George Orwell: The Great Rebel Writer
Celebrating the troublemaker's birthday in style
Judging by the frequency with which his name is invoked, or the dominance of his recent book sales, Orwell may have more fans than any other modern writer in the canon. If America keeps deteriorating, soon he may be as famous as the Kardashians, the Paul brothers, and our other great OnlyFans stars.
Many of his enthusiasts have only read his two most mature works: Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Both are so wonderful that they alone justify his place amongst their favorite writers. Many of my friends, most of whom can’t spell Proust, still remember them as distinct, engrossing experiences. Some, like me, can recall exactly where they were when they finished them. Nineteen Eighty-Four is the only book that has ever made me miss a train stop. For many people, especially more casual readers, these moments represent the peak literary experiences of their lives. It helps them understand what the rest of us are on about—why we give so much of our limited time to literature—just as a hacker comes to understand the golf-crazed man after he hits his first perfect five-iron. “Ah,” he says to himself, “so that’s why you’ve thrown away your marriage.”
Orwell has this effect because of his clean, colloquial, unaffected writing style. His language is akin to concise mathematical proofs in which all excesses are stripped away. With the fewest number of words and details possible, he renders worlds so absorbing and real that the reader loses his sense of self—he isn’t even aware of the world around him anymore—like a teenage boy scoring his first, real look at boobs. Orwell is able to accomplish this because he can stretch and release dramatic tension as masterfully as Dostoevsky: on every page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the stakes are high and the conflict is clear; the novel reads like a thriller. Within these constraints a dry British humor shines through. Reminiscent of Maugham, it is laugh-out-loud-funny. I could give countless examples from each of his books, but my favorite is when Winston Smith’s love interest, Julia, asks him the classic question: “What did you first think of me?” He responds: “I thought seriously of smashing your head in with a cobblestone.”
If you want to keep reading, you can check it out on The Republic of Letters’ page:
Read Animal Farm and 1984 as a kid. Maybe 10-11 years old. Could comprehend the narrative but not the subtexts. George is so easy to read. And its extremely difficult to be easy to read.
Read Down and Out in Paris and London recently, and connected with that book in a serious way. I've had to resprt to living on peanut butter sandwiches and stealing milk from the free coffee setup in the boathouse of a marina where I was living. (Far away from any friends or relatives I could call on for help.) Have also logged many hours in restaurants.
Anyway, Orwell is the man and I need to read more. Him, Vonnegut, and Palahniuk have me under the delusion that I can write simply and effectively like them, and that people will pay to read my stuff in the future.
My favorite Orwell experience was coming across a copy of Homage to Catalonia in an airport bookstore, only to realize that the owners probably thought it was a travel guide. Orwell can be misunderstood in so many interesting ways.