I hope it's better than his fiction.

As with the first two volumes, a fascinating read but particularly for Orwell fans. For them it's an essential read.

Plow through this one and one appreciates the pamphleteer at his finest.

An insight into the mind of Orwell that you don’t get from his more popular works. Short essays on a variety of topics, written in the midst of the Second World War, give a surreal glimpse of life at that time that I have felt anywhere else.

"While [Orwell] is best known for Animal Farm and 1984, most of his writing derived from his tireless work as a journalist, and thanks to David Godine’s welcome reissue of The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, which has been out of print for a decade, readers can find it all in one place. All of the author’s insightful, hard-hitting essays and journalistic pieces are here…the most complete picture of the writer and man possible."
—Eric Liebetrau | Kirkus Reviews

At last I finish the 4-volume collection of Orwell's non-novelistic writings. Well worth the slog, as could be imagined. This volume focuses on Orwell's column "As I Please" he wrote for The Tribune during the war years. There is a vast array of topics covered, the most interesting being his accounts of the everyday life of a Londoner during the war itself, shortages, rations, V-1s and V-2s, etc. Book reviews are at a minimum, there are some great essays on English life and culture (placed at the beginning) and reflections on nationalism, etc. Always great.

This is the third volume of Essays and Journalism by Orwell. The title As I Please comes from a column he wrote for the Tribune. Orwell writes confidently on all sorts of topics during World War II in this column.

This contrasts with Volume II covering the early parts of the war where he makes some very bad predictions based on current conditions. To his credit he addresses in Volume III his shortcomings of reporting/diagnosing the situation on the early years of the war.

Also included are excellent essays on anti-Semitism and Nationalism. The latter being particularly relevant for our days. The last inclusion is a preface that he wrote for the Ukrainian edition of Animal Farm. It is an excellent thumbnail biography

I thought this volume and the first are excellent with the second a disappointment.

One of the entertaining things about offering reviews of Orwell’s essays is that I find myself increasingly applying his own method of critique to what he himself says. This is actually a compliment, since it suggests that my own style of reviewing has become influenced by Orwell’s style of reviewing books.

This style is one of looking at the political and social significance of the books, and the views that the authors express, and Orwell uses this method throughout his reviews. In this volume, Orwell offers his judgements on a variety of writers, including Joseph Conrad, Arthur Koestler, P.G. Wodehouse and E.W. Hornung, James Hadley Chase and Oliver Goldsmith.

Naturally, Orwell always finds time to allude to other favourites of his, including Joyce, Dickens and Smollett. He even takes the time to write about Salvador Dali’s autobiography.

One of the most praiseworthy aspects of Orwell’s reviews is that he is able to separate his own political or moral opinions from making judgements about the aesthetics of a writer or (in Dali’s case) artist. In an age where people dismissed works they personally disapproved of as bad art, Orwell has a more nuanced approach, and he can recognise that it is still possible for something to be objectionable in its opinions, and yet still be good art.

One great pity is that Orwell is rather dismissive and uninterested in cinema, the great new art form that was producing many good works at the time. Perhaps one problem is that Orwell did not live in an age of television, let alone DVDs and videos, and so could not sit down and give those works the level of study that they deserve.

This leads to a number of what ifs in my mind. It would have been interesting to see what Orwell would have made of a film like The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, which both defends and critiques a class of people that Orwell often mentions slightingly.

Orwell’s political views are similarly nuanced. Unlike many left-wing people of his age, he is able to be patriotic about his country, though not nationalistic (he writes about this contrast in one essay here). Similarly he continues to criticise Soviet communism at a time when the left-wing intelligentsia were frequently blinded to what was going on in Russia.

In fact, it’s easy to forget that Orwell struggled to get Animal Farm published during the period of these writings (1943-1945), because it was actually unpopular to post a book that attacked the Russian Revolution. Orwell makes occasional allusions to this in his letters in this volume.

This opposition came from both the right (for whom Russia was a wartime ally) and the left (who were still reluctant to see anything bad in Russia). Orwell was writing Animal Farm in the brief time between two periods of anti-Communist feeling.

After the war, the right reverted to its usual anti-Communist stance as the Cold War began. The disillusionment of the left was to take longer, and perhaps only really took off when Kruschchev began to expose Stalinism for what it was. However, the evidence was there for everyone to see, as Orwell’s writings make clear.

Indeed, if I am to give this volume a title of my own (as I did with the first two volumes), I would be tempted to call it George Orwell Eats His Words, though I am aware that Orwell’s hatred of clichés would not make this a popular choice with him.

At various points in his writings in this volume, Orwell publicly admits that most of his predictions about the war were wrong, and he attributes it to wishful thinking on his part. He at least acknowledges his mistaken judgments, and promises to do better in future (though actually he continues to misjudge the situation, e.g. the likelihood of a Labour victory in 1945).

Orwell makes the perceptive point that people with a political agenda will never confess to being wrong, and that they will somehow find a subtle way of saying that their predictions were right after all. He at least does not do that, though it is fair to say that his errors on the matter mean that we should be wary about accepting all his judgments and analyses.

A large part of this volume is given over to Orwell’s articles for Tribune, called As I Please. Curiously, his style as a newspaper columnist is broadly similar to what we see in newspapers today – a little bit of political or literary analysis, accompanied by something trivial. It is surprising to find that newspaper journalism has changed so little in some respects.

By this time in his career, Orwell is relaxed in his writing style, and can discuss issues very confidently. He is not even above writing with great enthusiasm about rather mundane subjects such as cooking or tea.

As ever, this is suffused with a subtle patriotism, as in his account of the ideal English pub (The Moon Under Water), English cooking, how to make a cup of tea, and the English language, a concern of his that recurs in a few of the writings in this volume.

It may be my imagination, but the tone of Orwell’s writing is more light-hearted here than I have seen in earlier volumes. He may feel some worry with the political scene, but overall the tone is not one of pessimism or despondency, not even when his wife dies during this time.

Overall, this is another accessible volume of George Orwell’s non-fiction. His writings may be sweeping, dismissive, faintly rude and occasionally mundane, but there is always much to interest the reader. Orwell had a voice of his own – a no-nonsense and passionate one – and this comes across strongly in his writings during this period.

This is kind of a boring-looking book "letters and essays 1943-1945." When it showed up I wondered what I had been thinking and then every time I opened it I was shocked by just how interested in it I was. Orwell is so alarmingly sharp and honest, but what is maybe most remarkable is what good company he is. To me, much like David Foster Wallace, whenever I read Orwell I feel honored to be spending time with this person and that they are speaking to me so respectfully and companionably. There's so much interesting stuff in here on anti-semitism, nationalism, Orwell's unpopular anti-Soviet opinions within his circle of Socialism. Orwell's kind of contempt for Dali is pretty notable as well, which at first seemed like one of those long-forgotten disputes like Stravinsky vs. Schoenberg that now in retrospect seems a bit ridiculous but instead it made me think about how Orwell had gone to fight in the Spanish civil war and been shot in the throat, while Dali had thought of the role of the artist as above politics while living in the houses of wealthy aristocrats who were siding with Franco. I was never that big of a fan of Orwell's novels but his non-fiction is so alive. If you haven't read one of his non-fiction works I recommend them fully. Any of his collections of essays or Homage to Catalonia seem like great places to start. Orwell, you rule!

Volume 3 of this series is primarily made up of installments of a column called "As I Please," which Orwell wrote for Tribune, a socialist weekly where he was the literary editor. The columns are short, often broken up into two or three topics, and are about whatever was on Orwell's mind. He hits his usual themes, particularly the nature of socialism and fascism, but there's also a lot of variety. Many of the essays give the flavor of wartime England, describing the emptiness of the shops or the sounds of the V1 bombs falling. Others are a bit lighter: the 100th anniversary of Martin Chuzzlewit, ludicrous advertisements for writing advice, an annoying radio program, Orwell's most hated stale metaphors. The short length and variety of these pieces gives the book an enjoyable, zippy quality—but on the other hand, there are very few substantial essays, and the volume contains almost none of Orwell's most notable non-fiction. The best longer essay is probably the one about the autobiography of Dali.

If there is a larger theme, it's the disconnect between belief and reality. Orwell calls himself out for this, citing some of his writings from earlier in the war, where he states that a socialist revolution in England will be an inevitable outcome of the crisis. In hindsight, he admits that he wanted to believe this so much that it colored his perception of events. Orwell was writing Animal Farm during this time, and he's also focused on the Left's admiration of the Soviets and its inability to realize that Stalin is actually just another brutal totalitarian dictator. Well-meaning people want to believe that the socialist dream has become reality, so much so that they excuse or ignore obvious atrocities.

This theme also comes up in the essay on Dali. Orwell acknowledges that Dali is a brilliant artist who works hard to realize a unique vision. Orwell also thinks that Dali's vision is disgusting and immoral. He recognizes the difficultly of holding these two opinions.

If you say that Dali, though a brilliant draughtsman, is a dirty little scoundrel, you are looked upon as a savage. If you say that you don't like rotting corpses, and that people who do like rotting corpses are mentally diseased, it is assumed that you lack the aesthetic sense. Since 'Mannequin rotting in a taxicab' is a good composition (as it undoubtedly is), it cannot be a disgusting, degrading picture; whereas Noyes, Elton, etc. would tell you that because it is disgusting it cannot be a good composition. And between these two fallacies there is no middle position; or rather, there is a middle position, but we seldom hear much about it.

One of Orwell's great contributions is to speak those middle positions. Socialism is a good political philosophy, but socialist Russia is a bad regime. Violence is reprehensible, but a war against Nazi Germany is justified. The artist deserves freedom, but what he may say with that freedom can still be offensive. That ability to see the traps of thought that people so easily fall into (and even catch himself in them) is one of the reasons I have read so much of Orwell's writing.

Wow, Orwell really excels in these short formats where he needs to distil his thought to a few paragraphs. The titular "As I Please" Tribune column is really fantastic, and the other clear standout is his periodic "London Letter" to Partisan Review.

In this collection we witness how Orwell processed the fact that the war was not taking the predicted direction of his earlier 1940-42 work. Orwell predicted that England would either have a Socialist revolution, or would lose the war. His first candid admission of doubt around his prediction occurs in 1943, and in 1944 writes with certainty that he was wrong (although, funnily, he claims he was less wrong than contemporaries). Nevertheless, Orwell retains the belief that capitalism is doomed to turn into collectivism at some point, even though he admits that the most capitalist nation in the world at the time, the US, is the most capitalist.

To pick a good essay: Notes on Nationalism is fantastic and it defines what Orwell sees as a kind of sickness plaguing the world. By "nationalism" Orwell doesn't mean what you might usually think, instead he uses the term much more broadly to describe all systems of belief that require a dogmatic adherence to certain beliefs which can never be questioned. Orwell lists a number of influential nationalistic factions, right and left, and also provides some obvious truths that believers, as a rule, must collectively refuse to accept.

Highly recommended

I believe I've stated elsewhere that I would read Orwell write about paint drying. After this I think I'd have to recant that sentiment, as a lot of these reviews and "As I Please" columns seemed rather trivial, especially given the era in which they were written. I still love the man, the thinker and the writer, but I was disappointed by how little he addressed incredibly significant historical moments such as D-Day, Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the end of the war. I can't imagine he wouldn't have fascinating thoughts on the topics, and I was eagerly anticipating reading about them. To be fair, a significant part of this disappointment is certainly due to reading Noam Chomsky before this, a guy who only writes about important things.

Still, saying an Orwell book is disappointing, for me, is like saying that not all of Beethoven's symphonies were masterpieces. That's just how much I unabashedly love the guy. You still have the pristine clarity of thought, the overwhelming emphasis on reason and objectivity, and even the occasional humility -- for instance, when he had to admit that all of his wildly utopian predictions at the beginning of the war about England undergoing a revolution were embarrassing even to him (something I pointed out in my review of the last volume). He still offers fascinating insight into the ground-level politics of WWII, what with its battling factions and ideologies.

The overarching theme of these pieces is Orwell's humanism and democratic socialism, which he takes pains to defend against conservatism, totalitarianism, communism (i.e., Stalinism), fascism and even Trotskyism (dogmatic anti-Stalin socialism). It leaves me wanting to check out the final installment of the series, In Front of Your Nose: 1945-1950. All that's left now is to note some highlights:

In the last analysis our only claim to victory is that if we win the war we shall tell less lies about it than our adversaries. The really frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits "atrocities" but that it attacks the concept of objective truth: it claims to control the past as well as the future. . . There is some hope, therefore, that the liberal habit of mind, which thinks of truth as something outside yourself, something to be discovered, and not as something you can make up as you go along, will survive. 88

That really shows the origin of a large portion of his 1984 ideas. Then:

An argument that Socialists ought to be prepared to meet. . . is the alleged immutability of "human nature." Socialists are accused -- I think without justification -- of assuming that Man is perfectible, and it is then pointed out that human history is in fact one long tale of greed, robbery and oppression. . .

The proper answer, it seems to me, is that this argument belongs to the Stone Age. It presupposes that material goods will always be desperately scarce. The power hunger of human beings does indeed present a serious problem, but there is no reason for thinking that the greed for mere wealth is a permanent human characteristic. We are selfish in economic matters because we all live in terror of poverty. But when a commodity is not scarce, no one tries to grab more than his fair share of it. No one tries to make a corner in air, for instance. . . Or, again, water. In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. . . Yet in dried-up countries like North Africa, what jealousies, what hatreds, what appalling crimes the lack of water can cause! So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don't practice cannibalism any longer, but don't even want to? 189-90

I am no lover of the V2 [bomb], especially at this moment when the house still seems to be rocking from a recent explosion, but what depresses me about these things it the way they set people talking about the next war. Every time one goes off I hear gloomy references to "next time", and the reflection: "I suppose they'll be able to shoot them across the Atlantic by that time". But if you ask who will be fighting whom when this universally expected war breaks out, you get no clear answer. It is just war in the abstract -- the notion that human beings could ever behave sanely having apparently faded out of many people's memories. 280

Or again it can be argued that no unbiased outlook is possible, that all creeds and causes involve the same lies, follies and barbarities; and this is often advanced as a reason for keeping out of politics altogether. I do not accept this argument, if only because in the modern world no one describable as an intellectual can keep out of politics in the sense of not caring about them. I think one must engage in politics -- using the word in a wide sense -- and that one must have preferences: that is, one must recognize that some causes are objectively better than others, even if they are advanced by equally bad means. As for the nationalistic loves and hatreds that I have spoken of, they are part of the make-up of most of us, whether we like it or not. Whether it is possible to get rid of them I do not know, but I do believe that it is possible to struggle against them, and that this is essentially a moral effort. 380

The great need of the moment is to make people aware of what is happening and why, and to persuade them that Socialism is a better way of life but not necessarily, in its first stages, a more comfortable one. I have no doubt they would accept this if it were put to them in the right way: but at present nothing of the kind is being attempted. 398

Not Bad Reviews

@pointblaek