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Dickens, Dali And Others: (Authorized Orwell Edition): A Mariner Books Classic
Ten celebrated essays by a man universally regarded as a master of the essay form. Included are such classics as "Charles Dickens," "The Art of Donald McGill," "Boys' Weeklies," "Raffles and Miss Blandish," and "Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali."
Contents:
Charles Dickens
Boys' Weeklies
Wells, Hitler and the World State
The Art of Donald McGill
Rudyard Kipling
W.B. Yeats
Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali
Arthur Koestler
Raffles and Miss Blandish
In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse
Contents:
Charles Dickens
Boys' Weeklies
Wells, Hitler and the World State
The Art of Donald McGill
Rudyard Kipling
W.B. Yeats
Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali
Arthur Koestler
Raffles and Miss Blandish
In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse
252 pages, Paperback
First published February 14, 1946
10 people are currently reading
491 people want to read
About the author
George Orwell
1,281 books50.7k followersEric Arthur Blair was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to all totalitarianism (both fascism and stalinism), and support of democratic socialism.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
Orwell is best known for his allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), although his works also encompass literary criticism, poetry, fiction and polemical journalism. His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the industrial north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics, literature, language and culture.
Orwell's work remains influential in popular culture and in political culture, and the adjective "Orwellian"—describing totalitarian and authoritarian social practices—is part of the English language, like many of his neologisms, such as "Big Brother", "Thought Police", "Room 101", "Newspeak", "memory hole", "doublethink", and "thoughtcrime". In 2008, The Times named Orwell the second-greatest British writer since 1945.
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
May 20, 2017
Yaklaşık 500 sayfalık Orwell denemelerinin arasından bu tutarsız seçki neden yapılmış anlamadım. Başta epey iyi başlamasına rağmen sonrasında oncası dururken "Raffless ve Bayan Blandish" ya da "Iyi Kötü Kitaplar" gibi 21.yy'a ulaşmamış içerikteki yazıları Türkçe'ye çevirmek kimin fikriydi merak konusu benim için.
Çeviride içler acısı kelimeler kullanılmış (: (evet sevgili çevirmen patetik yerine sen de bu öbeği kullanabilirdin) en basitinden.
Olmamış. 3 yıldız kapağa ve ilk denemeler seçimine.
Çeviride içler acısı kelimeler kullanılmış (: (evet sevgili çevirmen patetik yerine sen de bu öbeği kullanabilirdin) en basitinden.
Olmamış. 3 yıldız kapağa ve ilk denemeler seçimine.
February 20, 2016
An amazing collection of essays covering a huge range of topics. Orwell has an uncanny ability to breath life into anything he writes about. His usual wit and humour made it all the more fun, and his views about Dickens, Miller, Shakespear and Greene are very interesting.
This collection introduced me to 'Orwell the essayist', And I can't say that I am not pleased.
This collection introduced me to 'Orwell the essayist', And I can't say that I am not pleased.
August 24, 2023
I enjoyed this series of essays, even while disagreeing on several points with Orwell. I love his writing style so much and it was interesting to get his perspective on some of my other favorite authors as well as a few people I’d never heard of.
February 8, 2023
[Reynal & Hitchcock] (1946). HB. 243 Pages. Bought at auction (eBay).
10 essays, originally published 1939-1945.
Contains a brief Introductory Note by the author.
Diverse, thought provoking, entertaining and well written - a great collection.
I note that “narrative” was sidelined, in favour of “recit”, in “Raffles and Miss Blandish.” Orwell forgot himself… ‘lexical grandstanding’!
“Benefit of Clergy” contains a ragbag of hilarious references to Salvador Dali… a “diseased intelligence” who launched an “assault on sanity and decency” and produced pictures which “poison the imagination”…. a “good draughtsman and a disgusting human being”…
10 essays, originally published 1939-1945.
Contains a brief Introductory Note by the author.
Diverse, thought provoking, entertaining and well written - a great collection.
I note that “narrative” was sidelined, in favour of “recit”, in “Raffles and Miss Blandish.” Orwell forgot himself… ‘lexical grandstanding’!
“Benefit of Clergy” contains a ragbag of hilarious references to Salvador Dali… a “diseased intelligence” who launched an “assault on sanity and decency” and produced pictures which “poison the imagination”…. a “good draughtsman and a disgusting human being”…
June 30, 2021
Balinanın Karnında - Kitaplar ve Sigaralar - Dali'den Karakurbağasına Bazı Düşünceler toplu yorumudur. Bu kadar üst üste okuyunca biraz tekrara düşüyor insan tabii ama Orwell’in denemeleri ve anıları her zaman ilginç ve kafa açıcı bence. Yine genel olarak edebiyat, edebiyat eleştirisi, savaş ve sosyalizm temel konuları. Açıkçası bunları okumanın Hayvan Çiftliği’ni ve 1984’ü çok daha iyi çerçevelememi sağladığını düşünüyorum, bu nedenle memnunum. Üçünün arasında en zayıf olan Dali’den Karakurbağası’na Bazı Düşünceler’di. Kitaplar ve Sigaralar’ın özellikle yatılı okul anıları kısmı ilginçti, erkek yatılı okullarında okuyanların kendilerinden çok şey bulacağını zannediyorum. Balinanın Karnında da Avrupa’nın iki savaş arasındaki en acayip dönemlerine oldukça aydınlatıcı bir ışık tutuyor. Ezcümle: Orwell büyük bir yazar şüphesiz, ama kendisi o meşhur iki kitabından ibaret değil ve kafasının içinde gezinmek ziyadesiyle heyecan verici.
April 2, 2022
Orwell is s truly fascinating thinker and author. Always nuanced, never dogmatic, always starting from a deep understanding of the human condition. These essays about artists and writers ranging from Dickens over Dali, Kipling, Yeats to Wodehouse are most definitely written by a left thinker but most of all by a man who puts humanity first. His defense of Wodehouse's activities while in German captivity, his nuanced opinion of Kipling contrasts sharply with the simplistic tirades one would normally expect from a left wing writer opining on these authors. As always, his insights are a breath of fresh air even decades after they were written. Still, an perhaps never more than today, relevant for every reader seeking an honest and humane voice.
October 17, 2017
dali ve karakurbagasiyla alakali yazilar kitabin adina yarasir guzellikteydi. birbirinden cok uzak gorunun iki konu ayni noktaya bu kadar guzel baglanabilirdi. george orwell okudukca daha da hayran oldugum bir yazar, yazarliktan da ote hayran oldugum bir insana donusuyor..
November 11, 2024
I used to read a lot of Orwell. When I was a student, I wrote a critical essay about his work and read most of the novels, the real-life encounters, and at least two of the of the volumes of the Alex Comfort edition of the collected essays. It was part of an engineering degree and may have been instrumental in identifying that I was on the wrong course. But in that essay, I identified “fair play” in the English “public school” sense as the key to understanding the thinking of the great man. For a non-British reader, it is worth restating that to the English the oxymoron “public school” actually means “private”. Part of that “fair play” agenda meant that he had to lean to the left in politics, but not ideologically. It was born of a need to extend the fairness concept as widely as possible. He was a fan of people, but always aware of their limitations, with no-one being wholly good or indeed wholly bad. Orwell was certainly no fan of privilege, neither social nor economic, despite his being raised under its shadow.
Since then, I have read very little Orwell, largely because I tend not to revisit works, and my reading in my late teens had covered the majority of his output. So how would I find Orwell’s “Critical Essays” in 2024? Would the fifty years that have passed change my view of this monument of twentieth century writing?
The first thing to note is that I had forgotten his style. The paragraphs are long, sometimes very long. The thought process is ongoing, but directed, never meandering, not always logical, but always insightful. The sentences are economical, largely matter of fact until he wants to emphasize, and then there may be a florid turn of phrase. His sociology, quite apart from his politics, is always in evidence. He is always a great analyser of society, of class-based taste and lifestyle, but without ever offering judgment. He is also very moral in the broadly Church of England sense. He knows when something is wrong and is not afraid to offer an opinion. In today’s Britain, he would probably own up to being a self-professed socialist, but not a member of a party and politically indistinguishable from liberality. It is from this standpoint that we begin to appreciate his criticism.
Orwell’s Critical Essays are really literary criticism, though their subjects are not all drawn from the work of writers. Alongside Dickens, Yates, P.G. Wodehouse, H’G. Wells and Kipling, there are sketches on popular culture in the form of McGill’s postcards and crime comics, and even a trip into the visual arts with a sideways look at Dali. Throughout, there is more that is sociological about this analysis than the purely literary. His essay on Wodehouse, for example, is more about the position the writer adopted after the German invasions of Belgium and France at the start of World War II, than about his literary style. The position Wodehouse adopted, however, is seen by well as an extension of the same, detached worldview that permeated his writing. Orwell makes the convincing case that Wodehouse was living largely in the past. And this then becomes an explanatory lens through which we can interpret the writing.
Make no mistake: Critical Essays is a masterpiece of its kind. Orwell’s essay on Dickens alone makes this work worth reading. If, like me, you have yet to trudge through the majority of Dickens’s novels, but are broadly familiar with the stories, then there is much that Orwell writes that prepares you to consume the output. Orwell writes throughout from a position of intimacy with the work, and he places himself firmly as appreciative of the novelist’s achievement, while at the same time being willing to state its limitations. There is no hero worship here: perhaps Orwell was incapable of it. By the end of the essay on Dickens, the reader feels both better informed and enlightened. You have not been turned off Dickens but attracted to what is undeniably good in his output, whilst recognizing its limitations. Orwell’s position on Dickens was that the novelist was largely a middle-class snob, tolerant of the working classes, but not wiling to rub shoulders with them. The lower middle-class origins, however, also meant that Dickens was definitely not a fan of the gentry, though he was prone to touch the forelock in their presence.
Orwell’s turn of phrase can be memorable. When discussing how Dickens renders accent in his texts, Orwell criticises the necessity to apostrophise. Personally, I agree with Orwell. It often astounds me how working-class people managed to speak at all in text through all those apostrophes! Again, the social class position of the novelist is made clear in Orwell’s analysis. “It is the thought of the “pure” Agnes in bed with a man who drops his aitches that really revolts Dickens.”
The presence of food is suggested as a definitive stylistic trait. Orwell sites several examples from the texts where the redundant detail adds to Dickens’s signature. And often, that redundant detail is a description of a meal. Orwell, however, goes further. He uses this obsession with food as evidence of the novelist’s limited vision. “…it is not merely a coincidence that Dickens never writes about agriculture and writes endlessly about food. He was a Cockney, and London is the centre of the Earth in rather the same sense that the belly is the centre of the body. It is a city of consumers, of people who are deeply civilized, but not primarily useful.”
Popular culture does receive Orwell’s comment. Given what he says, one wonders how he would react to what has happened in the area since 1950, when he died. He writes: “All art is propaganda. … On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.” In my opinion, he would see contemporary mass culture as primarily propagandistic.
Even in the 1940s, when many students in school still learned poetry by heart, Orwell records that perhaps Britain’s greatest literary tradition was utterly elitist. “In general, ours is a civilization in which the very word “poetry” evokes a hostile snigger or, at best, the sort of frozen disgust that most people feel when they hear the word “God”.” It was not the poetry itself that was the problem, but the public perception of it. And this was no doubt fuelled by the upper classes claiming its ownership for themselves.
And how about this for an anecdote? “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” This tells us what Orwell would have made of the political memoir!
And when it comes to opinion, Orwell is not worried about saying what he thinks. In the essay on Salvador Dali, he writes, “He is as anti-social as a flea.” He goes on the note that many of the works are good and that even the ideas they represent are interesting. But Orwell has a deep dislike of exaggerated self-promotion. For him, content was everything and he could always separate achievement from the achiever. The two sometimes were linked, but for Orwell there are no good guys or bad guys, only ultimately flawed people. In today’s age of empty, message-less celebrity, re-reading these essays reminds us what talent really is.
Since then, I have read very little Orwell, largely because I tend not to revisit works, and my reading in my late teens had covered the majority of his output. So how would I find Orwell’s “Critical Essays” in 2024? Would the fifty years that have passed change my view of this monument of twentieth century writing?
The first thing to note is that I had forgotten his style. The paragraphs are long, sometimes very long. The thought process is ongoing, but directed, never meandering, not always logical, but always insightful. The sentences are economical, largely matter of fact until he wants to emphasize, and then there may be a florid turn of phrase. His sociology, quite apart from his politics, is always in evidence. He is always a great analyser of society, of class-based taste and lifestyle, but without ever offering judgment. He is also very moral in the broadly Church of England sense. He knows when something is wrong and is not afraid to offer an opinion. In today’s Britain, he would probably own up to being a self-professed socialist, but not a member of a party and politically indistinguishable from liberality. It is from this standpoint that we begin to appreciate his criticism.
Orwell’s Critical Essays are really literary criticism, though their subjects are not all drawn from the work of writers. Alongside Dickens, Yates, P.G. Wodehouse, H’G. Wells and Kipling, there are sketches on popular culture in the form of McGill’s postcards and crime comics, and even a trip into the visual arts with a sideways look at Dali. Throughout, there is more that is sociological about this analysis than the purely literary. His essay on Wodehouse, for example, is more about the position the writer adopted after the German invasions of Belgium and France at the start of World War II, than about his literary style. The position Wodehouse adopted, however, is seen by well as an extension of the same, detached worldview that permeated his writing. Orwell makes the convincing case that Wodehouse was living largely in the past. And this then becomes an explanatory lens through which we can interpret the writing.
Make no mistake: Critical Essays is a masterpiece of its kind. Orwell’s essay on Dickens alone makes this work worth reading. If, like me, you have yet to trudge through the majority of Dickens’s novels, but are broadly familiar with the stories, then there is much that Orwell writes that prepares you to consume the output. Orwell writes throughout from a position of intimacy with the work, and he places himself firmly as appreciative of the novelist’s achievement, while at the same time being willing to state its limitations. There is no hero worship here: perhaps Orwell was incapable of it. By the end of the essay on Dickens, the reader feels both better informed and enlightened. You have not been turned off Dickens but attracted to what is undeniably good in his output, whilst recognizing its limitations. Orwell’s position on Dickens was that the novelist was largely a middle-class snob, tolerant of the working classes, but not wiling to rub shoulders with them. The lower middle-class origins, however, also meant that Dickens was definitely not a fan of the gentry, though he was prone to touch the forelock in their presence.
Orwell’s turn of phrase can be memorable. When discussing how Dickens renders accent in his texts, Orwell criticises the necessity to apostrophise. Personally, I agree with Orwell. It often astounds me how working-class people managed to speak at all in text through all those apostrophes! Again, the social class position of the novelist is made clear in Orwell’s analysis. “It is the thought of the “pure” Agnes in bed with a man who drops his aitches that really revolts Dickens.”
The presence of food is suggested as a definitive stylistic trait. Orwell sites several examples from the texts where the redundant detail adds to Dickens’s signature. And often, that redundant detail is a description of a meal. Orwell, however, goes further. He uses this obsession with food as evidence of the novelist’s limited vision. “…it is not merely a coincidence that Dickens never writes about agriculture and writes endlessly about food. He was a Cockney, and London is the centre of the Earth in rather the same sense that the belly is the centre of the body. It is a city of consumers, of people who are deeply civilized, but not primarily useful.”
Popular culture does receive Orwell’s comment. Given what he says, one wonders how he would react to what has happened in the area since 1950, when he died. He writes: “All art is propaganda. … On the other hand, not all propaganda is art.” In my opinion, he would see contemporary mass culture as primarily propagandistic.
Even in the 1940s, when many students in school still learned poetry by heart, Orwell records that perhaps Britain’s greatest literary tradition was utterly elitist. “In general, ours is a civilization in which the very word “poetry” evokes a hostile snigger or, at best, the sort of frozen disgust that most people feel when they hear the word “God”.” It was not the poetry itself that was the problem, but the public perception of it. And this was no doubt fuelled by the upper classes claiming its ownership for themselves.
And how about this for an anecdote? “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.” This tells us what Orwell would have made of the political memoir!
And when it comes to opinion, Orwell is not worried about saying what he thinks. In the essay on Salvador Dali, he writes, “He is as anti-social as a flea.” He goes on the note that many of the works are good and that even the ideas they represent are interesting. But Orwell has a deep dislike of exaggerated self-promotion. For him, content was everything and he could always separate achievement from the achiever. The two sometimes were linked, but for Orwell there are no good guys or bad guys, only ultimately flawed people. In today’s age of empty, message-less celebrity, re-reading these essays reminds us what talent really is.
October 1, 2025
Benefit of Clergy – some Notes on Salvador Dali by George Orwell is the nineteenth of The Essays that are placed on the 917th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the algorithm changes the hierarchy, who knows what the data used is, but if it takes into account the ‘reading public’, then the chefs d’oeuvre will descend, and the likes of The Da Vinci Code will dominate the arena, and they will become the GOAT – you have more than five thousand reviews on books from the aforementioned site and others, with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists waiting for you on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...
9 out of 10
‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats’
This sounds like one of the famous, classic lines “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line in Pride and Prejudice https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... as known as the start of Anna Karenina
‘Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticized, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.’
Like the other essays https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... this one is a mesmerizing Xray and says exactly what we need to know, indeed, I have started reading the autobiography of Dali, such a flamboyant figure, what with his moustaches and everything else
I have stopped though, after a few pages, he went on about himself, how divine he is – he probably, surely did not say that, but that was the feeling I was left with – and we reach the…toilet, where he has to defecate, and then follows the description of his feces, which have no smell, he is a demi, or maybe a full god
Geroge Orwell writes about the violence: ‘Several other incidents of the same kind are recorded, including (this was when he was twenty-nine years old) knocking down and trampling on a girl ‘until they had to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach.’ And this is so vile, albeit in the circumstances, they tolerate somehow his aberrations
Intellectuals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a fantastic book by Paul Johnson (I am reading his History of Christianity now) and we get from here that Leo Tolstoy, Erenest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others have been quite frightening, even abominable as humans
Thus, Dali may fit the profile of the gifted individual, who is a great artist, but not a good friend – the impression we have from reading the essay about his is that he was quite repulsive ‘When he is about five, he gets hold of a wounded bat which he puts into a tin pail. Next morning he finds that the bat is almost dead and is covered with ants which are devouring it. He puts it in his mouth, ants and all, and bites it almost in half.’
Dali has a five-year plan involving a poor girl, he torments her, kissing and fondling her, only to stop, telling her he will abandon her, and he does that and the conclusion is devastating: ‘But neither ought one to pretend, in the name of ‘detachment’, that such pictures as ‘Mannequin rotting in a taxicab’ are morally neutral. They are diseased and disgusting, and any investigation ought to start out from that fact.’ Critics would disagree, but I am (almost) convinced
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence
Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
9 out of 10
‘Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats’
This sounds like one of the famous, classic lines “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The first line in Pride and Prejudice https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... as known as the start of Anna Karenina
‘Some of the incidents in it are flatly incredible, others have been rearranged and romanticized, and not merely the humiliation but the persistent ordinariness of everyday life has been cut out. Dali is even by his own diagnosis narcissistic, and his autobiography is simply a strip-tease act conducted in pink limelight. But as a record of fantasy, of the perversion of instinct that has been made possible by the machine age, it has great value.’
Like the other essays https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... this one is a mesmerizing Xray and says exactly what we need to know, indeed, I have started reading the autobiography of Dali, such a flamboyant figure, what with his moustaches and everything else
I have stopped though, after a few pages, he went on about himself, how divine he is – he probably, surely did not say that, but that was the feeling I was left with – and we reach the…toilet, where he has to defecate, and then follows the description of his feces, which have no smell, he is a demi, or maybe a full god
Geroge Orwell writes about the violence: ‘Several other incidents of the same kind are recorded, including (this was when he was twenty-nine years old) knocking down and trampling on a girl ‘until they had to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach.’ And this is so vile, albeit in the circumstances, they tolerate somehow his aberrations
Intellectuals https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is a fantastic book by Paul Johnson (I am reading his History of Christianity now) and we get from here that Leo Tolstoy, Erenest Hemingway, Henrik Ibsen, Jean Jacques Rousseau and others have been quite frightening, even abominable as humans
Thus, Dali may fit the profile of the gifted individual, who is a great artist, but not a good friend – the impression we have from reading the essay about his is that he was quite repulsive ‘When he is about five, he gets hold of a wounded bat which he puts into a tin pail. Next morning he finds that the bat is almost dead and is covered with ants which are devouring it. He puts it in his mouth, ants and all, and bites it almost in half.’
Dali has a five-year plan involving a poor girl, he torments her, kissing and fondling her, only to stop, telling her he will abandon her, and he does that and the conclusion is devastating: ‘But neither ought one to pretend, in the name of ‘detachment’, that such pictures as ‘Mannequin rotting in a taxicab’ are morally neutral. They are diseased and disgusting, and any investigation ought to start out from that fact.’ Critics would disagree, but I am (almost) convinced
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence
Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
August 30, 2016
Reading this book made me wish Orwell was around today to add his incisive comments on our political world. He daringly eviscerates the much-cherished Dickens, and comments on the "good bad poetry" of the despised yet secretly loved Kipling. In between, he does a great job exploring British public taste in the WWII years and after--from off-color cartoon postcards to boys' weeklies. Orwell acts more as a sociologist or anthropologist here, and in between, offers precious jewels about writing. As a poet, I enjoyed his observation that people will gather around anyone playing a concertina in a bar, but if that same person should offer to quote a Shakespearean sonnet, the room would clear. Such humor and wisdom to be savored--and to imagine I saved this book from the recycle pile at my local dump.
August 29, 2021
I have the essays of Orwell collected in a four-volume set by penguin. It is a treasure-trove of intellectual curiosity, playful wit and sober judgement on everything that tickled his fancy. For me, these essays are even better than his novels. I love them.
July 22, 2017
Orwell'in yalın kaleminden serbest nazım denemeler, özellikle İspanya İç Savaşı ve Daliye dair olanlar demir leblebi mahiyetinde
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September 7, 2025Works of art are “capable of giving true pleasure to those who can see clearly what is wrong with them.” Orwell is fantastically capable of this, with all his flawed targets, and reports back fairly enough that we can learn to see them as such, too.
Above all, Orwell believes that literature reflects and affects its moment, that all art is propaganda, and that ignorance of either fact cannot be abided. His moment is a “modernity” of late- and post-World War II madness. The writer who cannot understand that “nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity” is stunted, stuck in an extinct era (one of Orwell’s leading conclusions about many of those who he critiques in this book).
There is no escape: “...nowadays the present and the future are too terrifying to be escaped from, and if one bothers with history it is in order to find modern meanings there”—though, it could be argued, this is what all botherings of history in all ages have been for.
We are all in pursuit of establishment: of finding an earthly paradise, a city of God, through force, thought, science, hope. But God is dead and nothing seems to be working. Here lies madness.
Orwell’s view of the future: “Since about 1930 the world has given no reason for optimism whatever. Nothing is in sight except a welter of lies, hatred, cruelty and ignorance, and beyond our present troubles loom vaster ones which are only now entering into the European consciousness.”
But to give up and hope that somehow, without action, things will be better 100 years from now, is not an option. And since art is inextricable from these projects, and “all revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure,” it follows that all artists fail, but not the same way. Constant critique, demanding, negotiation, and recalibration, are essential: to nudge each successive failure towards better ones.
Art distills its political scene and reaches people who, when they do read, want “the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals”—a truth of consumption that continues unaltered through today. Weaponized, art can be an attempt to “induce an outlook acceptable to the ruling class,” or whatever force is motivated to weaponize. No art is neutral. All art is propaganda.
Orwell’s great talents at show in this collection are (a) to tether artists to their contexts and implications, and (b) to take them as flawed, always, yet equally worthwhile, and to compliment their talents and successes and values while tearing down the rest.
His is a world of class structure, revolution, and bloodshed, centering around collapsing institutions felled by their incapability and rigidity, by the blindness of their practitioners, and by the brutal assaults on them—as on all of placid mankind—from the outside in. He has walked among the actual proletariat and has a keen nose and knife for those who feign to but have not.
Orwell sees clearly the cracks in the facades and why they have inevitably come to be there and how exactly the ruins will fall in the inescapable present and future—that which cannot be evaded by fleeing into the past, redoubling upon our own natures, or closing our eyes and hoping that the Beasts now walking the earth are aberrations, not offspring.
Almost a century later…well.
Above all, Orwell believes that literature reflects and affects its moment, that all art is propaganda, and that ignorance of either fact cannot be abided. His moment is a “modernity” of late- and post-World War II madness. The writer who cannot understand that “nationalism, religious bigotry and feudal loyalty are far more powerful forces than what he himself would describe as sanity” is stunted, stuck in an extinct era (one of Orwell’s leading conclusions about many of those who he critiques in this book).
There is no escape: “...nowadays the present and the future are too terrifying to be escaped from, and if one bothers with history it is in order to find modern meanings there”—though, it could be argued, this is what all botherings of history in all ages have been for.
We are all in pursuit of establishment: of finding an earthly paradise, a city of God, through force, thought, science, hope. But God is dead and nothing seems to be working. Here lies madness.
Orwell’s view of the future: “Since about 1930 the world has given no reason for optimism whatever. Nothing is in sight except a welter of lies, hatred, cruelty and ignorance, and beyond our present troubles loom vaster ones which are only now entering into the European consciousness.”
But to give up and hope that somehow, without action, things will be better 100 years from now, is not an option. And since art is inextricable from these projects, and “all revolutions are failures, but they are not all the same failure,” it follows that all artists fail, but not the same way. Constant critique, demanding, negotiation, and recalibration, are essential: to nudge each successive failure towards better ones.
Art distills its political scene and reaches people who, when they do read, want “the current struggles of the world to be translated into a simple story about individuals”—a truth of consumption that continues unaltered through today. Weaponized, art can be an attempt to “induce an outlook acceptable to the ruling class,” or whatever force is motivated to weaponize. No art is neutral. All art is propaganda.
Orwell’s great talents at show in this collection are (a) to tether artists to their contexts and implications, and (b) to take them as flawed, always, yet equally worthwhile, and to compliment their talents and successes and values while tearing down the rest.
His is a world of class structure, revolution, and bloodshed, centering around collapsing institutions felled by their incapability and rigidity, by the blindness of their practitioners, and by the brutal assaults on them—as on all of placid mankind—from the outside in. He has walked among the actual proletariat and has a keen nose and knife for those who feign to but have not.
Orwell sees clearly the cracks in the facades and why they have inevitably come to be there and how exactly the ruins will fall in the inescapable present and future—that which cannot be evaded by fleeing into the past, redoubling upon our own natures, or closing our eyes and hoping that the Beasts now walking the earth are aberrations, not offspring.
Almost a century later…well.
January 4, 2018
Although copyrighted 1946, these essays are still interesting to read. They’re not too dated, and even, surprisingly have some relevance today – especial “Wells, Hitler and the World State.” The author shares his insights and opinions on Kipling, Yeats, P.G. Wodehouse, Raffles, and the popular Boys’ Weeklies as well as the Authors/Artists in the title.
April 5, 2021
"Faşizm Kehanetleri" gibi bu kitabını da altını çizerek okumak durumunda kaldım. İnsanlar, kavramlar ve olgular üzerine yazdığı deneme ve makaleler o kadar yalın ve anlatım gücü yüksek ki insan neredeyse yazar yanınızda oturmuş çayını içiyor gibi hissettirdi. Faşizm Kehanetleri gibi bu kitap da gerçeklerin hizmetkarı bir eser...
June 20, 2024
A fantastic essayist, and I wish he were alive to day to comment upon the world of the 21st. century because his experiences and observations allied to his absolute honesty of opinion are totally captivating, thoughtful and informative, and the breathe of topics makes his work a treasure of variety. A must read writer for everyone.
January 28, 2019
Özellikle Dali ile ilgili bölüm ve yaptığı analiz müthiş çarpıcı. Savaşa ve insan ilişkilerine dair yaptığı yorumlar nefis. Müthiş bir gözlemci ve güçlü bir kelime oyuncusu.
March 1, 2021
Okurken hemen her konuda bilgilendiğimi hissettim, iyi ki okumuşum güzel bir eser.
September 22, 2023
Özellikle Common Toad / Karakurbağası hakkında yazdığı denemeyi herkesin okumasını tavsiye ediyorum.
May 11, 2020
While the really good ones in this collection, like the close-to-indispensable essay on Dickens, are in his Selected Essays, this is still a good group in its own right, especially for those interested in literature and politics. Orwell is close to as good as it gets in terms of, as the Time quote on the back of the book says, "rejecting the tightness of orthodoxy and the looseness of hedonism"-- I guess there's a reason people read that publication. Spectacular insight into the importance of everyday affairs.
I was looking forward to reading the Dali essay, but it turns out that as far as Dali goes, ignorance is much closer to bliss.
2020 update: Coming back to Orwell is like visiting an old professor of yours and realizing that he or she is still way smarter than you are, and that you've grown smarter yourself only allows you to see it better. One thing I didn't recognize before is that Orwell's famous line, "the smelly orthodoxies contending for our souls," refers almost exclusively to political 'faiths' in that religious belief is not a live option by that part of the essay.
I was looking forward to reading the Dali essay, but it turns out that as far as Dali goes, ignorance is much closer to bliss.
2020 update: Coming back to Orwell is like visiting an old professor of yours and realizing that he or she is still way smarter than you are, and that you've grown smarter yourself only allows you to see it better. One thing I didn't recognize before is that Orwell's famous line, "the smelly orthodoxies contending for our souls," refers almost exclusively to political 'faiths' in that religious belief is not a live option by that part of the essay.
September 22, 2018
This book is a great reminder that pop culture criticism and analysis is not a new phenomenon and, when not reduced to cliches or political Rorschach tests, an interesting and revealing one. Here we see the brilliant mind of Orwell explore the histories and ideologies of the popular media of his day, pulp magazines, the works of Salividor Dali, cheeky postcards, H.G. Wells, "noir" crime books, and several famous poets and writers including the titular extended piece on the works and political views of Charles Dickens. As a cultural critic Orwell is original and insightful and his stature as a writer only improved in my mind after reading this piece. For lovers of Orwell, those curious about pre WWII culture or those that simply want to read good writing and interesting cultural criticism I highly recommend this book
May 16, 2014
The copy I read was called 'Critical Essays', published by Secker and Warburg in 1954, but has the exact same ten essays in it.
I wish Orwell was alive and tweeting today.
"The energy that actually shapes the world comes from emotions ... which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destryoyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."
"Since 1920 he has squandered his talents in slaying paper dragons. But how much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander."
'Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
I wish Orwell was alive and tweeting today.
"The energy that actually shapes the world comes from emotions ... which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms, and which they have usually destryoyed so completely in themselves as to have lost all power of action."
"Since 1920 he has squandered his talents in slaying paper dragons. But how much it is, after all, to have any talents to squander."
'Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats."
February 7, 2017
"Sanat nedir?", "Bilim nedir?", "Siyaset nedir?", "Etik ile bu soruların arasındaki çizgi nerede çizilebilir?" gibi sorulara verdiği zekice cevaplarla tadına doyulmaz edebi bir şölen sunuyor George Orwell.
February 13, 2016
Although I really love reading Orwell's essays where he would discuss books and authors of the era I recommend picking up All Art is Propaganda instead as it has many of the same essays and much more interesting ones as well.
April 25, 2021
Available at the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/dickensda...
https://archive.org/details/dickensda...
July 28, 2012
Read 4/14/08
May 14, 2013
Came for the "Boys Weeklies" essay, ended up reading everything else as well.
April 26, 2017
Orwell'in bu zamana kadar hep romanlarını okudum ve dünya görüşünü, kurgu içerisinde ustaca yansitmasina hayran kaldım. Ama onun fikirlerini anlamak için denemelerine, gazete yazılarına bakmam gerekiyordu. Dali'den Karakurbağasına Bazı Düşünceler'in vesilesiyle bunu nispeten gerçekleştirmiş oldum.
Bu kitap Orwell'in ikinci dünya savaşı ve sonrasında yazdığı gazete yazılarından bir derleme. Kimi zaman İspanya Iç Savaşını anlatirken ki kendisi bu savaşa katılmış biri, kimi zaman İngiliz polisiye romanları üzerine bir eleştirisini kaleme almış. Birikimini yaşanmışlıklarla harmanlamis. Sanırım yazıları bu kadar çarpıcı yapan da bu.
Bu kitap Orwell'in ikinci dünya savaşı ve sonrasında yazdığı gazete yazılarından bir derleme. Kimi zaman İspanya Iç Savaşını anlatirken ki kendisi bu savaşa katılmış biri, kimi zaman İngiliz polisiye romanları üzerine bir eleştirisini kaleme almış. Birikimini yaşanmışlıklarla harmanlamis. Sanırım yazıları bu kadar çarpıcı yapan da bu.
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January 30, 2019George Orwell’ın romanlarını Can Yayınları basarken deneme türündeki kitapları Sel Yayıncılık’tan çıkmış. Yazarın deneme türündeki iki kitabını, Balinanın Karnında ve Dali’den Karakurbağasına Bazı Düşünceler’i arka arkaya okudum.
Deneme benim en sevdiğim türlerden biridir. George Orwell ise en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri ama maalesef yazarın ülkemizde çıkan deneme türündeki kitaplarını bir türlü çok sevemedim. Bence bunun nedeni kitaplarda toplanan denemelerin çok farklı konuları içermesi. Yazarın anılarından oluşsa ya da edebiyat alanındaki fikirlerini içeren yazıları olsa bayılarak okuyacağıma eminim ama siyasetle ilgili fikirleri de var kitaplarında. Siyasetle hiç alakası olmayan biri olarak bu yazılarda maalesef sıkılıyorum. Konuyla ilgili olanlar beğeniyle okuyabilirler belki.
Yine de iki kitapta da hoşuma giden yazılar oldu. Ancak yazarla tanışmak isteyenler mutlaka önce romanlarından başlamalı.
https://suleuzundere.blogspot.com/201...
Deneme benim en sevdiğim türlerden biridir. George Orwell ise en sevdiğim yazarlardan biri ama maalesef yazarın ülkemizde çıkan deneme türündeki kitaplarını bir türlü çok sevemedim. Bence bunun nedeni kitaplarda toplanan denemelerin çok farklı konuları içermesi. Yazarın anılarından oluşsa ya da edebiyat alanındaki fikirlerini içeren yazıları olsa bayılarak okuyacağıma eminim ama siyasetle ilgili fikirleri de var kitaplarında. Siyasetle hiç alakası olmayan biri olarak bu yazılarda maalesef sıkılıyorum. Konuyla ilgili olanlar beğeniyle okuyabilirler belki.
Yine de iki kitapta da hoşuma giden yazılar oldu. Ancak yazarla tanışmak isteyenler mutlaka önce romanlarından başlamalı.
https://suleuzundere.blogspot.com/201...
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