Inside the Whale: On Writers and Writing

by George Orwell

Unfailingly elegant and endlessly relevant, the four essays in this collection treat literature as a vital record of our political hypocrisies, our social failings, and the ennobling limits of our ideological aspirations. Delving into the literary canon, George Orwell encounters dusty classics and lesser-known works of literature on his own exhilarating terms. The novels of Henry Miller lead him inside the belly of Jonah’s whale, an imagined refuge in a time of total war. A trenchant investigation of Charles Dickens unfolds into a poignant portrait of nineteenth-century liberalism. A minor pamphlet on Shakespeare by Tolstoy provokes a stirring evocation of humanism and the excessive vitality of life. A series of singularly thrilling reading experiences, they celebrate Orwell’s engagement with the world of writers and literature.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Writing

256 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2021

About the author

Eric 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.

Reviews

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inside The Whale by George Orwell is the 9th in The Essays, which hold on to the 917th place on The Greatest Books of All Time site, while Nineteen Eighty Four is in 6th place and Animal Farm in 54th, the introduction to The Essays claims that the future could change that, this book getting to be ever more important -I have these blogs where I have reviewed over five thousand magnum opera, books and films, and you can have look at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...



9 out of 10

Alas, Henry Miller https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and his Tropic of Cancer occupy most of Inside The Whale, and since this book did not satisfy me, this is a bit of a letdown

Nevertheless, George Orwell has managed with his nine essays (so far, I still have more than half the Collection to read through, actually, it is an audiobook, so someone else does it for me) to leave a magnificent impression

Already, Nineteen Eighty Four https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... and Animal Farm have enthused this reader, especially given that we could experience the system, Big Brother, double speak, ‘all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others’ and all that
Surprisingly "a momentous event in the history of modern writing…a really excellent piece of work’ that is The Tropic of Cancer has this special quality, it deals with the common man, who reads this and feels understood, which is so much better than understanding somebody else, apparently, I did not feel that, but I should have, maybe

George Orwell says that Henry Miller is ‘a one book’ writer, or something of the kind, in future, he could descend into charlatanism or he would become unintelligible, there are already signs of that, again, not quotes, but how I remember this
Funny how Alan Poe https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is mentioned and we get that his work is so close to being the creation of a mad man, what with the character that takes the eyes out of a cat, but then the reader fells he would do that himself, weird how I do not share this idea

Many lines are jocular, the fact that there were so many Americans in Paris, at the beginning of the last century, would be artists too, so many that you would hear most ‘quand je serais lance’, there would be more of these painters and what not than usual people, - Whitman is very close to Henry Miller, or vice versa
Walt Whitman had this main theme of ‘acceptance’, but while it made sense for him, in the case of Henry Miller, it is not so – the latter was indifferent to the Spanish Civil War, indeed, he met George Orwell and told him that it is crazy to go to Spain, unless there is a selfish reason, working there as a journalist or something similar

Those who appreciated The Tropic of Cancer were worried that they could be seen as enjoying pornography – Anais Nin is in here, if briefly – James Joyce has something to share with Henry Miller, they both bring in the average, the scene of the burial from Ulysses could be present in The Tropic of Cancer, says Orwell
There are differences between these two, and then Ferdinand Celine is also compared with Henry Miller, the French novelist -blamed for his penchant for the Nazis – is much gloomier, what excites Miller horrifies Celine

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…’

[Cameron Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautiful new edition of four of his best essays; probably my 15th version of the same essays but I’ll empty all my funds into Orwell’s yellow-toothed mouth bcos yolo

[Evan Micheals · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is part of my read everything Orwell published project. This is a review of Henry Miller’s ‘Tropic of Cancer’ which Orwell had not read, because it was banned in the United Kingdom. Thus, is an investigation into Free Speech, Censorship, and the State of Western Democracies. It was written in 1940 and I can see Orwell’s ideas developing that would later be expressed in Animal Farm and 1984, as he can sees the rise of socialism and fascism.

Orwell wrote that popular books that are fashionable at the time reflect the whims of people under 30, reflecting the effect of Shropshire Lad on himself. He notes that some books reflect there time, whilst others may not be best sellers at the time, but go on to be timeless because they reflect something deeper than the fashion.

Orwell notes whenever Stalin gained or lost a new ally, all the propaganda had to be re-written to suit who Stalin was currently loving or hating. This is clearly expressed in 1984’s Ministry of Truth. Orwell writes of the need for a nation to have something belief in, a purpose, a shared story (or mythology) to get people work towards something greater than themselves. He believe that this was not being provided by Western Democracies.

Orwell attacks the idealism and propaganda surrounding the Spanish Civil War. “One can see the change in the prevailing literary attitude by comparing the books written about the Spanish civil war with those written about the war of 1914-18. The immediately striking thing about the Spanish war books, at any rate those written in English, is their shocking dullness and badness. But what is more significant is that almost all of them, right-wing or left-wing, are written from a political angle, by cocksure partisans telling you what to think, whereas the books about the Great War were written by common soldiers or junior officers who did not even pretend to understand what the whole thing was about. Books like ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, LE FEU, A FAREWELL TO ARMS, DEATH OF A HERO, GOOD-BYE TO ALL THAT, MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTARY OFFICER, and A SUBALTERN ON THE SOMME were written not by propagandists but by VICTIMS. They are saying in effect, ‘What the hell is all this about? God knows. All we can do is endure.’ And though he is not writing about war, nor, on the whole, about unhappiness, this is nearer to Miller’s attitude than the omniscience which is now fashionable (p 16-17). I think great work is not to reinforce an ideology that I am cocksure about, rather than to create the conditions that allows one or ones family to survive and thrive.

I was again reminded of Mike Martin’s excellent ‘Why We Fight’, as a lot of Millers ideas expressed to Orwell, support Martin’s conclusion. “I first met Miller at the end of 1936, when I was passing through Paris on my way to Spain. What intrigued me about him was to find that he felt no interest in the Spanish war whatever. He merely told me in forcible terms that to go to Spain at that moment was the act of an idiot. He could understand anyone going there from purely selfish motives, out of curiosity, for instance, but to mix oneself up in such things FROM A SENSE OF OBLIGATION was sheer stupidity. In any case may Ideas about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., etc., were all baloney. Our civilization was destined to be swept away and replaced by something different that we should scarcely regards it as human - - a prospect that did not bother him, he said. And some such outlook is implicit throughout his work. Everywhere there is the sense of the approaching cataclysm, and almost everywhere the implied belief that it doesn’t matter (p 52-53)”. Here Miller tells Orwell to go to war out of a sense of idealism, is stupidity, and let the record show that Orwell was lucky to survive his Spanish War experience. Not at the hands of his supposed enemy, but at the hands of his socialist comrades. Martin supports this with he idealism of why he went to war in Afghanistan being shattered at first engagement, as he realised he did not understand the complexity of the politics of the Valley he was in, let alone Afghanistan broadly. Then his mission came about survival of himself and his comrades. In his observation of Henry Miller, I asked myself was Miller the basis for ‘Benjamin the Donkey’ where Miller could observe what was happening but was powerless to prevent it happening nor saw the need to do anything to stop it from happening. Like Benjamin he abides (in a cantankerous way)?

I became interested in Miller as as writer with observations such as: “A year or so ago an American magazine, the MARXIST QUARTERLY, sent out a questionnaire to various American writers asking them to define their attitude on the subject of war. Miller replied in terms of extreme pacifism, an individual refusal to fight, with no apparent wish to convert others to the same opinion” (p 53)”. I liked that he had his opinion, but Miller felt no need to convince others of it.

Orwell used the metaphor of Jonah and the Whale in describing the contexts that we are all within that are larger than ourselves. “Miller himself is inside the whale. All his best and most characteristic passages are written from the angle of Jonah, a willing Jonah. Not that his is especially introverted – quite the contrary. In his case the whale happens to be transparent. Only he feels no impulse to alter of control the process that he is undergoing. He has performed the essential act of allowing himself to be swallowed, remain passive, ACCEPTING (p 56)”.

“Much of the literature that comes to us out of the past is permeated by and in fact founded on beliefs (the belief in the immortality of the soul, for example) which now seem to us false and in some cases contemptibly silly (p 58)”. I found this interesting, as the soul (and God) has not gone away in the 60 years since it was written. Orwell may have felt that he was on the cusp of science providing an explanation of everything.

“While I have been writing this essay another European war has broken out. It will either last several years and tear Western civilization to pieces, or it will end inconclusively and prepare the way for yet another war which will do the job once and for all” (p 64). Orwell expected a victory of fascism. “But war is only ‘peace intensified. What is quite obviously happing, war or no war, is the break-up of LAISSEZ-FAIRE capitalism and of the liberal-Christian culture. Until recently the full implications of this were not forseen, because it was generally imagined that socialism could preserve and even enlarge the atmosphere of liberalism. It is now being realized how false this idea was. Almost certainly we are moving into an age of totalitarian dictatorships – an age in which freedom of thought will be first a deadly sin and later one a meaningless abstraction. The autonomous individual is going to be stamped out of existence. But this means that literature, in the form in which we know it, must suffer at least a temporary death. The literature of liberalism is coming to an end and the literature of totalitarianism has not yet appeared and is barely imaginable. As for the writer, he is sitting on a melting iceberg; he is merely an anchronism, a hangover from the bourgeois age, as surely doomed as the hippopotamus. Miller seems to me a man out of the common because he saw and proclaimed this fact a long while before most of his contemporaries – at a time, indeed, when many of them were actually burbling about a renaissance of literature (p 64-65”. In 1940 Germany ruled Western Europe and only the British were left to resist. Germany and Russia were ‘allies’. The United States held on to its neutrality. It seemed as if Germany victory was a matter of time. In time it drew Western Civilization together to come over the tyranny of fascism. Let the record show that the hippopotamus is alive today.

Orwell advised “Get inside the whale – or rather, admit you are inside the whale (for you ARE, of course). Give yourself over to the world-process, stop fighting against it or pretending that you control it; simply accept it, endure it, record it (p 65)”. In this Orwell and Miller were wrong, as the Western World did not abide with Fascism (or Socialism). They resisted and fought.

I found the first two sections set a deep (and boring) foundation from which Orwell makes his cutting observations in the third and final section of the book where I quoted him most often. Orwell cuts like a razor blade with his writing. He also inspired me to want to read Henry Miller and specifically The Tropic of Cancer to see what the fuss is about. Orwell’s writing has that quality of being timeless and can be understood and identifiable many years after he first writes.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inside the Whale as an essay is a fusion of literary criticism and autobiography, although the essay also contains a general survey of the literary scene of the the thirties and forties. Nevertheless, the most vital issue of "Inside the Whale" is not primarily one of literary criticism. Rather it is the appearance of the totally new impulse in Orwell's mind, an impulse of quietism and despair.

Henry Miller, it turns out, has more than literary significance for Orwell. He is remembered as someone who represents a radical and not easily answered challenge to Orwell's previous values and beliefs.

The following sentences more than any others define the experience that lies at the very heart of the essay: "I first met Miller at the end of 1936, when I was passing through Paris on my way to Spain. What most intrigued me about him was to find that he felt no interest in the Spanish war whatsoever. He merely told me that to go to Spain at that moment was the act of an idiot. He could understand anyone going there for purely selfish motives, out of curiosity, for instance, but to mix oneself up in such things from a sense of obligation was sheer stupidity. In any case my ideas about combating Fascism, defending democracy, etc., were all baloney. Our civilization was destined to be swept away and replaced by something so different that we should scarcely regard it as human-a prospect that did not bother him, he said."

Orwell chose Tropic of Cancer as the theme of his essay because of personal reasons too. This novel had first appeared in 1935 and in 1940. When Orwell wrote his essay it was not a popular novel. Orwell then felt compelled to reconsider a writer whose attitudes four years earlier he had rejected. And it is a favourable re-evaluation, one which involves a denial, or at least a radical questioning, of Orwell's own previous outlook and feelings.

Many of the beliefs of Miller are shared by Orwell. When Orwell says, "I should say that he believes in the impending ruin of Western Civilization much more firmly than the majority 'revolutionary writers" he is echoing his own attitude.

"Inside the Whale", taken in its proper context, is not the exclusively literary essay that it may appear to be when read in isolation. It is the first chapter in a new phase of Orwell's autobiography.

It is Orwell’s first sustained criticism of the quality of the intellectual life of his time and also his first essay in defining the proper function of the intellectual. We see, for instance, that the second section of the essay is there not primarily as a piece of dispassionate literary history, but rather as a polemic against the "thirties" movement.

This section is organized around two questions: What is communism? And why were the young

English writers of the thirties attracted to it? The first is answered quickly and contemptuously: "The communist movement in Western Europe began as a movement for the violent overthrow of capitalism, and degenerated within a few years into an instrument of Russian foreign policy."

The second question is dealt with more carefully and at greater length. Orwell suggests that communism was a faith for a generation that fad lost faith in patriotism, religion, the Empire, the family, the sanctity of marriage, the Old School Tie, birth, breeding, honour, discipline. A further reason offered is "the softness and serenity of life in England itself."

Thus the essay voices Orwell's personal objections to communism, to left-wing thought Orwell tries to test the truth of a piece of writing against his own actual experience. His strong admiration is motivated by his personal liking for Miller. It is said that the reading of Miller had an influence on the style of Coming up for Air, which contains Orwell's most exuberant writing, as well as on the philosophy of its hero. "What in the end attracts Orwell most to Miller is the sheer happiness that en erges from his books, books that describe hardship, failure and frustration, but in the end leave an almost unique expression of the uninhibited enjoyment of life. 'So far from protesting, he is accepting."

Ultimately, it is an appreciation and analysis of Miller and his novel Tropic of Cancer which is the main subject-matter of Orwell's essay, "Inside the Whale'. Orwell enters the whale of the literature of his time and observes various works and writers objectively He admires Miller's passivism in the face of disasters, Miller's optimism at a time of chronic pessimism and Miller's vitality. He also admires Miller's philosophy. Henry Miller kept himself away from politics is a fact that surprises Orwell.

"Nevertheless, the most vital issue of "Inside the Whale" is not primarily one of literary criticism. Rather it is the appearance of the totally new impulse in Orwell's mind, an impulse of quietism and despair.

Henry Miller, it turns out, has more than literary significance for Orwell. He is remembered as someone who represents a radical and not easily answered challenge to Orwell's previous values and beliefs.

Just mark a few remarks of Orwell about Miller and his Tropic of Cancer:

1. "Tropic of Cancer is a novel in the first person, or autobiography in the form of a novel.... Miller himself insists that it is straight autobiography..."

2. "Here is a whole world of stuff which you supposed to be of its true incommunicable, and somebody has managed to communicate." This remark about Ulysses also applies to Tropic.

3. "Miller is writing about the man in the street, and it tis incidentally rather a pity that it should be a street full of brothels.....On the whole, in Miller's books you are reading about people living the expatriate life, people drinking, talking, meditating, and fornicating, not about people working, marrying, and bringing up children; a pity, because he would have described the one set of activities as well as the other."

4. "Henry Miller might be the starting point of a new "school".

5. "So far from protesting, he is accepting."

Of Henry Miller himself Orwell perhaps writes a more intelligent appreciation than anyone has done since ‘Inside the Whale' appeared. Miller, he decides, has something in common with Joyce --- the ability to give life and meaning and interest to the common place --- but he is not an artist in the same at once monumental and meticulous manner as Joyce. Rather he is an ordinary, somewhat hard-boiled man, American businessman, talking about life with a gift for words.

Orwell admires Miller greatly as a natural prose writer: "In his books English is treated as a spoken language, but spoken without fear, i.e., without fear of rhetoric or of the unusual or poetical word. The adjective has come back, after its ten years' exile. It is a flowing, swelling prose, a prose with rhythms in it, something quite different from the flat, cautious statements and snack-bar dialects which are now in fashion."

What in the end attracts Orwell most to Miller is the sheer happiness that emerges from his books, books that describe hardship, failure and frustration, but in the end leave an almost unique expression of the uninhibited enjoyment of life.

But there is a touch of hyperbole in his appreciation of Miller who is only minor writer and to whom he assigns such a high place.

In saying that Henry Miller is the starting point of a new school, and he unexpectedly marks the unexpected swing of pendulum; the writer is simply trying to salvage a minor writer from the stage of obscurity, in which he is in. In stating that Tropic of Cancer is an important book in a sense different from the one in which that word is generally used, he is striking something which is starting, and so controversial.

[fourlegs · Rating 4 out of 5]

quotes

Inside the Whale

(12) Miller is writing about the man in the street, and it is incidentally rather a pity that it should be a street full of brothels. That is the penalty of leaving your native land. It means transferring your roots into shallower soil. Exile is probably more damaging to a novelist than to a painter or even a poet, because its effect is to take him out of contact with working life and narrow down his range to the street, the cafe, the church, the brothel and the studio.

Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool

(97) Almost never does [Shakespeare] put a subversive or sceptical remark into the mouth of a character likely to be identified with himself. Throughout his plays the acute social critics, the people who are not taken in by accepted fallacies, are buffoons, villains, lunatics or persons who are shamming insanity or are in a state of violent hysteria. Lear is a play in which this tendency is particularly well marked. It contains a great deal of veiled social criticism - a point Tolstoy misses - but it is all uttered either by the Fool, by Edgar when he is pretending to be mad, or by Lear during his bouts of madness. [...] And yet the very fact that Shakespeare had to use these subterfuges shows how widely his thoughts ranged. He could not restrain himself from commenting on almost everything, although he put on a series of masks in order to do so. If one has once read Shakespeare with attention, it is not easy to go a day without quoting him, because there are not many subjects of major importance that he does not discuss or at least mention somewhere or other, in his unsystematic but illuminating way. Even the irrelevancies that litter every one of his plays - the puns and riddles, the lists of names, the scraps of reportage like the conversation of the carriers in Henry IV, the bawdy jokes, the rescued fragments of forgotten ballads - are merely the products of excessive vitality. Shakespeare was not a philosopher or a scientist, but he did have curiosity: he loved the surface of the earth and the process of life [...]

Charles Dickens

(131) The great disadvantage, and advantage, of the small urban bourgeois is his limited outlook. He sees the world as a middle-class world, and everything outside those limits is either laughable or slightly wicked. On the one hand, he had no contact with the industry or the soil; on the other, no contact with the governing classes. Anyone who has studied Wells's novels in detail will have noticed that though he hates the aristocrat like poison, he has no particular objection to the plutocrat, and no enthusiasm for the proletarian. His most hated types, the people he believes to be responsible for all human ills, are kings, landowners, priests, nationalists, soldiers, scholars and peasants. At first sight a list beginning with kings and ending with peasants looks like a mere omnium gatherum, but in reality all these people have a common factor. All of them are archaic types, people who are governed by tradition and whose eyes are turned towards the past - the opposite, therefore, of the rising bourgeois who had put his money on the future and sees the past simply as a dead hand.

(175) ...In the end the original story has been buried under the details. [Dicken's] imagination overwhelms everything, like a kind of weed. [...] Everything is piled up, detail on detail, embroidery on embroidery. It is futile to object that this kind of thing is rococo - one might as well make the same objection to a wedding-cake. Either you like or you do not like it. Other nineteenth-century writers, Surtees, Barham, Thackeray, even Marryat, have something of Dickens's profuse, overflowing quality, but none of them on anything like the same scale. [...] As a novelist his natural fertility greatly hampers him, because the burlesque which he is never able to resist is constantly breaking into what ought to be serious situations.

Writers and Leviathan

(192) I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary criticism is fraudulent... One's real reaction to a book, when one has a reaction at all, is usually "I like this book" or "I don't like it", and what follows is a rationalisation.

(193) Of course, the invasion of literature by politics was bound to happen [...] even if the special problem of totalitarianism had never arisen, because we have developed a sort of compunction which our grandfathers did not have, an awareness of the enormous injustice and misery of the world, and a guilt-stricken feeling that one ought to be doing something about it, which makes a purely aesthetic attitude towards life impossible.