tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post5745593739650887909..comments2024-02-06T16:17:25.826+00:00Comments on THE GRØNMARK BLOG: Celebrating England’s greatest blogger: George OrwellScott Gronmarkhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-15929263907428299022011-10-16T15:08:17.706+01:002011-10-16T15:08:17.706+01:00Good point, yes, he immersed himself in ordinary p...Good point, yes, he immersed himself in ordinary people's lives, the opposite of the "querulous ... English left-wing intelligentsia" he kebabs so accurately [1].<br /><br />I've just finished his Poetry and the Microphone [2], in which he tackles the question how to bring about a rapprochement between poetry and its public. I love "Poetry is disliked because it is associated with unintelligibility, intellectual pretentiousness and a general feeling of Sunday-on-a-weekday".<br /><br />Sunday-on-a-weekday ...<br /><br />----------<br /><br />1. http://orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/e_eye<br /><br />2. http://orwell.ru/library/articles/poetry/english/e_poetry<br />Thursday, June 9, 2011 - 02:39 PMDMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-87391512819945662372011-10-16T15:07:57.269+01:002011-10-16T15:07:57.269+01:00As far as I’m aware, Orwell was about the only ser...As far as I’m aware, Orwell was about the only serious writer who took an interest in what the plebs were reading – as a teenager, he led me to both “Raffles”, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and “No Orchids for Miss Blandish”, which seemed very tame, given that I’d already read a lot of Mickey Spillane by that stage (whose books really were pornographically brutal, even though written in the 1950s). Imagine any other intellectual giving a damn what the groundlings were consuming! <br /><br />I’m glad the same article leapt out at you: it was so at odds with his normal cool, questingly intelligent outlook. The more I read Orwell, the more it occurs to me that his only real drawback was a belief in the ability of the state to run anything successfully – which was odd, given how healthy sceptical he was of bureaucrats and totalitarianism. Despite that, what a wonderful journalist he was!<br />Tuesday, June 7, 2011 - 09:05 PMScott Gronmarkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15118026157459333174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-54744352068007281452011-10-16T15:07:44.421+01:002011-10-16T15:07:44.421+01:00He’s got the contrast set up, he amplifies his cas...He’s got the contrast set up, he amplifies his case with examples from other writers, some in the Raffles camp, others in the Slim camp, it’s neatly done and then he moves in for the kill -- this megalomania is the touchstone of totalitarianism, the exercise of raw power, whether over a kidnapped girl or an entire population, the popularity of Orchids may be a one-off, something to do with the war, he hopes so.<br /><br />Job done. He’s made his point. He’s nailed totalitarianism. Again. But he goes one step further, and finishes R&MB with this:<br /><br />Raffles, as I have pointed out, has no real moral code, no religion, certainly no social consciousness. All he has is a set of reflexes -- the nervous system, as it were, of a gentleman. Give him a sharp tap on this reflex or that (they are called ‘sport’, ‘pal’, ‘woman’, ‘king and country’ and so forth), and you get a predictable reaction. In Mr. Chase's books there are no gentlemen and no taboos. Emancipation is complete. Freud and Machiavelli have reached the outer suburbs. Comparing the schoolboy atmosphere of the one book with the cruelty and corruption of the other, one is driven to feel that snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated.<br /><br />The first time I read that, my hair stood on end at “Freud and Machiavelli have reached the outer suburbs”. It was only the second time I read it that I noticed “snobbishness, like hypocrisy, is a check upon behaviour whose value from a social point of view has been underrated”.<br /><br />I have 100 eulogies for the man who can write that. I will limit myself to three. His socialism has just dissolved. He doesn’t believe in eugenics. And he is rightly to be celebrated.<br /><br />PS<br />From Wikipedia [2]:<br />“James Hadley Chase is the best-known pseudonym of the British writer Rene Brabazon Raymond ... Chase, a London-born son of a British colonel serving in the colonial Indian Army ... with the help of maps and a slang dictionary, he wrote No Orchids for Miss Blandish in his spare time over a period of six week ends ...”<br /><br />PPS<br />Orchids is a rip-off of William Faulkner’s Sanctuary. Orwell absolves Faulkner of the vices of Mr Chase. I’m not sure I would. I love Faulkner’s books in general, but there are a couple where he gets all pervy, he has a hang-up about impotent men getting some sort of satisfaction by watching their brother rape a kidnapped woman. I prefer to ignore the pervy bits. In fact I’d forgotten about them until I read R&MB.<br /><br />----------<br /><br />1. http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/chase/english/e_bland<br /><br />2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hadley_Chase<br />Saturday, June 4, 2011 - 11:23 PMDMnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2215553202978284468.post-47431045800001576512011-10-16T15:07:30.305+01:002011-10-16T15:07:30.305+01:00Scott, quoting Orwell: Only a lefty could write: “...Scott, quoting Orwell: Only a lefty could write: “there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations” ...<br /><br />That’s from As I Please #34, 21 July 1944.<br /><br />It stood out like a sore thumb when I read it:<br /><br />In this country we are not troubled by lack of water. If anything we have too much of it, especially on Bank Holidays. As a result water hardly enters into our consciousness ... So also with any other kind of goods. If they were made plentiful, as they so easily might be, there is no reason to think that the supposed acquisitive instincts of the human being could not be bred out in a couple of generations. And after all, if human nature never changes, why is it that we not only don’t practise cannibalism any longer, but don’t even want to?<br /><br />It stood out because it is so far beneath him.<br /><br />Normally he writes with utter integrity. He hates totalitarianism, whether Communist or Fascist, and here he is apparently recommending eugenics.<br /><br />He is writing in the context of one of the eternal questions. “Socialists are accused”, he says, “I think without justification ... of assuming that Man is perfectible”. He is trying to defend Socialism and to distinguish it from totalitarianism. He does so by claiming that Man is perfectible. By eugenics.<br /><br />It’s ghastly, but it’s not Orwell, he must have had a fit on 21 July 1944, it ... stands out like a sore thumb ... from everything else he wrote.<br /><br />I like to think that this awful article of his gave him sleepless nights for some time to come.<br /><br />And that he published Raffles and Miss Blandish[1] on 28 August 1944 by way of expiation.<br /><br />R&MB is a neat little essay. Orwell contrasts Raffles as an anti-hero to Slim, the anti-hero of James Hadley Chase’s No Orchids for Miss Blandish, which sold half a million copies, and reading which Orwell describes as a “header into the cesspool”.<br /><br />Raffles is a nice, English sort of an anti-hero, a baddy, but he did play cricket for England and he did die nobly in the Boer War. Slim, by contrast, is simply revolting and the tenor of Orchids is a celebration of raw power, in which men are tortured and women are kidnapped and tortured and raped and the cruelty is not a means to an end but “a means to a means”, as Orwell puts it, the book is meant for sordid people who enjoy the thought of cruelty and Orwell is horrified that it sold so many copies.DMnoreply@blogger.com