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Keeping Our Little Corner Clean: 1942-1943
During this period, in addition to the magazine program, Voice, Orwell continued to develop what would now be called an "open university"—broadcasts by distinguished speakers on texts set for Bombay and Calcutta university degrees. He enlisted such speakers as E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot, and Joseph Needham, and the broadcasts were backed up by publications printed in India for university students. Some of Orwell's scripts, such as that for his "Imaginary Interview with Jonathan Swift," pose difficult textual problems and these are fully examined and annotated. Additionally, the script of Eileen Blair's broadcast for the series, "In Your Kitchen" has been included. Orwell still found time to write a number of reviews, contribute to Partisan Review, and write essays on Hardy, Henry Miller, and Yeats.
432 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
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About the author
George Orwell
1,339 books51.4k 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 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 31, 2022
I'm currently working on fulfilling a promise I made to myself to buy and read the Complete Orwell, however I could, dependent on gift cards and availability since I can no longer afford to buy books, and this volume is the first one I was able to add to my collection.
This is actually a pretty minor volume, since during the time it covers Orwell was employed by the BBC working on programs in English for the BBC's India service. Orwell felt the work was useless, radios being thin underfoot in the India of the day, but the material collected here indicates how hard he worked at it. Most of the content is scripts (or indications of scripts that are lost), memoranda, letters, telegrams, and a scattering of minor contributions to newspapers, mostly book reviews.
Probably the most valuable pieces are Orwell's weekly news commentaries, which he wrote with the benefit of access to the BBC's collection of British, foreign, and enemy literature. These are well written, very balanced, and make good reading. But for most interested in Orwell, this particular book is thin at best.
This is actually a pretty minor volume, since during the time it covers Orwell was employed by the BBC working on programs in English for the BBC's India service. Orwell felt the work was useless, radios being thin underfoot in the India of the day, but the material collected here indicates how hard he worked at it. Most of the content is scripts (or indications of scripts that are lost), memoranda, letters, telegrams, and a scattering of minor contributions to newspapers, mostly book reviews.
Probably the most valuable pieces are Orwell's weekly news commentaries, which he wrote with the benefit of access to the BBC's collection of British, foreign, and enemy literature. These are well written, very balanced, and make good reading. But for most interested in Orwell, this particular book is thin at best.
July 13, 2017
#Orwell's commentary in 1942 about TS #Eliot is worth the price of admission alone:
"There is very little in Eliot’s later work that makes any deep impression on me. That is a confession of something lacking in myself, but it is not, as it may appear at first sight, a reason for simply shutting up and saying no more, since the change in my own reaction probably points to some external change which is worth investigating...Eliot’s escape from individualism was into the Church, the Anglican Church as it happened. One ought not to assume that the gloomy Pétainism to which he now appears to have given himself over was the unavoidable result of his conversion. The Anglo-Catholic movement does not impose any political ‘line’ on its followers, and a reactionary or austro-fascist° tendency had always been apparent in his work, especially his prose writings. In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without being intellectually crippled in the process; but it is far from easy, and in practice books by orthodox believers usually show the same cramped, blinkered outlook as books by orthodox Stalinists or others who are mentally unfree. The reason is that the Christian churches still demand assent to doctrines which no one seriously believes in. The most obvious case is the immortality of the soul. The various ‘proofs’ of personal immortality which can be advanced by Christian apologists are psychologically of no importance; what matters, psychologically, is that hardly anyone nowadays feels himself to be immortal...There is no saying whether Mr. Eliot’s development could have been much other than it has been. All writers who are any good develop throughout life, and the general direction of their development is determined. It is absurd to attack Eliot, as some left-wing critics have done, for being a ‘reactionary’ and to imagine that he might have used his gifts in the cause of democracy and Socialism. Obviously a scepticism about democracy and a disbelief in ‘progress’ are an integral part of him; without them he could not have written a line of his works. But it is arguable that he would have done better to go much further in the direction implied in his famous ‘Anglo-Catholic and Royalist’ declaration. He could not have developed into a Socialist, but he might have developed into the last apologist of aristocracy. Neither feudalism nor indeed Fascism is5 necessarily deadly to poets, though both are to prose-writers. The thing that is really deadly to both is Conservatism of the half-hearted modern kind. It is at least imaginable that if Eliot had followed wholeheartedly the antidemocratic, anti-perfectionist strain in himself he might have struck a new vein comparable to his earlier one. But the negative, Pétainism, which turns its eyes to the past, accepts defeat, writes off earthly happiness as impossible, mumbles about prayer and repentance and thinks it a spiritual advance to see life as ‘a pattern of living worms in the guts of the women of Canterbury’—that, surely, is the least hopeful road a poet could take."
"There is very little in Eliot’s later work that makes any deep impression on me. That is a confession of something lacking in myself, but it is not, as it may appear at first sight, a reason for simply shutting up and saying no more, since the change in my own reaction probably points to some external change which is worth investigating...Eliot’s escape from individualism was into the Church, the Anglican Church as it happened. One ought not to assume that the gloomy Pétainism to which he now appears to have given himself over was the unavoidable result of his conversion. The Anglo-Catholic movement does not impose any political ‘line’ on its followers, and a reactionary or austro-fascist° tendency had always been apparent in his work, especially his prose writings. In theory it is still possible to be an orthodox religious believer without being intellectually crippled in the process; but it is far from easy, and in practice books by orthodox believers usually show the same cramped, blinkered outlook as books by orthodox Stalinists or others who are mentally unfree. The reason is that the Christian churches still demand assent to doctrines which no one seriously believes in. The most obvious case is the immortality of the soul. The various ‘proofs’ of personal immortality which can be advanced by Christian apologists are psychologically of no importance; what matters, psychologically, is that hardly anyone nowadays feels himself to be immortal...There is no saying whether Mr. Eliot’s development could have been much other than it has been. All writers who are any good develop throughout life, and the general direction of their development is determined. It is absurd to attack Eliot, as some left-wing critics have done, for being a ‘reactionary’ and to imagine that he might have used his gifts in the cause of democracy and Socialism. Obviously a scepticism about democracy and a disbelief in ‘progress’ are an integral part of him; without them he could not have written a line of his works. But it is arguable that he would have done better to go much further in the direction implied in his famous ‘Anglo-Catholic and Royalist’ declaration. He could not have developed into a Socialist, but he might have developed into the last apologist of aristocracy. Neither feudalism nor indeed Fascism is5 necessarily deadly to poets, though both are to prose-writers. The thing that is really deadly to both is Conservatism of the half-hearted modern kind. It is at least imaginable that if Eliot had followed wholeheartedly the antidemocratic, anti-perfectionist strain in himself he might have struck a new vein comparable to his earlier one. But the negative, Pétainism, which turns its eyes to the past, accepts defeat, writes off earthly happiness as impossible, mumbles about prayer and repentance and thinks it a spiritual advance to see life as ‘a pattern of living worms in the guts of the women of Canterbury’—that, surely, is the least hopeful road a poet could take."
August 8, 2014
Mostly broadcasts, talks at the BBC and a few reviews.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews