What do you think?
Rate this book
Inside the Myth: Orwell: Views from the Left
Book by
289 pages, Hardcover
First published November 15, 1984
11 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Norris
140 books18 followersAs of 2007 he is Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at Cardiff University. He completed his PhD in English at University College London in 1975, while Sir Frank Kermode served as the Lord Northcliffe Professor of modern English literature there.
Until 1991 Norris taught in the Cardiff English Department. He has also held fellowships and visiting appointments at a number of institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, the City University of New York and Dartmouth College.
He is one of the world's leading scholars on deconstruction, particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida. He has written numerous books and papers on literary theory and continental philosophy. Norris is now considered a philosopher in his own right: 2003's Life After Theory reference required featured an interview with Norris, placing him alongside Derrida as a significant contemporary.
Until 1991 Norris taught in the Cardiff English Department. He has also held fellowships and visiting appointments at a number of institutions, including the University of California, Berkeley, the City University of New York and Dartmouth College.
He is one of the world's leading scholars on deconstruction, particularly in the work of Jacques Derrida. He has written numerous books and papers on literary theory and continental philosophy. Norris is now considered a philosopher in his own right: 2003's Life After Theory reference required featured an interview with Norris, placing him alongside Derrida as a significant contemporary.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 9, 2022
This was written in 1984, in postmodernist style, including sentences like this: "The literary text .. is impenetrably encrusted with its criticism, commentary and other nominally secondary discourses, which all become assimilated." This means that a lot has been written about George Orwell and only we clever people can differentiate between truths and untruths.
However, the contributors to this book do - eventually - come out with some claims which can be verified or disproved. Orwell is quoted in the mid-1930s as being "anti-feminist" and is said not to have liked women, and the women characters in his fiction are seen as either doormats or shrews. The truth is that Orwell developed over his short lifetime. Those who read the newly published Complete book reviews by George Orwell ( ISBN 9781916363243 ) will find that he is already very complimentary in his 1931 review of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, and that in the mid-1940s, the much more experienced Orwell reviews books by and about women sociologists, artists, writers and even one of the first British woman factory inspectors. Also, his last fictional character, Julia, while driven more by emotions than intellect, is clearly courageous (which is admitted in Inside the Myth).
Essentially, Orwell developed, as a writer and as a human being. As will be noted in another recently published work, Revenge is Sour, subtitled 'lesser-known short works by George Orwell' ( ISBN 9781916363212 ), he was deeply influenced by his experiences of the Spanish Civil War, which obviously affected his views of politics but also, in tandem with this time at the BBC during the Second World War gave him time to reconsider matters.
As the volume is overtly from the perspective of the left, it should not be surprising that his final work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is referred to as a 'disgusting' - nay, the "one of the most disgusting books ever written" - and only possible as the creation of a sick man. Now as readers of Revenge is Sour will discover, there is some truth in this. The final revision was typed by a tubercular Orwell, mainly in his cold bedroom in the Scottish highlands, and that he felt that he had made a mess of it.
Nevertheless, the book's brilliance was recognised by publisher Fred Warburg well before the final revision. Unfortunately, Warburg never managed to find a suitable typist to assist his ailing author.
The old grounds of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a purely anti-socialist tract is rolled out as usual. Of course, the 'discourse' adopted by right-wing commentators cannot be ignored. There are reasons, however, why Orwell came out with primarily Stalinist tropes in his description of Oceania. One is the opinion suggested by his old friend Tosco Fyver (author of the rather useful George Orwell: A Personal Memoir) that he was not particularly interested in Nazi Germany, a beaten regime and that from the days of the Spanish Civil War, he was much more motivated by his detestation of Communism, an enduring and insidious enemy. A rather conflicting but not completely incompatible reason was that he lacked information on the Nazi regime. He did travel to Germany and Austria, as a BBC correspondent towards the end of the war, as is reflected in his essay 'Revenge is Sour', but found that the regime had been dismantled by then and that people were distancing themselves from the previously pervasive ethos. Also, the book serves a warning of what may happen: O'Brien describes Oceania as post-totalitarian, with a managerial state paying only lip-service to the predominant ideology (c.f. 21st century China). The state could have emerged from left or right.
Which reminds me of the criticism raised in the book of Orwell's poor predictive power. Orwell was not writing science fiction, although he did use the sci-fi methodology of extrapolating from his present to a likely future. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a warning, not a prediction.
One loose end: the recent criticism of Orwell being an informer to the secret service. The facts are that he had been asked by a department involved in the dissemination of British culture around the world as to who would be unsuited to the role of writing articles for the service. Orwell was an established writer and broadcaster and had served as such in the war, so it was perfectly sensible to ask him to rule out unsuitable candidates for the job. That is not the same as snitching to the secret service, as the more lurid commentors would have it.
One complimentary point about this otherwise rather poor volume is that the chapter by Stuart Hall is of the fine, objective quality one would expect of him. A rose among thorns.
However, the contributors to this book do - eventually - come out with some claims which can be verified or disproved. Orwell is quoted in the mid-1930s as being "anti-feminist" and is said not to have liked women, and the women characters in his fiction are seen as either doormats or shrews. The truth is that Orwell developed over his short lifetime. Those who read the newly published Complete book reviews by George Orwell ( ISBN 9781916363243 ) will find that he is already very complimentary in his 1931 review of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth, and that in the mid-1940s, the much more experienced Orwell reviews books by and about women sociologists, artists, writers and even one of the first British woman factory inspectors. Also, his last fictional character, Julia, while driven more by emotions than intellect, is clearly courageous (which is admitted in Inside the Myth).
Essentially, Orwell developed, as a writer and as a human being. As will be noted in another recently published work, Revenge is Sour, subtitled 'lesser-known short works by George Orwell' ( ISBN 9781916363212 ), he was deeply influenced by his experiences of the Spanish Civil War, which obviously affected his views of politics but also, in tandem with this time at the BBC during the Second World War gave him time to reconsider matters.
As the volume is overtly from the perspective of the left, it should not be surprising that his final work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, is referred to as a 'disgusting' - nay, the "one of the most disgusting books ever written" - and only possible as the creation of a sick man. Now as readers of Revenge is Sour will discover, there is some truth in this. The final revision was typed by a tubercular Orwell, mainly in his cold bedroom in the Scottish highlands, and that he felt that he had made a mess of it.
Nevertheless, the book's brilliance was recognised by publisher Fred Warburg well before the final revision. Unfortunately, Warburg never managed to find a suitable typist to assist his ailing author.
The old grounds of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a purely anti-socialist tract is rolled out as usual. Of course, the 'discourse' adopted by right-wing commentators cannot be ignored. There are reasons, however, why Orwell came out with primarily Stalinist tropes in his description of Oceania. One is the opinion suggested by his old friend Tosco Fyver (author of the rather useful George Orwell: A Personal Memoir) that he was not particularly interested in Nazi Germany, a beaten regime and that from the days of the Spanish Civil War, he was much more motivated by his detestation of Communism, an enduring and insidious enemy. A rather conflicting but not completely incompatible reason was that he lacked information on the Nazi regime. He did travel to Germany and Austria, as a BBC correspondent towards the end of the war, as is reflected in his essay 'Revenge is Sour', but found that the regime had been dismantled by then and that people were distancing themselves from the previously pervasive ethos. Also, the book serves a warning of what may happen: O'Brien describes Oceania as post-totalitarian, with a managerial state paying only lip-service to the predominant ideology (c.f. 21st century China). The state could have emerged from left or right.
Which reminds me of the criticism raised in the book of Orwell's poor predictive power. Orwell was not writing science fiction, although he did use the sci-fi methodology of extrapolating from his present to a likely future. Nineteen Eighty-Four is a warning, not a prediction.
One loose end: the recent criticism of Orwell being an informer to the secret service. The facts are that he had been asked by a department involved in the dissemination of British culture around the world as to who would be unsuited to the role of writing articles for the service. Orwell was an established writer and broadcaster and had served as such in the war, so it was perfectly sensible to ask him to rule out unsuitable candidates for the job. That is not the same as snitching to the secret service, as the more lurid commentors would have it.
One complimentary point about this otherwise rather poor volume is that the chapter by Stuart Hall is of the fine, objective quality one would expect of him. A rose among thorns.
March 6, 2025
3.44
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews