For fans of George Orwell, this is a nice collection of essay that reveal the brilliant mind behind 1984 and Animal Farm, among others. There’s critique of literature (e.g., of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer) & art (of Donald McGill), analysis of politics of the time (e.g., Spanish civil war and how British ruling class doesn’t understand Nazism), reminiscence of early school life, etc.

Da li bi zbirku eseja sa nekoliko sjajnih tekstova, trebalo oceniti najvišom ocenom? Možda su ocene pomalo detinjaste, ali ih je zabavno davati.

Nisam čitao Orvela (čak ni 1984), ali sam naleteo na njegov esej o radu britanskih rudara 1920-ih. Te slike su mi se urezale u pamćenje, pa ih sad redovno prepričavam svakome ko se žali kako mu je teško na poslu.

Taj esej nije u ovoj zbirci, već u Put za Vigan. Ali, zato su ovde skoro podjednako slikoviti Ubijanje slona, Vešanje i Kako umire sirotinja. Ovaj poslednji o uslovima u pariskoj bolnici dvadesetih godina.

Manje uzbudljivi za čitanje, ali na istom nivou su Razmišljanja o Gandiju, Tolstoj i Šekspir i Književnost i totalitarizam. U sva tri, Orvel sa puno strasti govori o svojim stavovima, kao što i kaže u naslovnom eseju:
"Ja pišem stoga što postoji neka laž koju želim razotkriti, neki čin na koji želim upozoriti, pa je moje osnovno nastojanje da me se sasluša. Ali ne bih mogao napisati knjigu ili čak neki članak, ukoliko to za mene ne bi bio i estetski doživljaj."

(Kad sam već kod strasti, tekst koji sam pročitao nekoliko puta je, najdirektnije rečeno, upustvo za pripremu dobrog engleskog čaja).

S obzirom na njegov stil, pretpostavljam da je Orvel trpeo slične kritike kao Hemingvej, da mu je proza suviše žurnalistička. Meni se sviđa. Ovde neki eseji imaju vrednost čitavih romana, pa sa esejima i nastavljam. Kataloniji u cast će da sačeka.

Having discussions lately about the topic that keeps academics in business, I guess: what is literature as opposed to other forms of fiction, I'd like to give access to this Orwell essay as a meaningful point of departure. I feel like I keep talking and arguing without any lines/definitions/meanings in place.

Good bad books. Essay by George Orwell. First published 2 November 1945.

Not long ago a publisher commissioned me to write an introduction for a reprint of a novel by Leonard Merrick. This publishing house, it appears, is going to reissue a long series of minor and partly-forgotten novels of the twentieth century. It is a valuable service in these bookless days, and I rather envy the person whose job it will be to scout round the threepenny boxes, hunting down copies of his boyhood favourites.

A type of book which we hardly seem to produce in these days, but which flowered with great richness in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is what Chesterton called the "good bad book": that is, the kind of book that has no literary pretensions but which remains readable when more serious productions have perished. Obviously outstanding books in this line are RAFFLES and the Sherlock Holmes stories, which have kept their place when innumerable "problem novels", "human documents" and "terrible indictments" of this or that have fallen into deserved oblivion. (Who has worn better, Conan Doyle or Meredith?) Almost in the same class as these I, put R. Austin Freeman's earlier stories--"The Singing Bone" "The Eye of Osiris" and others--Ernest Bramah's MAX CARRADOS, and, dropping the standard a bit, Guy Boothby's Tibetan thriller, DR NIKOLA, a sort of schoolboy version of Hue's TRAVELS IN TARTARY, which would probably make a real visit to Central Asia seem a dismal anticlimax.

But apart from thrillers, there were the minor humorous writers of the period. For example, Pett Ridge-but I admit his full-length books no longer seem readable--E. Nesbit (THE TREASURE SEEKERS), George Birmingham, who was good so long as he kept off politics, the pornographic Binstead ("Pitcher" of the PINK 'UN), and, if American books can be included, Booth Tarkington's Penrod stories. A cut above most of these was Barry Pain. Some of Pain's humorous writings are, I suppose, still in print, but to anyone who comes across it I recommend what must now be a very rare book--THE OCTAVE OF CLAUDIUS, a brilliant exercise in the macabre. Somewhat later in time there was Peter Blundell, who wrote in the W.W. Jacobs vein about Far Eastern seaport towns, and who seems to be rather unaccountably forgotten, in spite of having been praised in print by H.G. Wells.

However, all the books I have been speaking of are frankly "escape" literature. They form pleasant patches in one's memory, quiet corners where the mind can browse at odd moments, but they hardly pretend to have anything to do with real life. There is another kind of good bad book which is more seriously intended, and which tells us, I think, something about the nature of the novel and the reasons for its present decadence. During the last fifty years there has been a whole series of writers--some of them are still writing--whom it is quite impossible to call "good" by any strictly literary standard, but who are natural novelists and who seem to attain sincerity partly because they are not inhibited by good taste. In this class I put Leonard Merrick himself, W.L. George, J.D. Beresford, Ernest Raymond, May Sinclair, and--at a lower level than the others but still essentially similar--A.S.M. Hutchinson.

Most of these have been prolific writers, and their output has naturally varied in quality. I am thinking in each case of one or two outstanding books: for example, Merrick's CYNTHIA, J.D. Beresford's A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH, W.L. George's CALIBAN, May Sinclair's THE COMBINED MAZE and Ernest Raymond's WE, THE ACCUSED. In each of these books the author has been able to identify himself with his imagined characters, to feel with them and invite sympathy on their behalf. with a kind of abandonment that cleverer people would find it difficult to achieve. They bring out the fact that intellectual refinement can be a disadvantage to a story-teller, as it would be to a music-hall comedian.

Take, for example, Ernest Raymond's WE, THE ACCUSED--a peculiarly sordid and convincing murder story, probably based on the Crippen case. I think it gains a great deal from the fact that the author only partly grasps the pathetic vulgarity of the people he is writing about, and therefore does not despise them. Perhaps it even - like Theodore Dreiser's An AMERICAN TRAGEDY - gains something from the clumsy long-winded manner in which it is written; detail is piled on detail, with almost no attempt at selection, and in the process an effect of terrible, grinding cruelty is slowly built up. So also with A CANDIDATE FOR TRUTH. Here there is not the same clumsiness, but there is the same ability to take seriously the problems of commonplace people. So also with CYNTHIA and at any rate the earlier part of Caliban. The greater part of what W.L. George wrote was shoddy rubbish, but in this particular book, based on the career of Northcliffe, he achieved some memorable and truthful pictures of lower-middle-class London life. Parts of this book are probably autobiographical, and one of the advantages of good bad writers is their lack of shame in writing autobiography. Exhibitionism and self-pity are the bane of the novelist, and yet if he is too frightened of them his creative gift may suffer.

The existence of good bad literature - the fact that one can be amused or excited or even moved by a book that one's intellect simply refuses to take seriously - is a reminder that art is not the same thing as cerebration. I imagine that by any test that could be devised, Carlyle would be found to be a more intelligent man than Trollope. Yet Trollope has remained readable and Carlyle has not: with all his cleverness he had not even the wit to write in plain straightforward English. In novelists, almost as much as in poets, the connection between intelligence and creative power is hard to establish. A good novelist may be a prodigy of self-discipline like Flaubert, or he may be an intellectual sprawl like Dickens. Enough talent to set up dozens of ordinary writers has been poured into Wyndham Lewis's so-called novels, such as TARR or SNOOTY BARONET. Yet it would be a very heavy labour to read one of these books right through. Some indefinable quality, a sort of literary vitamin,
which exists even in a book like IF WINTER COMES, is absent from them.

Perhaps the supreme example of the "good bad" book is UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other. But UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, after all, is trying to be serious and to deal with the real world. How about the frankly escapist writers, the purveyors of thrills and "light" humour? How about SHERLOCK HOLMES, VICE VERSA, DRACULA, HELEN'S BABIES or KING SOLOMON'S MINES? All of these are definitely absurd books, books which one is more inclined to laugh AT than WITH, and which were hardly taken seriously even by their authors; yet they have survived, and will probably continue to do so. All one can say is that, while civilisation remains such that one needs distraction
from time to time, "light" literature has its appointed place; also that there is such a thing as sheer skill, or native grace, which may have more survival value than erudition or intellectual power. There are music-hall songs which are better poems than three-quarters of the stuff that gets into the anthologies:

Come where the booze is cheaper,
Come where the pots hold more,
Come where the boss is a bit of a sport,
Come to the pub next door!

Or again:

Two lovely black eyes
Oh, what a surprise!
Only for calling another man wrong,
Two lovely black eyes!

I would far rather have written either of those than, say, "The Blessed Damozel" or "Love in the Valley". And by the same token I would back UNCLE TOM'S CABIN to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies.

I haven’t been able to fully understand how it is that Orwell found a time machine came to our present time then went back to his time and wrote these essays. It’s hard to imagine how these essays were written in the thirties yet they remain so very relevant today.

"Politics and the English Language" alone is worth the price of admission. Sadly, this essay is as relevant today —if not more so — than it was in 1946.

We continue to wallow in a sea of mushy language and are drowning in propaganda and Newspeak.

And yet all the while, at the middle of one's heart, there seemed to stand an incorruptible inner self who knew that whatever one did — whether one laughed or snivelled or went into frenzies of gratitude for small favours — one's only true feeling was hatred.

I haven’t read all of Owell’s essays, and don’t intend to, but I’ve read enough where I want to review them. Not each essay, but as a general style, because Orwell is certainly one of the greatest essayists in the English language. Clear, succinct, and bullshit-free, he makes for easy reading but difficult digestion. The difficulty comes from the distilled truth pouring out of each page that makes me feel ashamed (perhaps that’s just my guilty conscious?). Orwell is one of those people who can look at a situation with frightening clarity, melting away all pretenses, illusions, and lies. My shame stems from my own lack of honesty; which is not to say that I’m dishonest, but only disingenuous. Note the irony in my distinguishing the two. That note is Orwell’s.

The man was poor his entire life and indeed died early from poverty. He was also a passive participant of British imperialism in his younger days, and it’s from those experiences that he saw, not just the evils of power, but its mask. Orwell knew how to spot power even as it attempted to disguise itself, which could all the more insidious because its subtlety. But he was passionately opposed to overt power as well, particularly in the form of fascism. He doesn’t actually have an essay that refutes fascism; it’s taken as a given. Orwell assumes we hate it instinctively. All he does from there is point out where its tentacles have spread, both in liberal democracies and communist states. Power is not merely a product of the 20th century—though it took new forms in that epoch—but a pervasive poison that encroaches on all parts of life at all times. Orwell trains us in calling it out.

Perhaps here we can mention a few essays. Politics and the English Language, the most famous one, is on one hand about bad writing but on the other a revelation that unjust power can only thrive on bad writing. Good writing retains a clarity that makes stupidity and cruelty easier to stop. Why I Write is his goals and history as a writer: perfect for anyone wanting to join the trade. The Hanging and Shooting an Elephant are stories from his job serving British imperialists, and infect us with their bizarre cruelty. Such, Such Were the Joys, and Reflections on Gandhi, and A Nice Cup of Tea, and Bookshop Memories and all his literary criticism, and his lectures on censorship, and his random observations are all wonderful. I’m sorry if this isn’t helpful, but really the best advice I can give is to just read them all. Read every word. If you’re shy, then pick an essay and wander through it and you’ll get a sense pretty quickly if Orwell is your man. He’s certainly mine.

Christopher Hitchens once separated writers into two classes: ones that encourage us to write—with their simplicity and honesty—and ones that make us wonder why we bother, or feel ashamed at ever having tried—masters of language that seem not of this world. Orwell strictly belongs in the former class. His words invite our words because all it takes is courage, an eye for truth, and a pen. As a reader we can feel fog being lifted from our eyes, and it's sobering. Suddenly, in any situation, at any time, we can see how things really are. We can cut away all the bullshit and unmask the executioner, revealing him for what he is. The chief feeling I get while reading these essays is something akin to anger, a quiet defiance that burns in my heart and won’t let go. It’s not the battle-cry of a warrior or the tirade of a politician. It’s the perseverance and pride of a gaunt, poor writer, living in a smoker’s den, hungry from not having eaten and trying not to worry about the rent, kept alive only by his writing, agonizing and ignored, but forcing him to keep going all the same. I know Orwell didn’t like saints, and certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be considered one himself, but if that’s not martyrdom I don’t know what is.

It would be wrong to say that I fell in love with George Orwell at first sight. Not at all. When I first read 1984 I loved his writing, but I wasn't mature enough to grasp its meaning. Then followed Animal Farm. And guess what? :) I simply loved it! And after reading it I decided to give myself another chance and read 1984 again. That's when I desperately fell in love with it. I fell in love with everything about that book - with the meaning, with the majestic characters, with Orwell's beautiful writing.
Everyone knows that Orwell was a great writer and after reading these essays one can hardly avoid seeing that Orwell was a great human being as well.

The Spike (1931)
A hanging (1931)
Bookshop memories (1936)
Shooting an elephant (1936)
Down the mine (1937) (from “The Road to Wigan Pier”)
North and south (1937) (from “The Road to Wigan Pier”)
Spilling the Spanish beans (1937)
Marrakech (1939)
Boys’ weeklies and Frank Richards’s reply (1940)
Wells, Hitler and the world state (1941)
Mark Twain — the licensed jester (1943)
Poetry and the microphone (1943)
W B Yeats (1943)
Arthur Koestler (1944)
Benefit of clergy: Some notes on Salvador Dali (1944)
Antisemitism in Britain (1945)
Freedom of the park (1945)
Future of a ruined Germany (1945)
Good bad books (1945)
In defence of P. G. Wodehouse (1945)
Nonsense poetry (1945)
Revenge is sour (1945)
The sporting spirit (1945)
You and the atomic bomb (1945)
A good word for the Vicar of Bray (1946)
A nice cup of tea (1946)
Books vs. Cigarettes (1946)
Confessions of a book reviewer (1946)
Decline of the English murder (1946)
How the poor die (1946)
Pleasure spots (1946)
Riding down from Bangor (1946)
Some thoughts on the common toad (1946)
The prevention of literature (1946)
Why I write (1946)
Lear, Tolstoy and the fool (1947)
Such, such were the joys (1947)
Writers and Leviathan (1948)
Reflections on Gandhi (1949)

Some of these I'd come across in other Orwell books, so only read the essays I hadn't. What can I say, he was simply a great writer of non-fiction. Whatever the subject, he is always just so interesting to read. He could write about doing the washing up and it would probably be good.

n  What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art.n

George Orwell is one of the inescapable writers of the last century. Far from becoming irrelevant, his works seem to become more significant with each passing year (as most recently evidenced by the present administration’s strained relationship with the truth). Orwell himself said that the “final test of any work of art is survival,” and his works seem on track to pass this final test. His dystopian novel recently became a surprise best-seller, almost seventy years after its initial publication. That is more than mere survival.
tt
And yet it isn’t for his political insights that I opened this collection of essays. It was rather—and I feel somewhat silly saying this—for his writing style. Orwell’s writing is, for me, a model of modern prose. His style can accommodate both the abstract and the concrete, the homely and the refined, the pretentious and the vulgar; his prose can satisfy both the academic and the artist, the intellectual and the layperson, the Panurge and the parish priest. It is unmistakably modern, even sleek, while obviously informed by the tastes and standards of the past. It is fiery, angry, and political, while remaining intimate, human, and honest.
tt
Something that repeatedly struck me while reading this collection was an inner conflict in Orwell’s worldview. There are two sides of the man, sometimes in harmony, and sometimes at odds: the writer and the activist. Orwell the writer is captivated by the rhythms of words, the sounds of sentences; he loves ruminating on a strange personality or a memorable story; he is enchanted by the details of daily life. Orwell the activist is outraged at injustice and uncompromising in his moral sense; he sees people as a collection of allies and enemies, taking part in a grand struggle to bring about a better society, or a worse one.
tt
Orwell himself discusses this tension in his little essay, “Why I Write.” In a more peaceful age, he thinks, he could have been an entirely aesthetic writer, perhaps a poet, not paying much attention to politics. It was his firsthand experience of imperialism, poverty, and fascism that activated his political conscience. Specifically, it was the Spanish Civil War that “tipped the scale” for him: “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.”
tt
Be that as it may, Orwell seems to have repeatedly struggled to reconcile this aim with his more humanistic side. In his brilliant essay on Dickens, for example, he spends page after page trying to analyze Dickens as a kind of social philosopher, examining Dickens's views on work, on the state, on education, and so on. Since Dickens was anything but a philosopher—as Orwell himself admits—this repeatedly leads to frustrating dead ends, and fails completely to do justice to Dickens’s work. It is only in the last section, where Orwell drops this pretense and treats Dickens as a novelist, that the essay becomes deeply insightful. Indeed, it soon becomes clear—it seems clear to me, at least—that Orwell likes Dickens for his writing, and not his activism, however much he may wish to think otherwise.
tt
Other essays exhibit this same tension. In his essay on vulgar postcard art, for example, he notes how backward is the social worldview expressed in the cards; but he is obviously quite fond of them and even ventures to defend them by likening their humor to Sancho Panza’s. His essay on boy’s magazines follows an identical pattern, exposing their conservative ideology while betraying a keen interest in, even a warm fondness for, the stories. In his appreciative essay on Rudyard Kipling’s poems, he even goes so far as to defend Kipling’s political views, at least from accusations of fascism.
tt
It is largely due to Orwell’s influence, I think, that nowadays it is uncontroversial to see the political implications in a movie cast or a Halloween costume. In all of these essays, Orwell worked to undermine the naïve distinction between politics and everyday life, showing how we absorb messages about standards, values, and ideologies from every direction. He did not merely state that “All art is propaganda,” but he tried to show it, both in his analyses and his own fiction. At least half the time, he is utterly convincing in this. (And indeed, Orwell was such a brilliant man that, even when I think he’s involved in a pointless exercise, he makes so many penetrating observations along the way— incidentally, parenthetically—that his writing fully absorbs me. )
tt
We owe a tremendous debt to Orwell for this insight. Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking that there is something terribly limiting about this perspective. All art may be propaganda, but it is not only propaganda; it is not even primarily so. There needs to be room in criticism, as in life, for the non-political. We need to be able to enjoy a novelist because of his characters and not his views on the state, a poet for his lines rather than his opinions, a dirty joke or a trashy magazine just because we want a laugh and a break. Orwell would agree with me up to a point, I think, but would also say that every decision to be “non-political” implicitly accepts the status quo, and is therefore conservative. This may be true; but it is also true that such "non-political" things are necessary to live a full life.
tt
Where I most disagree with Orwell is his conviction that the media we consume—magazines, post cards, popular novels, television—nefariously and decisively shape our worldview. For my part, I suspect that people absorb their opinions more from their community, face-to-face, and then seek out media that corresponds with their pre-existing views: not the reverse. Media may reinforce these views and give them shape and drive, but I don’t think it generates them.
tt
All this is besides the point. I admire Orwell, for his fierce independence, for his sense of outrage and injustice, for his facility with words, for his attempt to blend art and truth. In other words, I admire both the writer and the activist, and I think his work should be read until judgment day.

"Ütopya kuran hemen hemen herkes, dişi ağrıyan, dolayısıyla mutluluğun da diş ağrısı çekmemek olduğunu düşünen o adamı andırır."

Bilimkurgu, şiir ve Britanya coğrafyası yazarlarına Orwell gözünden bakmayı çok sevdim.

This is the sort of rare book one can read every five or ten years and each time thoroughly enjoy it and get more out of it.
Orwell will never stop being relevant and brilliant. His scalpel-like intelligence and incisive examination of a subject are always vital and brilliant.
It's hard to pick favourites in this collection. His literary essays are great, in particular the essays examining Dickens, Henry Miller and Kipling are, to my mind, almost the definitive word on their subjects.
Part of what makes Orwell so valuable was his ability to look inside the mind of totalitarianism. To examine the mental state of totalitarian regimes and their willing accomplices. His essays regarding the mental gymnastics of communists and Stalin fanboys are priceless and are relevant today when you encounter some of the mental midgets in various leftist movements.
His essays on Imperialism and Nationalism are the best examination of these subjects that i've ever read.
A book to keep and re-read every few years.