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Seeing Things As They Are
'This selection is a ceaseless delight ... there is a treat on almost every page'
Daily Telegraph
George Orwell wrote, in his words, from 'a desire to see things as they are'. This new collection of his journalism and other writings, including articles, essays, broadcasts, poems, book and film reviews from across his career, shows his unmatched genius for observing the world. Whether discussing Polish immigration or Scottish independence, railing against racism, defending the English language or holding an imaginary conversation with Jonathan Swift, these pieces reveal a clear-eyed, entertaining and eternally relevant chronicler of his age.
Edited with an introduction by Peter Davison
'Orwell's luminous gift was for seeing things, for noticing what others missed, took for granted or simply found uninteresting, for discovering meaning and wonder in the familiarity of the everyday... Nothing escaped or seemed beneath his notice, which was what made him such a good reporter... Seeing Things As They Are is intended to be a collection first and foremost of his journalism, with preference given to lesser-known pieces and reviews as well as some of the poems he wrote. It is full of interest and curiosities' Jason Cowley, Financial Times
'Peter Davison gives us a feast of [Orwell's] shorter writings, showing how from such hesitant beginnings he evolved into the writer of enduring importance we know, committed to decency, equality and political honesty, who could nevertheless wax lyrical over the first signs of spring or an imaginary English pub' Gordon Bowker, Independent
George Orwell wrote, in his words, from 'a desire to see things as they are'. This new collection of his journalism and other writings, including articles, essays, broadcasts, poems, book and film reviews from across his career, shows his unmatched genius for observing the world. Whether discussing Polish immigration or Scottish independence, railing against racism, defending the English language or holding an imaginary conversation with Jonathan Swift, these pieces reveal a clear-eyed, entertaining and eternally relevant chronicler of his age.
Edited with an introduction by Peter Davison
'Orwell's luminous gift was for seeing things, for noticing what others missed, took for granted or simply found uninteresting, for discovering meaning and wonder in the familiarity of the everyday... Nothing escaped or seemed beneath his notice, which was what made him such a good reporter... Seeing Things As They Are is intended to be a collection first and foremost of his journalism, with preference given to lesser-known pieces and reviews as well as some of the poems he wrote. It is full of interest and curiosities' Jason Cowley, Financial Times
'Peter Davison gives us a feast of [Orwell's] shorter writings, showing how from such hesitant beginnings he evolved into the writer of enduring importance we know, committed to decency, equality and political honesty, who could nevertheless wax lyrical over the first signs of spring or an imaginary English pub' Gordon Bowker, Independent
485 pages, Paperback
First published December 4, 2014
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About the author
George Orwell
1,257 books50.5k 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 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 29, 2024
Three and a half stars. (Why not more? I had to think about it, but eventually decided that (a) not everything Orwell wrote about was of compelling interest to me and (b) compared to say the roughly contemporary musical journalism of G. B. Shaw, Orwell's writings convey a relatively dour sense of personality.)
George Orwell was primarily a journalist, and assuming this selection is representative, his interests were social, political and literary. (He appreciatively reviews a couple of musical-hall shows and speculates about the potential of the cinema, but I don't recall a mention of classical music, or any of the visual arts. Names like Einstein, Eddington or Oppenheimer were also evidently beyond his professional event horizon.) Still, within those areas, his interests were wide and his thoughts penetrating.
Peter Davison is the lead editor of the 9000-page Collected Works of Orwell. It would have been nice to know how he chose the examples that make up this volume (omitting such essays as "A Hanging", "Shooting an Elephant" and "Why I Write"), but perhaps he can claim anthologist's privilege. His selection is pretty wide: among other material it includes poetry; book, film and theatre reviews; autobiographical essays, polemics, pieces of political analysis, radio broadcasts, including the script of an interview with Jonathan Swift.
Orwell was very productive. In his introduction Davison illustrates this statement with some of Orwell own (probably typical) figures for the mid 1940s when, despite the fact that he was never in the best of health and had to endure the tensions and frustrations of life in wartime and postwar Britain, in 30 months he wrote—and published—the equivalent of three substantial books. It's clearly futile to represent the scope of his work here. Unfortunately it's equally tempting to try to do so.
This collection is ordered chronologically. The first article (from 1929, as by E. A. Blair and restored from a French translation) is a measured and almost clinical denunciation of British policies in Burma, ending with the bitter prediction that once the country was depleted of resources, its population would "be able to appreciate how capitalism shows its gratitude to those to whom it owes its existence."
It is typical of these writings (and presumably of Orwell's working life) that the next item is a review of J. B. Priestley's novel Angel Pavement. Orwell is again caustic but measured, debunking what he sees as absurd overpraise of "a blatantly second-rate novelist" who had still produced an enjoyable light novel.
And this in turn is followed by a scathing description (almost certainly based on personal experience) of conditions in "Common Lodging Houses" (where unemployed homeless men paid to put roofs over their heads). Characteristically his diatribe includes practical suggestions for reform. Then some poems, reviews of Chesterton on Dickens, of Tropic of Cancer, of a Chinese travelogue by Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond's Ian, reporting on the influence of the USSR in the province of Sinkiang. (Orwell comments: "It is a queer tribute to the moral prestige of Communism that we are always rather shocked when we find that the Communists are no better than anybody else.") Kipling, a Defence of the Novel, and a poem bring us to 1937 and the Spanish Civil War.
Another twenty pages (including Bertrand Russell, more on Spain, an explanation of "Why I Join the I[ndependentl] L[abour] P[arty]" and some self-critical biography) and we're into 1940. And the first major representative of the war years takes the bull by the horns. Mein Kampf, Orwell says, is "the fixed vision of a monomaniac." His discussion is both honest and perceptive. (Presciently he surmises, "the Russo–German pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table.") Of Hitler himself Orwell says he would certainly kill him if he could, but he could feel no personal animosity. In fact he finds something deeply appealing about Hitler, who has a "pathetic doglike face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. . . . If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon." He attributes part of Hitler's success to his understanding that sometimes people do want "struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty parades." Orwell then cites Hitler's "I offer you struggle, danger and death" ("and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet")—which Davison aptly compares to Churchill's later "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech.
Orwell is rational and practical about means to oppose a Nazi invasion, but in these articles he does not have a great deal to say about the progress of the war. As far as I can recall the only victories he celebrates are at Rostov and Kharkov.
The end of the war passes virtually unmarked. Apart from one description of liberated Paris, the sound of V-1's falling is followed by a series of occasional pieces that carry us into 1946. One of these pieces is a discussion and defence of P. G. Wodehouse, who had been vilified for contributing to Nazi broadcasts while interned in Germany during WWII. (Others had done worse, Orwell maintained, and been treated much less harshly or even ignored.) He argues Wodehouse was naive not traitorous. (In an interview Wodehouse had wondered whether the kind of people he wrote about would still live after the [second] war. Orwell comments that mentally Wodehouse was still living in the times he wrote about, and Bertie Wooster, if he ever existed, had been killed around 1915.) Orwell suggests that Goebbels' department had hoped for more than they got from Wodehouse, because the latter's amiable exaggeration of upper-class stereotypes was easily mistaken by foreigners for bitter satire.
The postwar years represent about a third of the book; the mixture is as eclectic as before, but offers periodic reminders of how different the world was in the early postwar years: in some circles, for example, it was apparently a real question whether Britain should seek to ally itself with the US or with the USSR.
Anticipations of 1984 become increasingly apparent. Orwell had written about totalitarian visions in Wells and Jack London, Huxley and Zamyatin, as well as about real oppression in Spain and Russia. Now he discusses an attempt to rationalise English spelling. (Orwell suggests doing it a a few words at a time, as sometimes happens anyway; he also favours metric units in science and engineering but traditional units elsewhere.) And he sees the world starting to divide into two or three superstates that he believes will be permanently at low-level war with one another. He evidently discounted the changes in policy nuclear weapons would entail—but then, full-scale thermonuclear weapons were still two years away when Orwell died in 1950.
I am more interested in Orwell's views on literature than on his politics, and his knowledge of English letters seems quite comprehensive. Wherever he turns he produces continual jabs of common sense. Discussing the detective story, he points out how much of the literary quality of the Sherlock Homes stories stems from the preliminary "irrelevant" scenes involving Holmes and Watson alone. He also reflects that such earlier stories were much less formulaic than their murder-centred descendants, often dealing with petty crimes, or even no crime at all. On poetry he argues that rhymed, metrical verse makes poetry easy to memorise, and therefore gives it a chance to escape from the printed page. (What we see see of Orwell's own poetry is indeed traditionally structured.) He first introduces these ideas in an essay on T. S. Eliot. "I know a respectable volume of Eliot's earlier work by heart", Orwell says: "it simply stuck in my mind." But of the three recently published poems that were to form part of Eliot's Four Quartets he recalls only a few isolated lines—surprisingly none of which are from the magnificent passage in "The Dry Salvages" beginning "The river is within us, the sea is all about us" and running to the end of the first section. Perhaps more had changed than Eliot's poetry. His postwar review of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter is quite scathing—dubious about the choice of the African setting and incredulous about the behaviour of the major characters. His reading doesn't fit my own experience of Greene's novel; but that was a long time ago and I'm not prepared to say Orwell was wrong.
But there is no escaping the importance of Orwell's social conscience. Whatever he wrote or did, social justice was never far from his mind. He seems to have felt obliged to seek out wrongs and strive to redress them, almost as though a sense of struggle and striving (an impulse that perhaps originally stemmed from a need to expiate upper-class, imperialist guilt) had become essential to him. Some of his comments on Brave New World are perhaps revealing about the place of such struggle in his life: "though everyone is happy in a vacuous way, life has become so pointless that it is difficult to believe such a society could endure."
George Orwell was primarily a journalist, and assuming this selection is representative, his interests were social, political and literary. (He appreciatively reviews a couple of musical-hall shows and speculates about the potential of the cinema, but I don't recall a mention of classical music, or any of the visual arts. Names like Einstein, Eddington or Oppenheimer were also evidently beyond his professional event horizon.) Still, within those areas, his interests were wide and his thoughts penetrating.
Peter Davison is the lead editor of the 9000-page Collected Works of Orwell. It would have been nice to know how he chose the examples that make up this volume (omitting such essays as "A Hanging", "Shooting an Elephant" and "Why I Write"), but perhaps he can claim anthologist's privilege. His selection is pretty wide: among other material it includes poetry; book, film and theatre reviews; autobiographical essays, polemics, pieces of political analysis, radio broadcasts, including the script of an interview with Jonathan Swift.
Orwell was very productive. In his introduction Davison illustrates this statement with some of Orwell own (probably typical) figures for the mid 1940s when, despite the fact that he was never in the best of health and had to endure the tensions and frustrations of life in wartime and postwar Britain, in 30 months he wrote—and published—the equivalent of three substantial books. It's clearly futile to represent the scope of his work here. Unfortunately it's equally tempting to try to do so.
This collection is ordered chronologically. The first article (from 1929, as by E. A. Blair and restored from a French translation) is a measured and almost clinical denunciation of British policies in Burma, ending with the bitter prediction that once the country was depleted of resources, its population would "be able to appreciate how capitalism shows its gratitude to those to whom it owes its existence."
It is typical of these writings (and presumably of Orwell's working life) that the next item is a review of J. B. Priestley's novel Angel Pavement. Orwell is again caustic but measured, debunking what he sees as absurd overpraise of "a blatantly second-rate novelist" who had still produced an enjoyable light novel.
And this in turn is followed by a scathing description (almost certainly based on personal experience) of conditions in "Common Lodging Houses" (where unemployed homeless men paid to put roofs over their heads). Characteristically his diatribe includes practical suggestions for reform. Then some poems, reviews of Chesterton on Dickens, of Tropic of Cancer, of a Chinese travelogue by Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond's Ian, reporting on the influence of the USSR in the province of Sinkiang. (Orwell comments: "It is a queer tribute to the moral prestige of Communism that we are always rather shocked when we find that the Communists are no better than anybody else.") Kipling, a Defence of the Novel, and a poem bring us to 1937 and the Spanish Civil War.
Another twenty pages (including Bertrand Russell, more on Spain, an explanation of "Why I Join the I[ndependentl] L[abour] P[arty]" and some self-critical biography) and we're into 1940. And the first major representative of the war years takes the bull by the horns. Mein Kampf, Orwell says, is "the fixed vision of a monomaniac." His discussion is both honest and perceptive. (Presciently he surmises, "the Russo–German pact represents no more than an alteration of time-table.") Of Hitler himself Orwell says he would certainly kill him if he could, but he could feel no personal animosity. In fact he finds something deeply appealing about Hitler, who has a "pathetic doglike face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. . . . If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon." He attributes part of Hitler's success to his understanding that sometimes people do want "struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty parades." Orwell then cites Hitler's "I offer you struggle, danger and death" ("and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet")—which Davison aptly compares to Churchill's later "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech.
Orwell is rational and practical about means to oppose a Nazi invasion, but in these articles he does not have a great deal to say about the progress of the war. As far as I can recall the only victories he celebrates are at Rostov and Kharkov.
The end of the war passes virtually unmarked. Apart from one description of liberated Paris, the sound of V-1's falling is followed by a series of occasional pieces that carry us into 1946. One of these pieces is a discussion and defence of P. G. Wodehouse, who had been vilified for contributing to Nazi broadcasts while interned in Germany during WWII. (Others had done worse, Orwell maintained, and been treated much less harshly or even ignored.) He argues Wodehouse was naive not traitorous. (In an interview Wodehouse had wondered whether the kind of people he wrote about would still live after the [second] war. Orwell comments that mentally Wodehouse was still living in the times he wrote about, and Bertie Wooster, if he ever existed, had been killed around 1915.) Orwell suggests that Goebbels' department had hoped for more than they got from Wodehouse, because the latter's amiable exaggeration of upper-class stereotypes was easily mistaken by foreigners for bitter satire.
The postwar years represent about a third of the book; the mixture is as eclectic as before, but offers periodic reminders of how different the world was in the early postwar years: in some circles, for example, it was apparently a real question whether Britain should seek to ally itself with the US or with the USSR.
Anticipations of 1984 become increasingly apparent. Orwell had written about totalitarian visions in Wells and Jack London, Huxley and Zamyatin, as well as about real oppression in Spain and Russia. Now he discusses an attempt to rationalise English spelling. (Orwell suggests doing it a a few words at a time, as sometimes happens anyway; he also favours metric units in science and engineering but traditional units elsewhere.) And he sees the world starting to divide into two or three superstates that he believes will be permanently at low-level war with one another. He evidently discounted the changes in policy nuclear weapons would entail—but then, full-scale thermonuclear weapons were still two years away when Orwell died in 1950.
I am more interested in Orwell's views on literature than on his politics, and his knowledge of English letters seems quite comprehensive. Wherever he turns he produces continual jabs of common sense. Discussing the detective story, he points out how much of the literary quality of the Sherlock Homes stories stems from the preliminary "irrelevant" scenes involving Holmes and Watson alone. He also reflects that such earlier stories were much less formulaic than their murder-centred descendants, often dealing with petty crimes, or even no crime at all. On poetry he argues that rhymed, metrical verse makes poetry easy to memorise, and therefore gives it a chance to escape from the printed page. (What we see see of Orwell's own poetry is indeed traditionally structured.) He first introduces these ideas in an essay on T. S. Eliot. "I know a respectable volume of Eliot's earlier work by heart", Orwell says: "it simply stuck in my mind." But of the three recently published poems that were to form part of Eliot's Four Quartets he recalls only a few isolated lines—surprisingly none of which are from the magnificent passage in "The Dry Salvages" beginning "The river is within us, the sea is all about us" and running to the end of the first section. Perhaps more had changed than Eliot's poetry. His postwar review of Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter is quite scathing—dubious about the choice of the African setting and incredulous about the behaviour of the major characters. His reading doesn't fit my own experience of Greene's novel; but that was a long time ago and I'm not prepared to say Orwell was wrong.
But there is no escaping the importance of Orwell's social conscience. Whatever he wrote or did, social justice was never far from his mind. He seems to have felt obliged to seek out wrongs and strive to redress them, almost as though a sense of struggle and striving (an impulse that perhaps originally stemmed from a need to expiate upper-class, imperialist guilt) had become essential to him. Some of his comments on Brave New World are perhaps revealing about the place of such struggle in his life: "though everyone is happy in a vacuous way, life has become so pointless that it is difficult to believe such a society could endure."
November 15, 2020
I won't say anything on the selection process of the anthology other than that except for the occasional book, stage, or film review, the main focus of the anthology is to capture Orwell's worldview during the tumultuous interwar years and life in London during the Nazi air raids of WWII. His criticism often cannot resist his temptation to politize, and some of the criticism against Orwell included in the anthology says as much, so perhaps I am mistaken to say the criticism included is an exception to how the collection characterizes the type of man Orwell was.
What impresses me most about the anthology, and Orwell's journalism generally, of which this is my first contact with his non-fiction, is how Orwell's writing style is absent of pretension. He writes clearly without reliance on the deep baggage of vocabulary he without doubt had, keeping the sentences working at a swift conversational pace, cracking jokes and staying light on their feet whilst conveying facts and analysis. His determination to write plainly shares his concern for his common man, wanting to create journalism that both a worker and an intellectual could understand.
I find his style to be inspiring for the nobility of his aim, wishing to inform the less educated working class of England with a sophisticated journalism. He was also not afraid to use the odd colloquialism that would have been familiar to his readership, and must have amused them at least as much as it amused me, reading his work almost one hundred years after its original publication. Some of the pieces read like sitting down with one of the common crowd from the local pub, having a yarn about that day's newscycle over a deliciously cold pint. There is a rare humility to Orwell that is admirable.
Only a writer certain of himself could write with Orwell's style, not trying to prove his intelligence like so many others, who mistakenly turn out vanity pieces that showcase their education rather than inform and have a sense of humor about it.
I'd probably give a generous five stars, but the poetry included, while honourable, is subpar at best.
What impresses me most about the anthology, and Orwell's journalism generally, of which this is my first contact with his non-fiction, is how Orwell's writing style is absent of pretension. He writes clearly without reliance on the deep baggage of vocabulary he without doubt had, keeping the sentences working at a swift conversational pace, cracking jokes and staying light on their feet whilst conveying facts and analysis. His determination to write plainly shares his concern for his common man, wanting to create journalism that both a worker and an intellectual could understand.
I find his style to be inspiring for the nobility of his aim, wishing to inform the less educated working class of England with a sophisticated journalism. He was also not afraid to use the odd colloquialism that would have been familiar to his readership, and must have amused them at least as much as it amused me, reading his work almost one hundred years after its original publication. Some of the pieces read like sitting down with one of the common crowd from the local pub, having a yarn about that day's newscycle over a deliciously cold pint. There is a rare humility to Orwell that is admirable.
Only a writer certain of himself could write with Orwell's style, not trying to prove his intelligence like so many others, who mistakenly turn out vanity pieces that showcase their education rather than inform and have a sense of humor about it.
I'd probably give a generous five stars, but the poetry included, while honourable, is subpar at best.
October 1, 2016
interesting book of the selected works of george orwell from newspapers and other writings
October 28, 2018
This is a really thoughtful collection of Orwell’s writing, and I learnt a lot from it, not just about him but also the social situation in Britain and Europe in the lead-up, during and immediate aftermath of WW2. It put a fresh perspective on what I’ve already learnt at school growing up and just life to date.
I reflected on the note that, “It is...much easier to write inoffensive prose than to tell a good story,” in his essay on Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling wrote my favourite poem, If, which I quite often carry with me.
Reading a transcript of a BBC broadcast about the 3rd anniversary of the outbreak of WW2 - 5 Sept 1942- I considered as I hadn’t really before how people must have been at that point, especially when I read, “However long the struggle may yet be, its end cannot be in much doubt.” They were still hopeful, which was justifiable, but they didn’t see an end until almost another 3 years later.
Another passage that piqued my interest was in an essay entitled ‘Thomas Hardy looks at war’:
“Why, then, is Napoleon’s story moving? Because personal ambition is tragic against a background of fatalism, and the more megalomaniac it is, the more tragic it becomes. If one believes that the future is predetermined, no figure is so pitiful as the ‘great’ man, the man who a little more than others has the illusion of controlling his destiny.”
I took a lot of notes and excerpts from this volume and so can go on for ages, but in short I highly recommend it. Orwell was thoughtful and articulate, and as that’s a rarity especially in the age we live in now, it’s worth taking the time to reflect on what he had to say.
I reflected on the note that, “It is...much easier to write inoffensive prose than to tell a good story,” in his essay on Rudyard Kipling. Rudyard Kipling wrote my favourite poem, If, which I quite often carry with me.
Reading a transcript of a BBC broadcast about the 3rd anniversary of the outbreak of WW2 - 5 Sept 1942- I considered as I hadn’t really before how people must have been at that point, especially when I read, “However long the struggle may yet be, its end cannot be in much doubt.” They were still hopeful, which was justifiable, but they didn’t see an end until almost another 3 years later.
Another passage that piqued my interest was in an essay entitled ‘Thomas Hardy looks at war’:
“Why, then, is Napoleon’s story moving? Because personal ambition is tragic against a background of fatalism, and the more megalomaniac it is, the more tragic it becomes. If one believes that the future is predetermined, no figure is so pitiful as the ‘great’ man, the man who a little more than others has the illusion of controlling his destiny.”
I took a lot of notes and excerpts from this volume and so can go on for ages, but in short I highly recommend it. Orwell was thoughtful and articulate, and as that’s a rarity especially in the age we live in now, it’s worth taking the time to reflect on what he had to say.
June 27, 2019
This book has cemented George Orwell as my absolute favourite author. His reviews (ranging from science fiction of the day to Mein Kampf) demonstrate a genuine interest in the different purposes of books, but it is his intellectual honesty that did it for me. Orwell had strong opinions and principles that he stuck to and he is happy to admit where he has been wrong in the past. He would be ashamed as to what modern day discourse about politics has done. I would love to see him apply his critical eye to everything from the hypocritical social justice warriors, the misguided attitudes the general public have towards the European Union, and holding politicians to account for their lies and misgivings.
February 23, 2025
Couldn't finish this lepas separuh but I give 4 stars. Why?
Saya suka tulisan George Orwell sebab ia garang, teliti dan menghampiri personal yang kita semua boleh baca.
Selain idea politiknya yang memang tegas, keterbukaan dia untuk mengkritik tulisan kawan-kawan penulis adalah benda yang saya tak boleh tidak, perlu suka. Sebab di Malaysia, ia tiada. Kalau ada pun, ia kritik kedai kopi. Tidak ditulis, tidak dirakam.
Kalau ada satu bahagian menarik, semestinya "Broadcast" sebab ia sebuah transcript temu bual untuk kita fahamkan pendapat semasa George tentang scene penulisan ketika itu.
Saya putuskan untuk tamatkan bacaan sebab tulisan George bermain dengan sejarah yang banyak. Dan kebanyakannya selepas 200 muka, saya sedar ia tak sampai di kepala saya sepenuhnya sebab saya tidK pernah menekuni era yang ditulis oleh George. Jadi, ada ralat persilangan sejarah yang terjadi. Bukan sekadar ralat, tapi gagal terus untuk saya imani.
Jadi, sepanjang baca buku ini, memandangkan ia disusun secara kronologi, jadi saya hanya tekuni gaya penulisan George saja. Dan gayanya wajar 4 bintang.
Saya suka tulisan George Orwell sebab ia garang, teliti dan menghampiri personal yang kita semua boleh baca.
Selain idea politiknya yang memang tegas, keterbukaan dia untuk mengkritik tulisan kawan-kawan penulis adalah benda yang saya tak boleh tidak, perlu suka. Sebab di Malaysia, ia tiada. Kalau ada pun, ia kritik kedai kopi. Tidak ditulis, tidak dirakam.
Kalau ada satu bahagian menarik, semestinya "Broadcast" sebab ia sebuah transcript temu bual untuk kita fahamkan pendapat semasa George tentang scene penulisan ketika itu.
Saya putuskan untuk tamatkan bacaan sebab tulisan George bermain dengan sejarah yang banyak. Dan kebanyakannya selepas 200 muka, saya sedar ia tak sampai di kepala saya sepenuhnya sebab saya tidK pernah menekuni era yang ditulis oleh George. Jadi, ada ralat persilangan sejarah yang terjadi. Bukan sekadar ralat, tapi gagal terus untuk saya imani.
Jadi, sepanjang baca buku ini, memandangkan ia disusun secara kronologi, jadi saya hanya tekuni gaya penulisan George saja. Dan gayanya wajar 4 bintang.
January 29, 2018
Sure, this one took me a year to read, but it’s so easy to dip in and out of it, reading Orwell’s pieces on a variety of topics. I learned a lot more about international relations during the world wars and more particulars about political leaders active during those times - a feature sadly lacking in my high school education.
I empathise with many of Orwell’s opinions around culture, politics, society and human nature, so I suppose that in my case, his collected writings in this tome is akin to “preaching to the converted”.
Regardless, he was a writer that definitely possessed a gift for writing in a variety of contexts. I definitely look forward to reading more of his other works in the future.
I empathise with many of Orwell’s opinions around culture, politics, society and human nature, so I suppose that in my case, his collected writings in this tome is akin to “preaching to the converted”.
Regardless, he was a writer that definitely possessed a gift for writing in a variety of contexts. I definitely look forward to reading more of his other works in the future.
May 19, 2020
I love Orwell's clear and flowing words - less the fact that so much of what he observes is, or feels to be present around us in today's world full or Trump - Boris - Brexit and a virus. I have not completely finished this - but read it now and again - pulling out a sense for that time and him as a writer each time I dip in.
Read
March 29, 2024This Orwell guy was pretty good at writing huh
May 19, 2016
I am a great fan of George Orwell. I was fortunate enough to receive this book as a Christmas present some time ago. It is not one of those books which can be read from cover to cover. The collection of pieces are almost designed to be dipped into. For my part, I found it as a useful antidote to poor writing. Orwell's pieces are all very well written. The prose is precise and the logic of the argument flows from one point to another.
One of the advantages of reading a collection of journalism is that the subject matter jumps from topic to topic. This collection is full of little vignettes of British life from the mid-1930s, throughout the second world war, and on to the post-war period. It is fascinating.
For example, according to Orwell, there was not much of a colour bar in British restaurants prior to the war. This piece of petty racism was brought to the UK by American servicemen during the war. Apparently, in the segregated US forces, white American servicemen refused to dine with their black comrades, and the British restauranters simply allowed the money to talk. As I said, fascinating.
I quite like these acute observations of the detail of daily life. It really does connect me to a past that I have never known. The book is a wide collection of well observed features of daily life, well written, and full of interest. I imagine that I may return to the book in the future!
One of the advantages of reading a collection of journalism is that the subject matter jumps from topic to topic. This collection is full of little vignettes of British life from the mid-1930s, throughout the second world war, and on to the post-war period. It is fascinating.
For example, according to Orwell, there was not much of a colour bar in British restaurants prior to the war. This piece of petty racism was brought to the UK by American servicemen during the war. Apparently, in the segregated US forces, white American servicemen refused to dine with their black comrades, and the British restauranters simply allowed the money to talk. As I said, fascinating.
I quite like these acute observations of the detail of daily life. It really does connect me to a past that I have never known. The book is a wide collection of well observed features of daily life, well written, and full of interest. I imagine that I may return to the book in the future!
January 21, 2017
It is always good to read Orwell. Two things struck me while reading. Firstly, as is it a book you dip into and read over a longer period of time, it is surprising how many of the issues pop up in the news of 2017. For example, from near the end of the book, - the British relationship with the USA, minorities in Burma, immigration etc. Secondly, i was struck by the similarity of the change of leadership after Chamberlain to that of Cameron. It made me realise that without the crisis May would never have become PM and this make important change possible as the traditional leaders have been ousted for the present.
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