The Unexamined Orwell

Author : John Rodden
Publisher : University of Texas Press
ISBN 13 : 0292748973
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Unexamined Orwell written by John Rodden and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2012-08-17 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A reflection on Orwell-as-idea that “outlines some of the misconceptions and misuses of the Orwell name” (Modern Fiction Studies). The year 1984 is just a memory, but the catchwords of George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four still routinely pepper public discussions of topics ranging from government surveillance and privacy invasion to language corruption and bureaucratese. Orwell’s work pervades the cultural imagination, while others of his literary generation are long forgotten. Exploring this astonishing afterlife has become the scholarly vocation of John Rodden, who is now the leading authority on the reception, impact, and reinvention of George Orwell—the man and writer—as well as of “Orwell” the cultural icon and historical talisman. In The Unexamined Orwell, Rodden delves into dimensions of Orwell’s life and legacy that have escaped the critical glare. He discusses how several leading American intellectuals have earned the title of Orwell’s “successor,” including Lionel Trilling, Dwight Macdonald, Irving Howe, Christopher Hitchens, and John Lukacs. He then turns to Germany and focuses on the role and relevance of Nineteen Eighty-Four in the now-defunct communist nation of East Germany. Rodden also addresses myths that have grown up around Orwell’s life, including his “more than half-legendary” encounter with Ernest Hemingway in liberated Paris in March 1945, and analyzes literary issues such as his utopian sensibility and his prose style. Finally, Rodden poses the endlessly debated question, “What would George Orwell do?” and speculates about how the prophet of Nineteen Eighty-Four would have reacted to world events. In so doing, Rodden shows how our responses to this question reveal much about our culture’s ongoing need to reappropriate “Orwell.”

Author : John Rodden
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228418
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Becoming George Orwell written by John Rodden and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The remarkable transformation of Orwell from journeyman writer to towering icon Is George Orwell the most influential writer who ever lived? Yes, according to John Rodden’s provocative book about the transformation of a man into a myth. Rodden does not argue that Orwell was the most distinguished man of letters of the last century, nor even the leading novelist of his generation, let alone the greatest imaginative writer of English prose fiction. Yet his influence since his death at midcentury is incomparable. No other writer has aroused so much controversy or contributed so many incessantly quoted words and phrases to our cultural lexicon, from “Big Brother” and “doublethink” to “thoughtcrime” and “Newspeak.” Becoming George Orwell is a pathbreaking tour de force that charts the astonishing passage of a litterateur into a legend. Rodden presents the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four in a new light, exploring how the man and writer Orwell, born Eric Arthur Blair, came to be overshadowed by the spectral figure associated with nightmare visions of our possible futures. Rodden opens with a discussion of the life and letters, chronicling Orwell’s eccentricities and emotional struggles, followed by an assessment of his chief literary achievements. The second half of the book examines the legend and legacy of Orwell, whom Rodden calls “England’s Prose Laureate,” looking at everything from cyberwarfare to “fake news.” The closing chapters address both Orwell’s enduring relevance to burning contemporary issues and the multiple ironies of his popular reputation, showing how he and his work have become confused with the very dreads and diseases that he fought against throughout his life.

Author : Christopher Hitchens
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0786725893
Total Pages : 140 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Why Orwell Matters written by Christopher Hitchens and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-06 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Hitchens presents a George Orwell fit for the twenty-first century." --Boston Globe In this widely acclaimed biographical essay, the masterful polemicist Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer and participant George Orwell. True to his contrarian style, Hitchens is both admiring and aggressive, sympathetic yet critical, taking true measure of his subject as hero and problem. Answering both the detractors and the false claimants, Hitchens tears down the façade of sainthood erected by the hagiographers and rebuts the critics point by point. He examines Orwell and his perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and Englishness, as well as his outlook on America, a country and culture toward which he exhibited much ambivalence. Whether thinking about empires or dictators, race or class, nationalism or popular culture, Orwell's moral outlook remains indispensable in a world that has undergone vast changes in the seven decades since his death. Combining the best of Hitchens' polemical punch and intellectual elegance in a tightly woven and subtle argument, this book addresses not only why Orwell matters today, but how he will continue to matter in a future, uncertain world.

Author : George Orwell
Publisher : Modernista
ISBN 13 : 9180948634
Total Pages : 203 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Down and Out in Paris and London written by George Orwell and published by Modernista. This book was released on 2024-04-26 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through George Orwell's firsthand accounts, readers are exposed to the harsh realities of life as a member of the destitute underclass. Orwell works various menial jobs, as dishwasher and plongeur in Parisian restaurants, and encounters a cast of characters from all walks of life. These include fellow down-and-outs, as well as the exploitative and indifferent employers and landlords who profit from their desperation. Down and Out in Paris and London sheds light on the daily challenges faced by those living in poverty, from the constant struggle to secure food and shelter to the lack of dignity and respect afforded to the working poor. Orwell's experiences also serve as a critique of societal structures and attitudes that perpetuate poverty and inequality, offering insight into the systemic failures that marginalize and oppress the most vulnerable members of society. GEORGE ORWELL was born in India in 1903 and passed away in London in 1950. As a journalist, critic, and author, he was a sharp commentator on his era and its political conditions and consequences.

Author : Harold Bloom
Publisher : Infobase Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1438113005
Total Pages : 225 pages
Book Rating : 4.05/5 ( download)

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Download or read book George Orwell, Updated Edition written by Harold Bloom and published by Infobase Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a collection of critical essays on the works of George Orwell.

Author : D. J. Taylor
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504015193
Total Pages : 517 pages
Book Rating : 4.96/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Orwell written by D. J. Taylor and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-07-28 with total page 517 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Whitbread Biography Award: A “profoundly moving [and] definitive” portrait of George Orwell, author of 1984 and larger-than-life literary genius (The Daily Telegraph). It was not easy to bury George Orwell. After a lifetime of iconoclasm, during which he professed no interest in religion and no affiliation with any church, he asked to be buried in an Anglican churchyard—but none would have him. Orwell’s friends fought for him to have a proper grave, however, and the author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia, among other brilliant works of prose, poetry, and journalism, was laid to rest in a quiet country cemetery. Almost immediately, his legacy was in dispute. Orwell did not want any biographies written of him, but that has not stopped scholars from trying. Of all those published since the author’s death in 1950, D. J. Taylor’s prize-winning book is considered the most definitive. Born in India, Orwell spent his forty-six years of life traveling the British Empire and confronting the world head on. From the trenches of Spain to the top of bestseller lists, Taylor presents Orwell fully—as a writer, social critic, and human being.

Author : Dennis Glover
Publisher : Abrams
ISBN 13 : 1468315927
Total Pages : 189 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Man in Europe written by Dennis Glover and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2017-11-14 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This “riveting novel about Orwell’s last days” takes readers inside the renowned author’s mind as he creates his final dystopian masterpiece (New Statesman). April, 1947. In a run-down farmhouse on a remote Scottish island, George Orwell begins his last and greatest work, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Forty-three years old and suffering from the tuberculosis that within three winters will take his life, Orwell comes to see the book as his legacy—the culmination of a career spent fighting to preserve the freedoms which the wars and upheavals of the twentieth century have threatened. Completing the book is an urgent challenge, a race against death. In this masterful novel, Dennis Glover explores the creation of Orwell’s classic work which defined the twentieth century for millions of readers worldwide—and has continued to prove its unnerving relevance in the twenty-first. Simultaneously a captivating drama, a unique literary excavation, and an unflinching portrait of a writer, The Last Man in Europe will change the way we understand both our enduringly Orwellian times and Orwell’s timeless masterpiece.

Author : Rebecca Solnit
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0593083377
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.76/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Orwell's Roses written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist for the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography “An exhilarating romp through Orwell’s life and times and also through the life and times of roses.” —Margaret Atwood “A captivating account of Orwell as gardener, lover, parent, and endlessly curious thinker.” —Claire Messud, Harper's “Nobody who reads it will ever think of Nineteen Eighty-Four in quite the same way.” —Vogue A lush exploration of politics, roses, and pleasure, and a fresh take on George Orwell as an avid gardener whose political writing was grounded by his passion for the natural world “In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses.” So be-gins Rebecca Solnit’s new book, a reflection on George Orwell’s passionate gardening and the way that his involvement with plants, particularly flowers, illuminates his other commitments as a writer and antifascist, and on the intertwined politics of nature and power. Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the roses he reportedly planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this overlooked aspect of Orwell’s life journeys through his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left) to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism. Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers are drawn onward from Orwell‘s own work as a writer and gardener to encounter photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her politics, agriculture and illusion in the USSR of his time with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s examination of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market. The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes Solnit’s portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as offering a meditation on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance.

Author : George Orwell
Publisher : DigiCat
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 2801 pages
Book Rating : 4.82/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Essential Works of George Orwell written by George Orwell and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-13 with total page 2801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat presents the George Orwell Collection -the greatest novels, poems, essays and autobiographical works of this great visionary in one volume: Novels: Burmese Days A Clergyman's Daughter Keep the Aspidistra Flying Coming Up for Air Animal Farm 1984 Poetry: Awake! Young Men of England Kitchener Our Hearts Are Married, But We Are Too Young The Pagan Poem from Burma The Lesser Evil Romance Summer-like for an Instant The Italian Soldier Shook My Hand... Reflections on War and Society: Spilling the Spanish Beans Not Counting Niggers Prophecies of Fascism Wells, Hitler and the World State Looking Back on the Spanish War Who Are the War Criminals? Future of a Ruined Germany Revenge is Sour You and the Atomic Bomb Notes on Nationalism Catastrophic Gradualism Freedom of the Park How the Poor Die In Front of Your Nose Thoughts on England: Democracy in the British Army The Lion and the Unicorn Antisemitism in Britain In Defence of English Cooking Decline of the English Murder Politics and the English Language Views on Literature, Art & Famous Men: In Defence of the Novel Notes on the Way Charles Dickens Literature and Totalitarianism The Art of Donald Mcgill Rudyard Kipling W. B. Yeats Mark Twain—the Licensed Jester Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool Writers and Leviathan Reflections on Gandhi... Book Reviews: Mein Kampf The Totalitarian Enemy... Miscellaneous Writings: A Farthing Newspaper The Spike Boys' Weeklies and Frank Richards's Reply Poetry and the Microphone The Sporting Spirit... Autobiographical Works: A Hanging Down and Out in Paris and London Bookshop Memories Shooting an Elephant The Road to Wigan Pier Homage to Catalonia Marrakech Why I Write...

Author : Jonathan Rose
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Revised Orwell written by Jonathan Rose and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written to address recent discussions of George Orwell's novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four, this impressive collection of interpretive writing debates the work's value as a portent for our future and questions much of the second-guessing that has taken place about how Orwell might have responded to events he did not live to see. Essays included in the work were prepared by scholars from a broad range of disciplines--intellectual historians, literary critics, experts on communication, psychologists, students of popular culture, sociologists, linguists, and classicists--to generate fresh new perspectives on Orwell and the Orwellian myth. Included among the essays is one of the first Soviet critiques of Nineteen Eighty-Four to appear in English translation; the piece was previously published in the Russian literary magazine Novy Mir in 1989. Several essays discuss the novel's literary artistry, its popular and modernist appeal, as well as the ways in which Orwell made use of psychoanalytic techniques. The Revised Orwell contains a lively selection of scholarly writing that reveals Orwell to be a controversial, politically idiosyncratic writer, but one well within the mainstream of British cultural history. These works are solidly researched and fully developed; they will make lasting contributions to Orwell studies.