There seems to be another outbreak of Orwell quotation across parts of the blogosphere (at least I’ve noticed a couple of the usual suspects engaging in this over the past few days). Matthew Turner commented on this habit in September:
It’s by now well-established that a man who died over 50 years ago has all the answers to today’s problems (well except when he talks on economic policy, or social policy, or class, or etc).
Still, following a link to his Notes on Nationalism (not one of his better efforts, but anyway) I did find a few words that seemed descriptive of blogospheric “debate” :
Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening. There can often be a genuine doubt about the most enormous events. For example, it is impossible to calculate within millions, perhaps even tens of millions, the number of deaths caused by the present war. The calamities that are constantly being reported — battles, massacres, famines, revolutions — tend to inspire in the average person a feeling of unreality. One has no way of verifying the facts, one is not even fully certain that they have happened, and one is always presented with totally different interpretations from different sources. What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied. Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory. Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.
This one, from the Notes On Nationalism, jumped out at me:
Orwell was a clever guy.
I am currently in the process of forming the unpopular opinion that Orwell was not even in the top three English essayists of the 20th century; Keynes, JK Galbraith and Elizabeth David are all better.
Wow. That’s the blogosphere, all right.
What’s wrong with quoting Orwell? It’s not that he has any ‘answers to today’s problems’, of course not; it’s just that he’s a brilliant satirist. Swift’s ‘modest proposal’ is quoted quite a bit too.
Why does Orwell hate America?
Such and such an essay is “not one of his better efforts”??? G.O. was “not even in the top three English essayists of the 20th century”????
“Yes, well, as we all know, the Bard of Stratford couldn’t spell, and Ben Jonson’s plays had a better sense of location, but the following lines from Polonius seem remarkably prescient …”
By the way, I don’t care how tired people are of Bono, that new U2 album totally rocks.
Is it ironic that the father of doublethink should be cited so much in support of doublethink?
Note that Orwell was actually WRONG in this essay, or at least not right for the greater-+
part. Despite everything, much of the truth about World War II has come to the light in the past almost 60 years, including those bits that do not reflect well on the victors.
The real modern utility of Orwell — as you’ve just demonstrated — is not as acerbic moraliser-in-chief, it’s his remarkable ability to put down the sanctimonious intellectual pretensions of others in short, biting, memorable sentences.
“It is easier — even quicker, once you have the habit — to say in my opinion it is a not unjustifiable assumption than to say I think,” from P&tEL, is a terrific antidote to bad prose, for example. “The Catholic and the Communist are alike in assuming that an opponent cannot be both honest and intelligent,”* is another of my favourites.
*. The Prevention of Literature. He might have added “the warblogger,” or, in the interests of giving equal-opportunity offense, “the Nation reader.”
Excellent quote.
It does seem odd to say that Orwell wasn’t even among the top three English essayists of the last century.
After all, I’d have thought making it to, say, fourth place, would be a hell of a distinction.
For my money Chesterton blows all challengers out of the water anyway.
“much of the truth about World War II has come to the light in the past almost 60 years”
Well has it been definitevely settled about “What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944?” or the Bengal Famine. So out of 3 is pretty good foresight if you ask me.
I think dsquared’s point was that Orwell is excessively touted as the ultimate English essayist, of the last century or otherwise, by overenthusiastic Orwell-spouters who have read very little in the way of English essayists. Which is fair.
As for Chesterton, I find he has absolutely no re-readability unless you agree with him, whereas Orwell is (and all truly great essayists are, IMHO) refreshing even when he’s wrong.
Well, Sertorius may or may not have been a better field commander than Caesar, but Caesar, as a result of some other decisions that are usually thought of as external to generalship, made field command relevant in a way Sertorius never did. Which is why JC is excessively touted as the ultimate Roman general.
And this is how I feel about the Chesterton/Orwell comparison. It doesn’t matter how technically polished “the writing” was in Chesterton’s essays. Orwell’s general choice of topics should be understood as a technical decision. And it is this particular technical decision that is the reason he easily outclasses all other essayists of his generation. I don’t mean to take anything away from the others (as if I could). I just want to emphasize the point that sometimes the most popular is indeed the best in some fundamentally significant way, and in such cases there’s no reason not to admit it. Every citizen should be acquainted with Orwell’s essays, but only those with a special interest in the essay form need to be aware of Chesterton.
There’s a reason Orwell is often quoted and Chesterton is not; right or wrong, Orwell is always relevant and always straightforward.
I’m not sure the frequency of quotation tells you anything. If you check, say, the Penguin Thesaurus of Quotations, you’ll see Orwell cited 17 times, and Chesterton 74.
And that seems to be pretty much the ratio in any selection of quotations.Well, considering how much Chesterton wrote, and his tendency at times to parody himself, I’d have to concede that he was often irrelevant and rarely straightforward.
Not being straightforward isn’t always a vice, though, if it encourages you to think more deeply about what is said.
I don’t buy the idea that he only works if you agree with him. He was regarded as pretty much the finest essayist of his day by the likes of Wells and Shaw, for example, and yet they disagreed with him on almost everything.
Not being straightforward is a debatable virtue in extended-length political musing — in other words, in a political essay — but an indisputable vice in political debate, which is where 95% of Orwell’s citations come from. His use is, as I alluded to before, not so much that he says new things as that makes points other people want to make in articulate, concise and memorable ways.
And I didn’t say that Chesterton “only works if you agree with him,” I said that Chesterton has no re-reading value if you don’t agree with him. I read most of Orwell’s major essays two or three times a year, not deliberately, but because they’re like intellectual sorbet: they cleanse your mind of the lingering taste of bullshit. With Chesterton, the first time out, watching the point he’s making unfold is a sight to see, but once you know what he’s trying to argue, it becomes harder and harder to get past what a pompous know-it-all he was.
I should add that I don’t consider Orwell the greatest English political essayist, etc., etc., etc., mainly because I think the category is silly, but I do consider him a sharper (though not deeper) thinker and a more interesting read than Chesterton.
Besides, Orwell wasn’t the most popular, or anything like it. He was in fact fairly obscure throughout his lifetime. He got a little last-minute popularity with 1984, but not as an essayist. He was an obscure anti-Stalinist leftist who wrote for The Tribune and Partisan Review - not exactly a best-seller.
And he’s not really the most popular now either. He is often spoken of as the presumed best or classic or genius and the like, but that’s not quite the same thing.
Anyway, I have to agree that he’s over-rated. I noticed it in reading some of the essays recently - they really are quite flat and tired. Hack-work, frankly. Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens, to name but two, can write rings around him on a bad day. Orwell was interesting and valuable politically and morally, but as an essayist - well, let me put it this way. If he and Hazlitt were in a burning house and I could save only one, it would be Hazlitt every time.
Sorry, Schwa, misunderstood your point. I still disagree, mind, but get you properly now.
Read Orwell’s correspondence and journalism when he is confronting those who don’t consider ww2 worth winning for a variety of reason. Then think about the discourse before the invasion of Afghanistan. The parallels are striking.
What was the point of the post?
Just curious.
Right after I read this post I noticed Oliver Kamm was quoting Orwell.
Kamm’s delinking to this site was funny and partly deserved, but wrong. I couldn’t help but wonder if ‘Indifference to objective truth is encouraged by the sealing-off of one part of the world from another, which makes it harder and harder to discover what is actually happening.’ was a reponse to that.
You realize, gray, that the vast majority of Americans on the left supported the US intervention of Afghanistan. Or are you just here to try to spread a smear?
Orwell is not remembered for his contributions to economics or social policy. Orwell is remembered today for his insights into human nature, especially that of it relevant to political behavior. And, we’ve been seeing a lot of human nature relevant to political behavior lately, and perhaps we always will. So long as other people are the subjective focal point of our perception of political processes, Orwell will continue to be quoted in abundance, and often pertinently.
The fact that Orwell is so very relevant, sadly means that we haven’t come far in the intervening years and the direction in which we are headed is a perilous one.
Nice find Chris.
Note that Orwell was actually WRONG in this essay, or at least not right for the greater-+
part. Despite everything, much of the truth about World War II has come to the light in the past almost 60 years, including those bits that do not reflect well on the victors.
But that doesn’t help Orwell. No doubt in half a century we’ll have a much better idea of how well the respective foreign policies of the Clinton and Bush administrations worked. Our problem is that we don’t know right now. Or at least I don’t. Like Orwell, I am having a very hard time parsing any sort of signal from the noise of partisan bickering and one-sided partisan presentation and spinning of facts.
As ted says, this Orwell quote captures the din of the blogosphere perfectly. But it also describes mainstream media pundits and politicians, just as it did in his day.
taak: Orwell is not remembered for his contributions to economics or social policy. Orwell is remembered today for his insights into human nature, especially that of it relevant to political behavior.
Exactly.
Shorter Ophelia Benson: Two writers have written better essays than the worst work of George Orwell, who wrote several thousand pieces of journalism in his short, overworked life. This proves that Orwell is over-rated; no, I do not understand what ‘non sequitur’ means. Also, Crooked Timber reminds me of the Hitler-Stalin Pact and the Moscow Trials, so you’ll excuse me if I seem a little nervous.
DICK! How’ve ya been? It’s not clear to me that Ms Benson evinced ignorance about the meaning of ‘non sequitur,’ but if you can prove that she did (to my satisfaction), I hereby undertake to deposit ONE HUNDRED BILLION SWISS FRANCS into the numbered account of your choice! Best of luck!
Chris, do all your colleagues at Bristol’s Philosophy Department go
round communicating with ‘rude’ words, with lots of capitals and
exclamation marks, or is there just the one Tourette’s case? Somehow I
suspect the latter, but I’d be interested to know.
That last comment was from me, by the way. Thing is, Chris, banning contributions from one of my IPs is a bad idea, because I can switch IPs very easily. Also a little odd that you should ban me and not some silly fellow who communicates by means of childish synonyms for ‘penis’, but it’s your call…
Erm- why exactly is this not considered worthy of deletion:DICK! How’ve ya been? It’s not clear to me that Ms Benson evinced ignorance about the meaning of ‘non sequitur,’ but if you can prove that she did (to my satisfaction), I hereby undertake to deposit ONE HUNDRED BILLION SWISS etc etc…
When this is:Chris, do all your colleagues at Bristol’s Philosophy Department go
round communicating with ‘rude’ words, with lots of capitals and
exclamation marks, or is there just the one Tourette’s case? Somehow I
suspect the latter, but I’d be interested to know.
It’s not so much that Orwell is frequently quoted, surely, so much as that when he is it’s considered a debate stopper. As in “Orwell said x,y,z about your type/argument. Therefore you’re wrong.” When people quote other people, there’s normally an understanding that you’re borrowing authority. Some people (eg Churchill) are quoted with a pinch of salt. Orwell is accorded far more authority, especially when it comes to literature/prose, but also leftist politics, than almost anyone else who is frequently quoted.
Dan,
I haven’t banned you or anyone else. I’ve been in a meeting all afternoon and just got back to this.
To Chris - my apologies. I
did think that this had happened, because I tried to send a comment to
this thread, and was twice barred because of ‘suspected inappropriate comment’
(this was the phrase the comments form came up with - had never seen
this before in my extensive experience of CT comments) and there was
no problem when I then posted a comment on Henry’s thread. It sounds like there was some sort of technical bug. So, again, my sincere apologies, and my thanks for the fact that you are actually a very tolerant host.
To the person who uses shockingly ‘rude’ words, strings of erratically emphasised capitals etc: if your behaviour is an act it wouldn’t be found funny by an audience of nine-year olds, and if it isn’t an act, you need to look up Tourette’s syndrome.
Dan - I reckon that you’ve run into our MT-Blacklist plugin which monitors for comment-spam - it probably thought that you were hawking p3nIs enl@rgement or something. It’s purely automatic - blocks posts with suspect words.
Dan - I reckon that you’ve run into our MT-Blacklist plugin which monitors for comment-spam - it probably thought that you were hawking p3nIs enl@rgement or something. It’s purely automatic - blocks posts with suspect words.
“Some nationalists are not far from schizophrenia, living quite happily amid dreams of power and conquest which have no connection with the physical world.”
This is so true, and it makes my heart ache to even think about it. To give up the schizophrenia would be the beginning of enlightenment and good feelings, but they refuse to give it up.
But to the point, you put out the bait, and the fish have spoken by their actions and words.
uD??8? quote Orwell so cheerfully on behalf of current U.S. foreign activities might want to have a look at “Shooting an Elephant,” “Marrakech,” and the rest of his work expressing a complicated disgust at colonialism — at what it does to both occupiers and occupied. On these and many other Orwell subjects see Charles’ Links.
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