Why Orwell Matters

Why Orwell Matters by Christopher Hitchens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I’ve been reading my way through the collected works of Orwell, in 20 volumes, edited by Peter Davison. I’m doing this because I think George Orwell matters very much indeed. And so I was pleased to see that another writer I admire very much, Christopher Hitchens, was chosen to write this short book to explain why people like me are sufficiently fascinated to read some 12,000 pages of his work.

Here’s what Publisher’s Weekly has to say about the book:

Far from being an ordinary biography, this small volume is an in-depth investigation of the essential George Orwell-"the heart on fire and the brain on ice." Hitchens recognizes that Orwell was more than the author of 1984 and Animal Farm. He was a keen critic of Nazism and Stalinism and didn't soften his pictures of them to sell books. His analysis of the grave inequities of those two forms of government is sufficiently acute to apply to the early 21st century's political spectrum. While claiming that Orwell "requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies [as] an object of sickly veneration and sentimental over-praise," Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and the Nation, asserts that in contrast to his many contemporaries who wrote about the era's political issues (e.g., Louis MacNeice, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day Lewis), "it [is] possible to reprint every single letter, book review and essay composed by Orwell without exposing him to any embarrassment"-a remarkable feat, indeed. The only problem with this study is that it assumes that the reader already knows that Orwell conscientiously overcame his early anti-intellectualism, his dislike of the "dark" people of the English Empire, and his squeamishness about homosexuality-all to become a great humanist. Thus, it is written for readers who have already done their homework.

2011 No 115

Comments

[Barbara]

Thank you, this sounds like a must-read for me.