading, but in this fourth volume, Orwell is at the height of his power (his forties; TB would kill him before he was fifty) and the world had entered the stage that is still, somewhat, our own. Included here are, among many other memorable pieces, his essay "You and the atomic bomb" (October 1945), a reportage on the pointlessness of revenge (a propos of the defeated Fascists and their triumphant enemies in occupied continental Europe), a piece on the common toad, and his statement upon the Bollingen Committee's awarding its annual prize for poetry to the Fascist Anti-Semite Ezra Pound. This last piece is masterpiece of legalist irony, odd when compared to Orwell's usual directness; it would be worthy of John Marshall.

I read this many years ago. I loved it but I am a huge Orwell fan. He wrote about his difficulties having some pieces published because of communist influences in the publishing industry. This included his reports that communists in the Spanish Civil War were killing socialists (like Orwell) fighting Franco. That was a surprise to me.

For years, I have been impressed by the quality of the essays in Dickens, Dali, and Others, Shooting an Elephant, and Such, Such Were the Joys. I was looking forward to reading more of Orwell's essays. I soon discovered, however, that Orwell's essays not published in book form shared all the faults of those that I had read, but few of the virtues.

Many cite Orwell's honesty as his primary virtue, but these essays reveal a man who is, if not dishonest, then at least quite blind to his own experiences. He states, without any supporting evidence, that "only Socialist nations can fight effectively" (p. 67, from The Lion and the Unicorn), despite the fact that he served in an army organized along socialist lines (as narrated on p. 255), if not the army of a socialist nation, five years prior to the publication of this statement; the army was defeated decisively by Generalissimo Franco's decidedly non-socialist forces.

Orwell also frequently resorts to name-calling. Those who disagree with him politically are almost invariably "reactionaries", "Fascists", or "pro-Fascist". Jack London is "not . . . a fully civilised man."; rather, he possesses a "streak of savagery". Any thought, expression, or even word of which Orwell disapproves is "vulgar", from the cartoon postcards of Donald McGill to Kipling's statement that "He travels the fastest who travels alone" to Yeats's use of the word (!) "loveliness" (Orwell also claims that "Yeats's tendency is Fascist." on p. 273).

It is clear to me after reading this volume that the editors who selected pieces for the three volumes of essays published during Orwell's lifetime made the right choices; they show him at his best. The rest of the material here is hardly worth reading except as a window into the soul of a man who was incapable of viewing the world except through the distorting lens of a commitment to socialism.