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Orwell. La Conciencia de Una Generacion
Hijo de un funcionario británico en la India colonial, George Orwell desarrolló en sus primeros años una conciencia crítica y no tardó en renegar del sofocante sistema de clases en que nació. El sentimiento de culpa y la lúcida percepción de la realidad fueron dos elementos que marcaron su vida y su carrera como escritor.
444 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Jeffrey Meyers
110 books26 followersJeffrey Meyers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has recently been given an Award in Literature by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Thirty of his books have been translated into fourteen languages and seven alphabets, and published on six continents. He lives in Berkeley, California.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 29, 2019
George Orwell was one heck of a miserable fellow. And yet he became the dissenting voice in a fading colonial empire beset by Fascism and Communism brewing on its doorstep, a voice that has presciently endured to this day.
Empire was against young George from the outset. His father, a colonial officer in the Opium Department in British India, was focussed on selling the drug to China, resulting in two wars; his mother was the descendent of teak merchants in Burma where the locals were exploited; another relative was a slave owner in Jamaica. Orwell, chronically plagued by weak lungs, went to the right public schools: St. Cyprians “where snobbery, philistinism, homosexuality, racism and sadism were engendered” and Eton which was “a lukewarm bath in snobbery, although it helped shape character and individualism.” He followed his father into the colonial service by becoming an undistinguished policeman in Burma for five years on a good salary, only to give it up and end as a tramp in England and France, because he needed experience to fuel his art of writing political literature. Guilt was the reward for his colonial middle-class origins. His novel coming out of Burma, Burmese Days, has no redeeming characters in it, neither natives nor colonials.
Orwell was a masochist and found contentment amidst squalor. Whether that was in bumming around London and Paris to prove the desirability and dignity of work, or descending into abandoned coal mines in Wigan to expose the evils of capitalism, or living in a dilapidated farm in Wallington “with infrequent bus service, water flooding the kitchen, backed up sewers, mice toppling the china, no electricity and irregular heating,” or living in bombed-out flats in London during the blitz to work for the Home Guard, or writing his masterpieces in Joura on the Hebrides in the most uninhabitable house on the British Isles that finally put him in hospital from whence he never returned, he relished discomfort and privation. “The progress of the artist is the continual extinction of personality.” He didn’t care for the wellbeing of his long suffering wife, Eileen, as long as he had the squalid space to do his work. When Eileen succumbed to a neglected cancer, Orwell was away reporting on the Continent.
He was a vocal supporter of Socialism and a denouncer of its evil cousins, Communism, Fascism and Imperialism. He joined the Republicans in Spain to fight against Franco, but with the collapse of his side due to infighting with Stalin’s Communists, he was soon on the run for his life along with Eileen and a bullet wound in his neck as a “thank you” for participating. He took on prominent figures like H.G. Wells, Salvador Dali and Wyndham Lewis for their counter political views. His writing was criticised for not having the creativity of the true novelist and for being better suited for essays and reportage. His earlier books, dubbed novels, were political morality tales, and his best book (in his estimation) Homage to Catalonia sold only 600 copies; he voluntarily suppressed the reprinting of his second and third novels A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, as they were not up to snuff. But his last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, launched him into superstar status, where he has been for over 75 years. In his later years, he also found steadier employment with the BBC, the Observer, and the Manchester Evening News, giving him conduits for his political writing. And yet he quit the BBC and modeled its puritanical culture at the time in Nineteen Eighty Four.
A lanky, tall, man with a frail constitution, he had a poor self image, and often did not succeed with the women he pursued. Many refused to marry him or sleep with him. His deathbed, second marriage to Sonia Brownell, 18 years his junior, was a bit of a joke; she did not love him, was scared of sex although she had a myriad of affairs, was cold to his adopted son, Richard, and looked upon Orwell as a cause rather than a husband. The marriage was never consummated. Sonya went onto marry a homosexual (another unconsummated marriage), squander the Orwell estate over half-baked artistic projects, and end her days drunk and broke.
This is a hard book to get through, not because it is poorly written (in fact, it is very well written, and Meyers covers a lot of material that seems to be well researched and cross referenced) but rather due to its wretched principal character, Orwell himself.
He was the most enigmatic of writers, a saint to some, who lived and modeled his work. He sensed the cruel, the macabre and the disgusting, and loathed what was fake. He despised humanity and fought for ideas. He had a gentle temperament towards some and was cold to others (especially women); he displayed violence by kicking his servants in Burma, using his fists on his classmates, and caning his students, the last punishment being one meted out to Orwell himself as a child, especially when he wet his bed at St. Cyprians. Some of his terminology such as “Big Brother is watching,” “Some animals are more equal than others,” and words from a whole new language called “Newspeak” used in Nineteen Eighty Four have entered the vernacular. The word “Orwellian” alone spells dystopian disaster. His dire warnings and predictions have endured, most recently re-surfacing with the advent of Donald Trump and other tough-man leaders around the world, making Orwell a writer for the ages.
Given Orwell’s stature, I guess reading at least one of his many biographies (there seems to be more written about him than by him) is a must for any ardent scholar of Literature. This book will keep you engaged, if you can put up with the squalor and the misery. “Orwell? He’s a gloomy bird,” says a wartime broadcasting buddy, and I second it.
Empire was against young George from the outset. His father, a colonial officer in the Opium Department in British India, was focussed on selling the drug to China, resulting in two wars; his mother was the descendent of teak merchants in Burma where the locals were exploited; another relative was a slave owner in Jamaica. Orwell, chronically plagued by weak lungs, went to the right public schools: St. Cyprians “where snobbery, philistinism, homosexuality, racism and sadism were engendered” and Eton which was “a lukewarm bath in snobbery, although it helped shape character and individualism.” He followed his father into the colonial service by becoming an undistinguished policeman in Burma for five years on a good salary, only to give it up and end as a tramp in England and France, because he needed experience to fuel his art of writing political literature. Guilt was the reward for his colonial middle-class origins. His novel coming out of Burma, Burmese Days, has no redeeming characters in it, neither natives nor colonials.
Orwell was a masochist and found contentment amidst squalor. Whether that was in bumming around London and Paris to prove the desirability and dignity of work, or descending into abandoned coal mines in Wigan to expose the evils of capitalism, or living in a dilapidated farm in Wallington “with infrequent bus service, water flooding the kitchen, backed up sewers, mice toppling the china, no electricity and irregular heating,” or living in bombed-out flats in London during the blitz to work for the Home Guard, or writing his masterpieces in Joura on the Hebrides in the most uninhabitable house on the British Isles that finally put him in hospital from whence he never returned, he relished discomfort and privation. “The progress of the artist is the continual extinction of personality.” He didn’t care for the wellbeing of his long suffering wife, Eileen, as long as he had the squalid space to do his work. When Eileen succumbed to a neglected cancer, Orwell was away reporting on the Continent.
He was a vocal supporter of Socialism and a denouncer of its evil cousins, Communism, Fascism and Imperialism. He joined the Republicans in Spain to fight against Franco, but with the collapse of his side due to infighting with Stalin’s Communists, he was soon on the run for his life along with Eileen and a bullet wound in his neck as a “thank you” for participating. He took on prominent figures like H.G. Wells, Salvador Dali and Wyndham Lewis for their counter political views. His writing was criticised for not having the creativity of the true novelist and for being better suited for essays and reportage. His earlier books, dubbed novels, were political morality tales, and his best book (in his estimation) Homage to Catalonia sold only 600 copies; he voluntarily suppressed the reprinting of his second and third novels A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying, as they were not up to snuff. But his last two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, launched him into superstar status, where he has been for over 75 years. In his later years, he also found steadier employment with the BBC, the Observer, and the Manchester Evening News, giving him conduits for his political writing. And yet he quit the BBC and modeled its puritanical culture at the time in Nineteen Eighty Four.
A lanky, tall, man with a frail constitution, he had a poor self image, and often did not succeed with the women he pursued. Many refused to marry him or sleep with him. His deathbed, second marriage to Sonia Brownell, 18 years his junior, was a bit of a joke; she did not love him, was scared of sex although she had a myriad of affairs, was cold to his adopted son, Richard, and looked upon Orwell as a cause rather than a husband. The marriage was never consummated. Sonya went onto marry a homosexual (another unconsummated marriage), squander the Orwell estate over half-baked artistic projects, and end her days drunk and broke.
This is a hard book to get through, not because it is poorly written (in fact, it is very well written, and Meyers covers a lot of material that seems to be well researched and cross referenced) but rather due to its wretched principal character, Orwell himself.
He was the most enigmatic of writers, a saint to some, who lived and modeled his work. He sensed the cruel, the macabre and the disgusting, and loathed what was fake. He despised humanity and fought for ideas. He had a gentle temperament towards some and was cold to others (especially women); he displayed violence by kicking his servants in Burma, using his fists on his classmates, and caning his students, the last punishment being one meted out to Orwell himself as a child, especially when he wet his bed at St. Cyprians. Some of his terminology such as “Big Brother is watching,” “Some animals are more equal than others,” and words from a whole new language called “Newspeak” used in Nineteen Eighty Four have entered the vernacular. The word “Orwellian” alone spells dystopian disaster. His dire warnings and predictions have endured, most recently re-surfacing with the advent of Donald Trump and other tough-man leaders around the world, making Orwell a writer for the ages.
Given Orwell’s stature, I guess reading at least one of his many biographies (there seems to be more written about him than by him) is a must for any ardent scholar of Literature. This book will keep you engaged, if you can put up with the squalor and the misery. “Orwell? He’s a gloomy bird,” says a wartime broadcasting buddy, and I second it.
January 23, 2016
'Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation' by Jeffrey Meyers was an extremely detailed yet engaging biography of the tortured writer George Orwell culled from contemporary accounts, interviews, archival documents, photographs and his body of short stories, articles, non-fiction books and novels. The book covers his schooldays, his life in Burma as a police officer, as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, personal relationships, his perpetual ill health, his 'peculiar relish for personal discomfort' and the social and political beliefs that underpinned all his writing. Sometimes I felt overwhelmed by the amount of detail but I kept going and was rewarded with a powerfully penetrating portrait of a man I don't think I'd like to meet. I loved facts such as 'Animal Farm was rejected by five publishers before being accepted; his classic 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was described by one critic as 'cynical rot'.
October 10, 2021
Brisk, readable (though frequently repetitive) bio of a difficult, conflicted man with a terrifically observant, curious, and passionate mind. Calls' em as he sees 'em, even if he sees different sides at different times. A political progressive who saw the evils of totalitarianism and a doting father (to his credit), and who chased women and was reluctant to consent to his wife's hysterectomy for uterine cancer because it meant she'd not be able to have any more children (um, not so much, and she died on the table). A brilliant writer, whose essays read as crisp and fresh today as eighty years ago, and who would happily drink and talk till closing time with writers he had savaged in print the day before...and whose names he would turn around and send off to the British government's secret propaganda office as communist sympathizers, "homosexuals," or just "Stupid." Meyers glosses over this aspect (though to be fair the list wasn't made widely public till after this book was published), minimizing it as doing what he felt was a "patriotic duty."
Repeatedly described as a Gothic, guilt-ridden, "saintly" character (and more than a bit of a poseur as well), Orwell is still a cryptic and contradictory being... and one still worth reading.
Repeatedly described as a Gothic, guilt-ridden, "saintly" character (and more than a bit of a poseur as well), Orwell is still a cryptic and contradictory being... and one still worth reading.
January 15, 2025
Biografia molt ben feta d'un dels meus autors de referència. Personatge que tingué una vida apassionant, caracteritzada pel seu inconformisme, el seu idealisme, les seves frustracions i la seva mala salut; elements que foren clau per a la creació de novel·les que a dia d'avui encara són referents mundials. Avantatge afegit d'haver-ne fet la lectura just després d'haver fet la de dues d'aquestes obres.
July 30, 2017
I respect and admire Orwell's writing, but I found this biography tedious. Nothing against Meyers.
Perhaps I like Orwell the author and not Orwell the man? I quit reading about 20% through. May pick up again someday.
Perhaps I like Orwell the author and not Orwell the man? I quit reading about 20% through. May pick up again someday.
October 19, 2018
I found similarity in our upbringings, which were predominantly outside our home culture. I see also ties between one of my first short stories and Burmese Days.
February 6, 2019
See on põhjalik ülevaade nii Orwelli elust kui ka ajastust, mil kirjanik tegutses. Tõeline maiuspala Orwelli fännidele.
December 10, 2019
Well done, just long enough, throws in just enough literary analysis, I see some flashes of Orwell in myself. Interesting guy. It is probably time for me to read 1984
April 4, 2015
This was my blind date for the Blind Date with a Book program at my library. I'm sorry to say it, but George and I would have never got on. He was a rather depressing and uninteresting fellow, besides being tightly bound to his carnal nature. Then there's the small matter of his having been dead for 65 years and you know, I like to spend my time in the land of the living. Sorry, George- it just wasn't meant to be.
However, I do admire his intense desire to fight for the weaker man in a world gone war-crazy; he worked to guard posterity by awakening his generation to the consequences of nations ruled by tyrants. Born in a well-to-do society that controlled and brutalized other nations, Orwell felt a heavy sense of guilt. To escape it, he chose to spend the rest of his life among the lowest classes - even as he fought in Western Europe to defend the political good - and wrote about their wretched conditions.
Through his writing, Orwell sought to end political corruption and improve the societies affected by it. In the end, his books (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, among others) and smaller works had a tremendous effect. However, Orwell (born Eric Blair) was pursued by respiratory ailments, particularly tuberculosis, for most of his life. In his last days, he feverishly edited Nineteen Eighty-Four to prepare it for publication. Although he fought the disease as hard as he'd lived, the author and political soldier was finally taken by tuberculosis on January 21, 1950.
However, I do admire his intense desire to fight for the weaker man in a world gone war-crazy; he worked to guard posterity by awakening his generation to the consequences of nations ruled by tyrants. Born in a well-to-do society that controlled and brutalized other nations, Orwell felt a heavy sense of guilt. To escape it, he chose to spend the rest of his life among the lowest classes - even as he fought in Western Europe to defend the political good - and wrote about their wretched conditions.
Through his writing, Orwell sought to end political corruption and improve the societies affected by it. In the end, his books (Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, among others) and smaller works had a tremendous effect. However, Orwell (born Eric Blair) was pursued by respiratory ailments, particularly tuberculosis, for most of his life. In his last days, he feverishly edited Nineteen Eighty-Four to prepare it for publication. Although he fought the disease as hard as he'd lived, the author and political soldier was finally taken by tuberculosis on January 21, 1950.
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July 18, 2007gosh, i was reading this biography off and on when we were living in London last year, and you all know what a speedy reader i am, that i find myself finishing it up here in New York. it's kind of a Debbie Downer. what do you expect from the life of Orwell (real name: Eric Blair. he had such bitter feelings towards his family their Burmese/Indian colonial ways that he took on a nom de plume)? we were living close to where he lived in north London as a young writer, so it was cool to think back to what Golders Green, Hampstead Heath, and Kentish Town must have been like when he was kicking it there in the 1930s. i find myself missing London a bit. i get a different sensibility reading this biography here in New York than i got while reading it in London. one's surroundings do influence one to such a great degree. aint it funny? i'll let you all know how it ends. hint: he dies. too bad. he's one of my favorite authors/writers. xoxo.
January 2, 2021
总而言之，这并不是一本成功的传记：杂乱地堆砌事实，充满了太多无关紧要的转述，落笔又不免单薄而流于表面。虽然确有许多有趣的细节，但要不是读过奥威尔的书的话，你恐怕很难会对这本传记的主人公产生足够的热情和认同。
February 18, 2012
His literary works such standards, but the man . . . well, who knew? But Mr. Meyers shows us that human being behind the writings. It leaves me with mixed reactions now to both, the man and the books.
Almost unsettling.
Read only if you're curious, and don't mind having your illusions wrinkled a bit.
Almost unsettling.
Read only if you're curious, and don't mind having your illusions wrinkled a bit.
July 9, 2012
Eric Blair's life is skillfully presented in this excellent biography. The author helps the reader see the connections between Orwell's experiences and his fiction. Thoroughly researched but nicely paced, the book is interesting from start to finish.
August 5, 2010
Very interesting the life of Eric Blair (aka George Orwell). If you found 1984 or animal farm interesting..you need to learn somtehing about the author's life.
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