Product Description

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

A generous and varied selection–the only hardcover edition available–of the literary and political writings of one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century.

Although best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-four, George Orwell left an even more lastingly significant achievement in his voluminous essays, which dealt with all the great social, political, and literary questions of the day and exemplified an incisive prose style that is still universally admired. Included among the more than 240 essays in this volume are Orwell’s famous discussion of pacifism, “My Country Right or Left”; his scathingly complicated views on the dirty work of imperialism in “Shooting an Elephant”; and his very firm opinion on how to make “A Nice Cup of Tea.”

In his essays, Orwell elevated political writing to the level of art, and his motivating ideas–his desire for social justice, his belief in universal freedom and equality, and his concern for truth in language–are as enduringly relevant now, a hundred years after his birth, as ever.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40370 in Books
• Published on: 2002-10-15
• Released on: 2002-10-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1424 pages

Review
"Orwell is the most influential political writer of the twentieth century . . . He gives us a gritty, personal example of how to engage as a writer in politics." ?New York Review of Books

"[Orwell] evolved, in his seemingly offhand way, the clearest and most compelling English prose style this century . . . But of course he was more than just a great writer. We need him today because [of] his passion for the truth." ?The Sunday Times (London)

"Had Orwell lived to a full term, he might well have gone on to become the greatest modern literary critic in the language. But he lived more than long enough to make writing about politics a branch of the humanities, setting a standard of civilized response to the intractably complex texture of life." ?The New Yorker

"The real reason we read Orwell is because his own fault-line, his fundamental schism, his hybridity, left him exceptionally sensitive to the fissure?which is everywhere apparent?between what ought to be the case and what actually is the case. He says the unsayable."
?Financial Times

"Orwell was the conscience of his generation." ?V. S. Pritchett


-- Review

Review
“Orwell is the most influential political writer of the twentieth century…He gives us a gritty, personal example of how to engage as a writer in politics.” –New York Review of Books

“[Orwell] evolved, in his seemingly offhand way, the clearest and most compelling English prose style this century…But of course he was more than just a great writer. We need him today because [of] his passion for the truth.” –The Sunday Times (London)

“Had Orwell lived to a full term, he might well have gone on to become the greatest modern literary critic in the language. But he lived more than long enough to make writing about politics a branch of the humanities, setting a standard of civilized response to the intractably complex texture of life.” –The New Yorker

“The real reason we read Orwell is because his own fault-line, his fundamental schism, his hybridity, left him exceptionally sensitive to the fissure–which is everywhere apparent–between what ought to be the case and what actually is the case. He says the unsayable.” –Financial Times

“Orwell was the conscience of his generation.” –V. S. Pritchett

From the Inside Flap
A generous and varied selection?the only hardcover edition available?of the literary and political writings of one of the greatest essayists of the twentieth century.

Though best known as the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell left an even more lastingly significant achievement in his voluminous essays, which dealt with all the great social, political, and literary questions of the day and exemplified an incisive prose style that is still universally admired. Included among the more than 240 essays in this volume are Orwell's famous discussion of pacifism, "My Country Right or Left," his scathingly complicated views on the dirty work of imperialism in "Shooting an Elephant," and his very firm opinion on how to make ?A Nice Cup of Tea.? In his essays, Orwell elevated political writing to the level of art, and his motivating ideas?his desire for social justice, his belief in universal freedom and equality, and his concern for truth in language?are as enduringly relevant now, a hundred years after his birth, as ever.

Customer Reviews

Truth hurts; so does George
What distinguishes George Orwell from every other political writer in history is his pitiless intellectual honesty. It is true that Orwell hated imperialism, fascism and capitalism, and that he spent the majority of his career stumping and scrapping for democratic socialism, but no political ideology ever swallowed more abuse from one of its own. For every positive word Orwell scribbled or spoke about socialism he threw in at least a paragraph of denunciation, insult and mockery; indeed, in THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER he so ridiculed the pimply, sniggering, ivory-tower intellectuals who were the public face of the movement that the Left Book Club, which had commissioned the book, added an introduction that basically disowned it. Orwell was quite simply something that doesn't exist nowadays: a man who didn't let his political opinions interfere with his observations. He spoke the truth, or what he saw as the truth, without any respect for the party line, and if he brassed off his own side in so doing, that was just too damn bad.

ESSAYS is not like the other Orwell books on the market, which featured pieces selected by an editor - THE ORWELL READER, A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, etc. It is a massive, hardbacked, dumbell-heavy compendium of every single essay he penned in his entire career, spanning the period 1928 - 1949: letters to newspapers (some of them unpublished), BBC broadcasts, the innumerable "As I Please" columns, famous works like "Such, Such Were The Joys" and "The Lion and the Unicorn", innumerable book reviews...in other words, 1,360-plus pages of acid observation, scourging honesty and gallows humor, delivered by a master at the top of his form.

Obviously, you have to be a pretty hardcore fan of G.O. to lug this miniature telephone book out of the store, but it's a bargain at any price. Orwell's special genius was that he could tackle something completely ordinary - a ponderous scholarly work on political trends, a second-rate gangster novel, American comic books, magazines devoted to young boys, a government White Paper, even ordinary British postcards - and unmask the hidden, inner motivations which lurked behind them. His ability to see through dishonest arguments, expose hypocrisy, trace twisted motives to their roots, and draw timeless conclusions from seemingly trivial political and pop-culture events is rivaled only by his willingness to say the unsayable. Who but Orwell could get away with a such a brutally frank discussion of the motivations behind everything from anti-Semitism to pro-Communism, the allowance for the possibility that British Imperialism was worse than Nazism, or the statement that the root of Hitler's appeal was that Fascism was psychologically more sound than its alternatives, because it played into the fact that humans want struggle and sacrifice as much as pleasure and saftey? The answer is nobody; nobody else would have dared. Or would dare, now, when nearly every sentence written by politcos Left, Right and Center is either intellectually dishonest, partisan hackwork, or so filled with political, racial, and sexual correctness, with platitudes, with clichés and buzzwords, with stupidity and cowardice, that they essentially have no meaning?

In "1984", Orwell coined the term "duckspeak" to describe those who chatter unconsciously, unaware of the meaning of their own words but certain of their conformity to the party line. Well, you can love Orwell, you can hate him, or you can disagree with him to the middle of your bones, but one thing is absolutely certain: nowhere in the wrist-straining tome that is ESSAYS will you hear a single quack.

Political writing as art; all art is propaganda
In these by times highly emotional essays written in the 1930s and 1940s George Orwell gives us with in depth analyses his personal viewpoint on the literary, political and socio-economic scene.

In literature, he sees the novel as `a Protestant form of art, a product of the free mind, of the autonomous individual.' Orwell's aim was to `push the world in a certain direction: a battle against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism.'
In his criticism he searches for the essential (hidden) message of the author.
Dickens's rather naïve creed is: `If man would behave decently, the world would be decent.' His ideal is `a hundred thousand pounds, a quaint old house, a sweetly womanly wife, a horde of children and no work.'
Henry Miller's books are `a passive acceptance of decay and evil.'
H.G. Wells dreams of a utopian World State.
R. Kipling is a jingo imperialist, but he didn't understand that `an empire is primarily a money-making concern'.
W.B. Yeats is in essence a defender of feudalism, `a great hater of democracy and of human equality, of the modern world, science, technology and the concept of progress.'
A. Koestler's main theme is `the decadence of revolutions owing to corrupting effects of power.'
P.G. Wodehouse's real sin is to present the English upper classes as much nicer than they are.
In `Gulliver's Travels', J. Swift delivers a frontal attack on totalitarianism and shows that he is a disbeliever in the possibility of happiness.

Orwell's view on world matters is rightly `no Law, only Power'.
Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power.
The concentration of the media in the hands of a few rich men puts the freedom of the press and intellectual liberty under attack. The `very concept of objective truth' is lost.
The Spanish war showed him the essential horror of army life.
He is extremely severe for the British establishment: `The British ruling class thought that Fascism was on their side.' For them, `it is better to inherit, than to work.' `In an England ruled by stupidity, to be `clever' was to be suspect.'

But his solution is also naïve: `common ownership of the means of production. The State, representing the whole nation, owns everything, and everyone is a State employee.' In other words, he pleads for a massive bureaucracy.
But he contradicts himself when he complains that `everything in our age conspires to turn the writer into a minor official!'

These essays contain also vivid memories of his public school life (`irrational terror') and of his Indian life ('Shooting an elephant'). He comments on sports (`war without shooting), detective stories (J.H. Chase), poetry (`the most hated art form'), mildly pornographic comic postcards (`a harmless rebellion against virtue') and ends with a superb portrait of Ghandi.

These remarkable essays, written by a fearless superb free mind, a fighter for justice and a true `révolté' (A. Camus), are a must read.

A real treat
I believe the other reviews of this book to be quite accurate; rightfully noting its annoyingly bad layout(lacking index, missing page headings of what you're reading, etc). Disregarding these shortfalls, Orwell's writing itself easily makes up for--and surpasses--were the publishers have blundered. I read these essays with child-like Christmas morning joy; finding pleasure in them as if peeling away the wrapping paper from the presents, leaving me engulfed with intrigue over Orwell's subjects, prose and opinions. This book is a real treasure trove for all those who enjoyed Orwell's most famous, if not cliche, works of 1984 and Animal Farm.