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Why Orwell Matters

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As someone who has just begun to read the works of Christopher Hitchens - a few essays from Vanity Fair and "God is not Great" - my appreciation of the man is admittedly thin. Yes, I know Hitchens is reputed to be polemical, hard-headed and thorough in his analysis of big issues, and doesn't suffer fools gladly. Rather than intimidate me, these credentials oddly enougly enticed me to pick up another one of Hitchens's controversial studies titled "Why Orwell Matters" on the life and times of the English writer, George Orwell. Anything about Orwell as an essayist,columnist,broadcaster, and civil servant that is written by a big-name critic like Hitchens is bound to have something intelligent to say about his continuing impact on the modern world. To start with, Hitchens does an extensive job of clarifying Orwell's literary values as seen through the eyes of the political left and right, the nationalists, the imperialists, the feminists, and finally the common man. As one reads through each of these takes on Orwell, he or she must be careful to understand what Hitchens is in effect doing. He is lining up all these opposing and conflicting views on the true identity of Orwell in history in order to destroy them like straw men. For him, each of these idealisms try to distort Orwell's true affect on history by presenting him as a traitor to or defender of their narrow cause. In the process of exposing the inadequacies of each of their positions on the 'Orwellian' persona, Hitchens offers what he believes is a more honest, straightforward assessment. Orwell was a writer who saw life in the simplest of terms: tyranny versus freedom. Within these parameters, Hitchens produces extensive proof that consistently shows Orwell writing about and speaking against governments and societies that oppress the individual. Those who would enlist Orwell's simple message in aid of some great ideological cause, whether it be communism, socialism or conservatism, are the clearest examples of tyrants using ideas to solidify power. Hitchens does a remarkable job on showing how "1984" really is really an apocalyptic expose on what happens to a society that loses its grasp on freedom. The many impoverished characters that pop up quite regularly in this and other works are all victims of those at the top who make it their life calling to control and dehumanize the underling. While some would say that such a philosophy clearly makes Orwell a socialist, Hitchens believes that the true measure of the man is something deeper and personal understanding of the lot of humankind. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to see what influence writers command in their words when shaping the thoughts of others, including Hitchens himself.

WHY ORWELL MATTERS
Christopher Hitchens
ISBN 0-465-03049-1

In a lifetime of reading, the writer whose books and essays have influenced my thinking more than any other is George Orwell. It is commendable that Christopher Hitchens singles him out as a writer that matters. But I am somewhat disappointed in this book.

The book is not a biography. Hitchens writes about Orwell's books and ideas rather than his personal life, but he includes so little about the latter that one has difficulty determining Orwell's circumstances. For example, Hitchens tells us that Orwell's father was a non-factor in his life, but he hardly makes clear why. Elsewhere, he informs us that Orwell, who he says was awkward with women, married twice. Again, a little background on the marriages might be helpful.

Hitchens sets out to defend Orwell against attacks by writers, politicians, and assorted adversaries. The book has too many such defenses. Hitchens devotes so much energy to these pursuits that in the end it is, it seems, the quality of the portrayal of Orwell's work, that is sacrificed. Not enough of the clear, unpretentious feel of Orwell's writing comes through in this book.

Hitchens does call attention a number of times to Orwell's fine essay , "On Politics and the English Language". In this essay, among other things, Orwell laid out some simple rules for straightforward, honest writing. One of these rules, for example, is "Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent." Although Hitchens may be Orwell's advocate, he seems not a practitioner of his writing guidelines. Consider Hitchens' sentence, for example, "Notwithstanding this elaborate disavowal or "dementi", authors in need of a quick fix continued to use even the clapped-out Labourism of the late 1970s as a template for sub-Orwellian literary enterprises."

Toward the end of this book, Hitchens writes that Orwell's thought has largely been vindicated by time and that he "need not seek any pardon on that score". Exactly, his work stands alone sufficiently not to have required the earlier defenses. In summary, Hitchens also offers that Orwell had a "commitment to language as the partner of truth". This pithy synopsis of his work gets to the heart of Orwell's writing. I wish the rest of the book were as apropos.

I've never been George Orwells biggest fan. It's not his ideas that I disagree with so much as an aversion to mixing politics and fiction. I've yet to read a really good piece of polemic in fiction form that could truly be called Literature, and it has always bothered me that people claim 1984 as a work of art. Thus is was with great delight that I read in this book Hitchens description of the novel as one of the "Good Bad Books" of 20th century fiction. This book enabled me to divorce Orwell from my views on literature and art, and start to view him from a scope of political scrutiny. Hitchens writes the portrait of a man who was, throughout his life, a contradiction. He aborhed racism and expressed a desire for true equality, while at the same time combating conservative views in himself that believed 'blacks' and the poor to be inferior. A man who spent his life in constant support of socialism, yet filling volumes with scathing criticism of the Left. What ultimately surfaces in this book is a picture of a man who believed in truth above all. on the closing page, Hitchens states that "politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individual who maintain allegiance to them." This is why Orwell matters, not because of what he contributed to politics, important as those contribution may be, but because he followed principle above all. This book is undoubtbly worth the time and effort to read, but it isn't without it's flaws. In more than a few spots Hitchens falls prey to the "sickely veneration and sentimental overpraise" that he condemns in the introduction. The lack of footnotes and bibilography is troubling to say the least, as he rarely gives exact locations of quotes, something he repeadetly calls Orwells detractors on. If you can, ignore these faults, and simply realize that this book is not an objective authority, and should be taken in most parts as merely opinion. But regardless, it is very englightening opinion on one of the most misunderstood figures of our time.

...or almost always right. Welcome to Christopher Hitchens' paean to his hero. Let's look at the virtues of this polemic in praise of everybody's favorite Socialist. Hitchens is his usual sharp and amusing self, and he covers a wide number of areas in his defense of Orwell. He claims for Orwell a special prescience in three areas, in opposing imperialism, fascism and communism. He challenges Orwell's leftist critics, such as Edward Said, Salman Rushdie, Isaac Deutscher, while reserving special animus against Raymond Williams. At the same time he criticizes those who would claim Orwell for the COMMENTARY right, most especially the egregious Norman Podheretz, but also noting Orwell's difficulties with T.S. Eliot in the publication of "Animal Farm", and the way he criticized James Burnham for power worship. Then we're off to looking at Orwell's views on America and the UK, where Hitchens seeks to show that Orwell was not a simple minded British patriot. Then we get a chapter of Orwell's views on women, the controversial list of fellow travellers he gave to the British government, and the quality of his novels. Finally Hitchens praises Orwell for the clarity of his writing, in contrast to Adorno and Claude Simon, and ends with a coda about Auden.

Hitchens provides much in defense of his hero. He quotes a pompously obtuse attack by John Major that must be read to be believed. He quotes the best passage from "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" where the protagonist bookseller gushes insincerely about the "Englishness" of Galsworthy and Priestly. Hitchens does admit his hero a few flaws. Orwell did have a prejudice against homosexuals, and he was willfully obtuse about Auden's "Spain", where it is obvious that Auden is using "necessary murder" in irony. The early novels all have serious flaws, and Orwell was not entirely comfortable in his attitude towards women. However, Hitchens points out that Orwell was so fair minded that he sought to change a passage in "Animal Farm" that he thought was unfair to Stalin.

Reservations? Oh yes. At one point Hitchens says that while he is defending Orwell from his critics he also seeks to save Orwell from his saccharine admirers. He objects to calling Orwell a saint for two reasons. First, Hitchens is a very vehement atheist. Second, and more important, Orwell, in his essay on Gandhi, famously said that saints should be considered guilty until proven innocent, and Hitchens would prefer a more lenient standard of judgement. For a start, Hitchens is extremely unfair to Claude Simon, who appears as a deceitful fellow traveller, on the basis of a few uncomplimentary passages of one chapter of one novel, The Georgics, an extremely complex and difficult novel that should not be judged this way. He sneers at Simon's style (based on Faulkner's) and makes the witless comment that Simon is trying to describe the thought processes of a man he never met (someone call the National Guard! Tolstoy and Joyce and practicing telepathy without a licence!) He describes Simon's admirers as "pseudo-intellectuals" which does not seem to me a fair way of describing Roger Shattuck or Martin Seymour-Smith.

Another problem. At one point Hitchens notes Orwell occasionally made callous and insensitive comments about Jews, but he doesn't quote any. Compare this in contrast to the insinuations he made against Richard Crossman in "For the Sake of Argument." It is hard to believe that if Crossman had made the obtusely misogynist comment Orwell made in his essay on George Gissing, Hitchens would let it go unmentioned. Nor does it appear to me that if Crossman had made the list Orwell did, Hitchens would assume it was done out of the highest of motives. About Orwell's prescience, Hitchens himself admits that Orwell himself was so disgusted with the Popular Front, that he opposed fighting Hitler up to the Nazi-Soviet pact. And in praising Orwell as a brave anti-communist of the left, in the tradition of Serge and Souvarine, Hitchens emphasises his marginality and unpopularity. But what about the anti-communism of Ebert and Noske, Faure and Bevin? This would not make Orwell look so brave, or so heroic. And one wonders whether the mainstream press will give Helen Graham's upcoming book on the Spanish Republic the same attention that they give this book. Hitchens praises Orwell for his support of European Union, but would he have been so enthusiastic about the EEC in the fifties when the three main countries, France, Italy and Germany were dominated by political Catholicism?

I can't help adding that the essay Hitchens mentions about Mark Twain was not as long, or as complimentary, or as insightful as Hitchens suggests. Nor do I believe that Orwell's statement that he could never hate Hitler was as perceptive as Hitchens claims. Among the admirers of Orwell one often encounters a double standard: your (feminist, ethnic) objections are petty and sectarian and should be ignored for the good of the common struggle; while my objections (against vegetarians and sandal wearers) reflect my high moral tone and the strength and purity of my convictions. They are not subject to compromise. Against those who criticize Orwell for encouraging apathy, Hitchens portrays him a matchless figure of unquestionable independence. Yet in Hitchens' writing one finds little discussion of strategic and tactical questions. What one does find is a tendency to fixate on certain figures: Paine, Marx, Trotsky, Luxembourg, Debs, Serge, Mandela, Orwell himself. This is not a politics: it is an atheist's martyrology. And it is not enough, especially in praise of someone who was most things to most people.

George Orwell is now remembered for his brilliant portrayals of the evils of Stalinism a system which has pretty much ceased to exist except in North Korea. It is ironic that Orwell who became one of communism's most effective critics was in fact a person who was a committed socialist for all his life.

This book is really a collection of essays by Hitchen's looking at different aspects of Orwell and his legacy. With the collapse of communism one wonders how long 1984 and Animal Farm will continue to be put on school syllabuses and for how long Orwell's books will be read.

Never the less Hitchen's essays are readable and they catch the basic decency of Orwell and the man and his one or two rather minor character flaws. The best essay is the discussion of the empire and Orwell's loathing for it. Even now the dreams of past majesty can blind us to what a squalid little affair the empire on the whole was. Its racism and how much the degradation of millions of subject peoples was bound up in its very nature was so clearly illustrated in Burmese days.

Other parts of the book deal with Orwell and his attitude to women, his preparation of a black list of fellow travellers and a number of those issues which have been used to attack his memory in recent years. All in all an entertaining book about an important figure in his time but one wonders for how much longer that will be so.

You can always judge a book by who hates it. Liberals say Hitchens is a liar, I say this is a must read. Orwell was a good communist, he had the dream in his heart for a better world. Like some sort of phantom Bobby Kennedy he saw the way the world could be and asked 'why not'. Orwell then watched as COmmunism became a viscious hideos monstrosity. Everywhere communism went it became more brutal then what it was replacing. In RUssia the communists took peasants(who had simply been suppressed under the Tsar) and murdered millions of them for no reason whatsoever. Orwell eventually migrated his views and wrote 'Animal Farm' thus opening the glass on the evils of totalitarian leadership and the blind ideals of the foolish followers Orwell matters because he opened his mind and stopped following a false ideology, an ideology that became as bad as fascism. Hitchens is a great writer and wonderful poetic author.

Hitchens has contributed a lot of valuable works to society and he's certainly got the right idea here - in defending Orwell from unjustified attack. He sings his praises but he uses a voice far too obscure for all but a select group to understand. Orwell was a true socialist - his work was given to the people and in so doing, he helped to make our world a better, less corrupt, place. Hitchens is trying to do the same, I think, but he's reached a level in his own thinking that is over the heads of most people and he needs to come back down - not dumb it down, just remember the simplicity that Orwell weaved his terrific tales and essays with. It's the only way to get through... and matter.

Remarkably, as the 21st century opens George Orwell's shadow looms larger than ever over the world, undiminished by the end of the Cold War (a phrase which he probably invented). He is increasingly claimed by both Left and Right as one of their own. Two Englishmen now living in America, Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens, can best claim the mantle of Orwell by virtue of their clearsightedness and ability to cut through cant. Hitchens has written a short, bracing book on why "Animal Farm", "1984", and the collected essays are still essential reading. Orwell was a divided man. He was emotionally a conservative and intellectually a socialist. He was able to live out the contradiction and thus was blessed (or cursed) with the ability to see the big picture. Most of us in our own little lives are opportunists; our social and political views are shaped by what seems to us will allow us to rise in the world. Because of his awareness of his contradictions (and an unusual strength of will or character) Orwell could more closely approach "objectivity" (that noble dream) than most of us.

Hitchens claims that Orwell was right about the three big issues of the 20th century--imperialism, Fascism, and Communism: something almost no other of his contemporaries can claim. In the chapter "Orwell and the Left" Hitchens swiftly eviscerates those critics who see Orwell as a sellout (Including Edward Said, whose blurb approving of Hitchens' earlier work appears prominently on the dust jacket of this one.) In "Orwell and the Right" he establishes that Orwell did not advocate mindless aggression against the Communists. Orwell attacked James Burnham for his pessimism and Hitchens says that Orwell didn't want a nuclear first-strike against the Soviets as so many did--it would have killed many of the people who made the successful peaceful revolution against Communism 40 years later. Perhaps the most important chapter in this book is "Deconstructing the Post-Modernist: Orwell and Transparency" in which Hitchens explains Orwell's abiding concern with "objective truth" and exposes the bad faith of the deconstructionists. (A disbelief in demonstratable truth can cover an awful lot of sins.)

Hitchens has made a lot of news the past few years with his arguments with his friends on the Left. He detests Bill and Hillary Clinton; and he has broken with the anti-war movement because of what he says is its solipsism and anti-Americanism. In these things he is merely following the lead of his mentor Orwell, who angered many on the left with "Animal Farm" and "1984." But these books have been proved correct over the years as any books could be. I'm betting time will be kind to Hitchens, too.

Christopher Hitchens is one of my favorite authors, albeit from a misunderstood "liberal" bent whose books and past writings in The Nation and newer pieces in Vanity Fair I relish. So when I saw him on C-SPAN and other shows discussing his new book Why Orwell Matters I was made more more curious and curious as the hours went on and vowed that the book would be moved to the top of my "must order this week" list.

And true to form Mr Hitchens does not disappoint. He gives the reader meat to chew on, which means I would read a chapter and then think upon what I had read, then the next chapter, and found that Orwell came alive to me. He became a man unlike the images liberals as well as conservatives had painted over the years. I especially was intrigued with his views on feminists which I realize are much the same as mine.

And I realized that the often paraphrased sayings about the young being liberal and the older we become the more conservative, seem to mirror Orwells life in many ways. Many of us were taught that he was anti-business and anti-American and neither seems to be true. And I loved reading that Orwell admitted in many ways that he wrote based upon his place in life be it poor or better off financially. And as noted on page 174" that Orwell treasured certain 'bourgeois' values because he thought they might come in handy as revolutionary ones". Guess visions of Hollywood liberals came to mind, where one lives well and has money yet denounces non-liberals who have the same benefits.

If you are the least bit interested in authors lives and times this is a book you probably would enjoy and hopefully come away from, feeling better educated or informed.

I have always admired Cristopher Hitchens (though not as much as his brother Peter). I was thrilled with his break from the NATION magazine--however of late Chrispoher's polemical tone has been increasing and the exploratory side of his writing shrinking (can a side shrink?). Christopher once said in a debate with his brother that a good polemicist speaker or writer should be able to marshal the best counter arguments to his own. Now when Christopher attacks figures like Clinton or Kissinger who deserve no defense that does not bother me; however the critics, particularly the left wing critics of Orwell deserve better. The Tribune I believe published an attack on Orwell by D.A.N. Jones years ago. It is a good essay--informative and transparent. It is never mentioned though it deserves respectful discussion. I am MUCH put off by the way Hitchens dismisses E.P. Thompson--a great historian, wonderful writer and (one the basis of the one time I heard him) a wonderful speaker as well.

Orwell at the beginning of Homage to Catalonia made it a point to praise the "stalinoid" grunts who were out in the field doing battle against Franco. Orwell grants more than a measure of heroism to the communist movement( many of whom were also shot in the neck) that Hitchens refuses.

What else? There is one reference to Aneuran Bevan--a great man, but Orwell never explores it. Neither does he explore the bond that developed between Orwell and Evelyn Waugh near the end of Orwell's life. There is a qurellous aspect to Orwell for whom nothing is ever right (which perhaps explains why he admired Waugh) that manifests itself increasingly in Hitchen's writings. I don't know what to make of his remarks about Deutcher.

Consider also the question of 'Balance": Whom does he criticize on the right? Burnahm--who as he rightly points out history has forgotten, Hayek who deserves a longer and more thoughful critique and Pohoredez (sic) who is hardly worth mentioning (a critique of his brother Peter, a most thoughtful man would be much more enlightening.)
Orwell as Jones notes in the conclusion of his essay was a complex man on whom historical judgements are difficult to render. Christopher has no such qualms.
I did like the bit about post modernism but the importance of absolute transparancy in good prose was not made sufficiently transparent. Christopher quoting Judith Butler neutrally in the face of her recent disgraceful, unreadable and unlearned book on Anigone gives the Social Text people, and the various academic frauds who have turned our universities into cisterns an out. Here was the place to be polemical!
Alas the book is a screed and does not do justice to the complexities of Orwell--actually Christopher you are sounding more and more like Podoredez(sic) and his female.