politcal q 1999 vol 73, 83-90

d:/2polq/70-1/marks.3d ^ 15/12/98 ^ 11:36 ^ disk/sh

Reputations

George Orwell

PETER MARKS

It is a measure of George Orwell's cul-tural impact that less than two decadesafter his death in 1950 he was denouncedby a fictional character. A student radicallaunches the attack during a lecture on`The British Scene in the Thirties' given atColumbia University by the eponymoushero of Saul Bellow's Mr Sammler's Planet(1969): `Orwell was a fink. He was a sickcounter-revolutionary. It was good hedied when he did.' One might expectsimilar broadsides from real opponents,but that from an imagined figure signalsthe pervasiveness of Orwell's reputationsoon after his death.

Tellingly, the student denouncesOrwell's supposed political treachery,rather than Orwell the writer, or Orwell'swritingsÐvery different things. A com-monplace and almost necessary aspect ofOrwell criticism lies in both distinguish-ing and exploring the complex relation-ship between these elements. Eachcontributes, though with subtle distinc-tions and with different emphases, to thevarious assessments of Orwell. That thatname was itself adopted by Eric Blairadds a further complication, comment-ators arguing plausibly that Blair in somesense refashioned himself over time as`George Orwell', an ideal alter ego. If theauthor is dead, theoretically and literally,the same need not be true of the pseud-onym. Particularly in terms of Orwell'sreputation, that posthumous figurelooms monstrously large.

This fact underlines the extent to whichall reputations are to some degree in thehands of actors other than what might be

described as the reputee. For a writer,even after his death, the mechanics ofpublication play a central part in thevicissitudes of esteem. This certainlyapplies to Orwell, for in 1950 many ofthe original texts were out of print or, inthe case of his essays, scattered amongperiodicals. Thus the arrival in 1998 ofthe long-awaited and rightly applaudedtwenty-volume Complete Works of GeorgeOrwell (hereafter Complete Works) was ofreal significance.1

By the very nature of its size and costthe Complete Works is unlikely to supplantthe individual novels and docu-mentaries, or the four-volume CollectedEssays, Journalism and Letters (hereafterCEJL) of 1968, as entry points for thegeneral reader, but clearly it suppliesgreat quantities of grist for scholarlymills. In addition to nine volumes offiction and longer non-fiction, the setprovides eleven volumes of essays,reviews, articles, letters, reports andsuch quirky intellectual delights as thenames in Orwell's address book, hisreading for 1949 and, more contro-versially, his list of supposed communistfellow-travellers. Over 3,700 items arecatalogued, the Cumulative Index itselfrunning to over 180 pages. Chiefly editedby Peter Davison, this monumentalcollection at once confirms Orwell'sreputation as a major twentieth-centuryauthor (only figures of importance attractsuch editorial devotion) and adds to thatreputation by giving coherent anddetailed form to Orwell's challengingoutput. A triumph of editing, the

# The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 1999Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA 83


Complete Works set is comprehensive,contains new and often surprising mater-ial, and is informatively and intelligentlyannotated. The material in the last elevenvolumes also suggests a fertile new areafor critical investigation, and for refigur-ings of Orwell's reputationÐhis essays.Astonishingly, and despite the wide-spread recognition of Orwell's skills asan essayist, no sustained study of thisaspect of his work has yet appeared.

Sick, saint or sceptic?

The primary source of Orwell's reputa-tion lies not in the realm of scholars (hisworks are rarely taught at universitylevel) but in the public domain, wherehe is one of the most widely read of thecentury's serious writers. Contributing tothat reputation, beyond the fictions,documentaries and essays themselves,lies the man (variously described andmythologised). This complex weave ofwriter, writings and reputation has itselfbeen given critical attention in JohnRodden's acute and detailed study, ThePolitics of Literary Reputation: The Makingand Claiming of `St George' Orwell (1989).In an unwitting echo of Bellow's student,Rodden also argues (though for funda-mentally different reasons) that it wasgood for Orwell to die when he did. Hedied at `precisely the ``right'' historicalmoment', Rodden contends, because hadOrwell lived further into the fifties andsixties `he would not have been sparedthe agony of taking sides on numerouspolitical issues . . . [which] would havecompromised him in the eyes of somegroups which today claim him as apatron saint.'2

Leaving aside temporarily the agoniesof taking sides, assessments runningfrom sick counter-revolutionary topatron saint clearly mark Orwell's repu-tation as contested ground. His ownscepticism of saints, however, providesa useful antidote to any inclinationtowards hagiography. Suitably, it comes

in his last published essay, `Reflectionson Gandhi', which begins: `Saints shouldalways be judged guilty until they areproved innocent.' Beatification, even fora Gandhi or a Diana, is largely a post-humous affair, and certainly so (if thelabel has any application) for Orwell.Rodden details such important contribut-ing forces as the co-opting of Orwell bythe American right (who misread AnimalFarm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as anti-socialist rather than as anti-communistsatires), the inclusion of these works inhigh-school curricula, the changing per-ceptions of Orwell by sections of theBritish left, Orwell's status behind theIron Curtain, and the mythical culturalpower (and marketing pull) of 1984.Importantly, too, Orwell was taken upby certain commentators as an exemplarof the critical intellectual.

Dissenting cries emanated from theleft, however, many critics consideringOrwell's massive status but (as theysaw it) inherently conservative stance asmisrepresenting socialism, and so givingaid and comfort to its enemies. In purelyliterary terms Orwell's reputation hasoften suffered from the undoubted lim-itations of his 1930s novels, and thesomewhat patronising dismissal ofAnimal Farm as a classic whose messageis so simple as not to deserve detailedanalysis. A variety of flaws (some recog-nised by Orwell himself) deny NineteenEighty-Four a place in the academic lit-erary pantheon, and his work generallyhas been found wanting when analysedfrom theoretical positions such as femin-ism or post-colonialism. To compoundhis lowly status in the academy, none ofhis books fits easily within the modernistcanon, nor the anti-canons of post-modernism. As a consequence of thismix of complex forces, many different`Orwells' exist, positive and negative,complementary and contradictory.

Ironically, while Eric Blair might him-self have considered Orwell an idealmodel, and while some critics see his

# The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 199984 Peter Marks


life, politics and literary style as pro-claiming the necessity of clarity anddirectness, Orwell functions almost as atest case for the protean nature of reputa-tion. That reputation developed onlyslowly in his lifetime, and in its initialstages mostly within the relatively lim-ited arena of Britain. Orwell's earlyworks were treated more with gentlerespect than with great enthusiasm. Thepolitics of publishing, in several senses,also proved both help and hindrance. TheRoad to Wigan Pier, for example, wasselected by the newly established LeftBook Club (controlled by Orwell's pub-lisher, Victor Gollancz) and consequentlysold nearly 50,000 copies. His next work,Homage to Catalonia, was rejected byGollancz on political grounds and soldonly 867 copies in its first six months. Notsurprisingly, perhaps, one of Orwell'spersistent concerns remained the controlof heterodox ideas. Admittedly, bothbooks were geared to specific, highlypoliticised audiences, but their differentfates are instructive. What linked thesebooks was a conscious and subversivepolemicism: one of Orwell's signaturetraits, but one unlikely to win over scep-tical publishers. Significantly, while bothare now considered classics in theirseparate spheres, neither was publishedin the US until after Orwell's death, anindication of his relative obscurity in the1930s. Gollancz also rejected Animal Farmnearly a decade later (as did Faber's T. S.Eliot and several American presses), butit was this work, along with NineteenEighty-Four, that would turn Orwellfrom a minor English writer into aworld figure. Editions of both were pub-lished simultaneously in the US, the firsttime that this had happened to Orwellsince A Clergyman's Daughter in 1936. Aswith Wigan Pier, though on a far largerscale, the selection of these texts in Amer-ica by a book club (in this case the Book-of-the-Month Club) greatly increasedsales, but had a more lasting impact onhis reputation. With the follow-up suc-

cess of Nineteen Eighty-Four, anotherBook-of-the-Month selection, Orwellwas catapulted on to the world stage, aleap that would have been impossiblewithout the American impetus. In broadcultural terms, the tenor and longevity ofOrwell's reputation have depended sub-stantially upon the phenomenal impactof these two fictional pieces. That worksof overt political fiction should sell in thetens of millions is amazing enough; thatboth should come from the same writer,perhaps unique.

As the Cold War faded in the 1960sfrom grotesque threat to numbing (if stillgrotesque) reality, Orwell lost somethingof the cultural eminence he had enjoyed.The appearance towards the end of thedecade of the CEJL revived critical andpublic interest, reviewers lavishingpraise both on Orwell and his essays.George Steiner described the fourvolumes as `a place of renewal for themoral imagination', and Irving Howe,Professor of English at the City Univer-sity of New York, reviewing the CEJL,declared Orwell `the greatest Englishessayist since Hazlitt, maybe since DrJohnson'. (By a neat coincidence, Howe'spraise appeared in the same year as,further up Manhattan at ColumbiaUniversity, Bellow's imaginary studentdenounced Orwell.) The refocusing ofcritical attention on to Orwell's essaysand articles initiated by the CEJL acquiresrenewed contemporary momentum withthe publication of the Complete Works.Assessment of the volumes of essaysmay well confirm (or refute) Howe'sview of Orwell as an essayist, but theirimportance as elements in his overallwork needs to be addressed and evalu-ated.

Essayist and polemicist

It is an indication of the significance ofthese shorter pieces that the last ninevolumes of essays and articles in theComplete Works, covering the years

# The Political Quarterly Publishing Co. Ltd. 1999 George Orwell 85


1939±50, are balanced by only two worksof fiction. Admittedly these are AnimalFarm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, andOrwell was planning new fiction at thetime of his death; but the bulk of hisliterary production in the last decade ofhis life consisted of essays and articles.Over the course of his relatively shortwriting career he produced a substantialbody of memorable pieces, among them`Politics and the English Language',`Thoughts on the Common Toad',`Charles Dickens', `Wells, Hitler and theWorld State', Ìnside the Whale', `Shoot-ing an Elephant', `How the Poor Die',`The Lion and the Unicorn', and `Why IWrite'. Two aspects of the essay deserveattention in appraising the form's signi-ficance to Orwell's corpus and to hisreputation: the essay's personal perspect-ive, and the rather more esoteric questionof incompleteness. Ì myself am the sub-ject of my book,' declared Michel deMontaigne in the first collection of whathe named essais: from the outset, then, theessay offers an intensely personalimpression of the world and, if onlyunconsciously, of the essayist.

Orwell's reputation often hinges onperceptions of the man, and for manyreaders their sense of him derives fromhis essays, which often deal in emphaticterms with what can be idiosyncraticviews. The essay, particularly, allowsOrwell to explain and explore his inter-ests, views and (more obliquely) per-sonality. The titles of several volumes inthe Complete Works, each drawn from anessay, confirm this: Ì Have Tried to Tellthe Truth'; Ì Belong to the Left'; Ìt isWhat I Think'. Many of the mostrenowned pieces consider private andseemingly mundane enthusiasms: sea-side postcards; the desire to make theperfect cup of tea, or drink in the perfectpub; boys' magazines; toads. Yet evensomething superficially as apolitical asthe mating of toads prompts the personalthought that this simple enjoyment of aspring ritual might be disapproved of by

dictators and bureaucrats. In such essaysOrwell adopts the stance of the defiantcommon man, employing the personalnote as a small counterblast to thedrone of officialdom. And even suchostensibly objective exercises as theexamination of modern prose in `Politicsand the English Language' end with apersonal call: Òne cannot change this allin a moment, but one can at least changeone's habits, and one can even, if onejeers loudly enough, send some worn-outand useless phrase . . . into the dustbinwhere it belongs.'

Orwell's essays differ in a vital wayfrom those of Montaigne, however, inthat they mostly appeared first in period-icals. Over 100 periodicals are recordedin the Complete Works, from luminariessuch as Partisan Review and Horizon toobscure journals such as Controversy andHighway. Considered as a group, theseoften short-lived organs provided crucialif makeshift platforms for cultural andpolitical debate and discussion. As theyhad done since the early seventeenthcentury, periodicals transformed theessay from an essentially private, con-templative medium into one that wasboth immediate and public. This functionserved a key purpose for Orwell, allow-ing him to publicise politically heterodoxviews, though the degree of that pub-licity was limited to often small cir-culations, mostly under 5,000. Theposthumous fame of Orwell as an essay-ist needs to be weighed against the relat-ive lack of impact of his political essays.His more general, cultural essays faredbetter, Q. D. Leavis enthusiasticallypraising the collection Inside the Whale(1940) as signalling à live mind workingthrough literature, life and ideas'. Evenso, only 1,000 copies were printed (letalone sold), the volume as a whole suffer-ing the neglect common to essays.

The essay as a form has long enduredscholarly neglect, in much the same wayas the short story, being categorised andthen dismissed as bellettrist, ephemeral



or incomplete. This may explain the fail-ure of commentators to do justice toOrwell's essay output when assessinghis reputation, but in fact the incomple-teness of the essay remains one of itscrucial elements, and was repeatedlyutilised by Orwell. Indeed, one theoret-ical approach to the essay lauds itsincompleteness, telling us much aboutthe rhetorical vigour of Orwell's essays.In Òn the Nature and Form of the Essay'Georg LukaÂcs argues that incomplete-ness and lack of system are central tothe critical function of the essay, `theessential, the value-determining thingabout [the essay being] not the verdict(as in the case of the system) but theprocess of judging'.3 This view offers atheoretical explanation for the practicalvalue Orwell found in the essay, oneallowing for critical judgement andactive engagement in ongoing debates.Incompleteness provides a polemicaldimension and momentum, the force-fully stated argument not requiring thedetailed substantiation necessary for afull-blown thesis.

In his own essays Orwell employsincompleteness to effect, the essay pro-viding him with a polemical tool, a razor-edged blade for analytical dissection andrhetorical attack. Utilising this quality toprosecute an argument fits with thestrategy Orwell sets out in a key essay,`Why I Write' (1946). Here, he lists fourgreat motives for writing, but in consid-ering his own starting point he stresses àfeeling of partisanship, a sense of injus-tice. When I sit down to write a book, I donot say to myself, `Ì am going to producea work of art.'' I write it because there issome lie that I want to expose, some factto which I want to draw attention, andmy initial concern is to get a hearing.'4

Orwell admits in the essay that he has notwritten a novel in seven years, and it isdifficult to see quite how most of hisfiction fits the brief set out in `Why IWrite'. The exception in 1946 wasAnimal Farm, but much of the burden of

exposing lies and drawing attention tofacts falls on the essays.

In performing this crucial task theessays fulfil a more general function, forthey both signal the need, and define aspace, for critical intellectuals. Orwell'sglobal reputation rests in large part uponthe wide readership generated by hismost famous fictions, works whosephrases and images have enteredmodern cultural mythology. But his con-tinuing presence in more structuredpublic debate has much to do with therepeated reconsideration of his ideas byintellectuals. This aspect might well havea greater effect on the long-term survivalof his reputation. One hears clear echoesof the position Orwell sets out in `Why IWrite' in this pronouncement by NoamChomsky in American Power and the NewMandarins (1969): Ìt is the responsibilityof intellectuals to speak the truth and toexpose lies.' Orwell and Chomsky see therole of intellectuals in strikingly similarterms, and both remain sceptical thatintellectuals will in fact fulfil theirresponsibility. In much of his writingOrwell trains the light of suspicion onthe motives and actions of the intelligent-sia, allowing himself the provocative (ifparadoxical) role of the anti-intellectualintellectual. Given his own suspicion ofsaints, Orwell must not be taken as aninfallible guide to what might be consid-ered lies or truth, justice or injustice.Rather, he operates as one possible ex-ample of intellectual responsibility.Chomsky has in fact criticised Orwell'sanalysis of propaganda as simplistic, anddeclared Nineteen Eighty-Four a `tenthrate novel'. But he judges Homage toCatalonia a `great book', and considersOrwell himself `honest' as well as `veryunusual and very praiseworthy inattempting to extricate himself from sys-tems of thought control'.5

Not all intellectuals come to praiseOrwell. Raymond Williams is only onefigure from the left to criticise Orwell'sideas and eminence. Interviewed by the



New Left Review in 1979, Williams con-structed Orwell almost as the embodi-ment of what Chomsky depicts assystems of thought control. Morebroadly, Williams accused Orwell ofbeing a malevolent presence in the polit-ical culture of postwar Britain:

In the Britain of the fifties, along every roadthat you moved, the figure of Orwell seemedto be waiting. If you tried to develop a newkind of cultural analysis, there was Orwell; ifyou wanted to report on work or on ordinarylife, there was Orwell; if you engaged in anykind of socialist argument, there was theenormously inflated statue of Orwell warningyou back.6

Here, Orwell assumes almost the form,and enjoys almost the power, of BigBrother; but Williams's pre-1978 assess-ments of Orwell were rather more posi-tive, as the editors of New Left Reviewindicated in their questions and com-ments. Indeed, they chided Williamsseveral times for what they saw as hisrelatively generous view of Orwell, oneof which they, as part of a new genera-tion of leftist activist and thinkers, werehighly sceptical. Ultimately, Williams'ssuggestion that he can `see the basis fora very much harder assessment of thiskind of man and this kind of writing'seems as much an act of confession as ofcriticism.

Williams's own refigurings of Orwellover time operate as but one instance ofthe difficult relationship between Orwelland sections of the British left from as farback at least as 1936. The first substantialclash came with The Road to Wigan Pier,published in 1937, but finished beforeOrwell went to Spain in December 1936.In Wigan Pier, Orwell argues tenden-tiously that ìn order to defend Socialismit is necessary to start by attacking it . . . .for the moment I am advocatus diaboli.'There follows the infamous, intemperateand overtly provocative caricature ofsocialists and communists as fruit juicedrinkers, sex maniacs, pacifists and fem-

inists. As in so many of his essays,Orwell's polemical skills depend on thestripping away of what he takes to befalse or damaging aspects, and of adopt-ing (all too gleefully at times) the role ofdevil's advocate, rather than of construct-ing a theoretically sophisticated argu-ment. For a committed theorist andsocialist such as Williams, the provoca-tion eventually became difficult to toler-ate. His ultimate rejection of Orwell by1978 was strikingly slow, not occurringuntil Williams's late fifties, an age thetarget himself never reached. ButOrwell's posthumous global reputationmade him a difficult figure for otherson the left from the 1950s onward.Having the most famous and widelyread political writer of the centuryopenly declaring himself a socialistmight seem to be cause for rejoicing,but the provocative approach taken upin the essays and documentaries routi-nely lacerated friend more savagely thanfoe. Couched mostly in crystalline prose,his work could be and was read by ahuge audience, one less able to distin-guish between devil's advocate anddevil.

Worse, Orwell was taken up andchampioned by sections of the politicalright, happy to employ his criticism of hisown side to prosecute their case. Littlesurprise, then, that some of Orwell'smost brutal critics have come from theleft. E. P. Thompson provides oneinstance, claiming in 1960 that as a con-sequence of the essay Ìnside the Whale'(1940), `the aspirations of a generationwere buried; not only was a politicalmovement, which embodied much thatwas honorable buried, but also the notionof disinterested dedication to a cause.'7

An astonishing claim, and one difficult tosustain; but one also which hints at whatThompson sees as the negative impact ofOrwell's influence in the decade after hisdeath. Thompson's attack on Ìnside theWhale', twenty years after that essay wasfirst published, suggests that particular



pieces have a potent and enduring shelflife. And Thompson is not the last tocriticise vigorously Orwell's argumentin that essay. Salman Rushdie wasalmost equally antagonistic in 1984 inhis own essay Òutside the Whale',taking Orwell to task for embracing andespousing a `quietist philosophy'. ForRushdie, the writer must reject thisstance, for `the truth is that there is nowhale. We live in a world without hidingplaces.'8 Perhaps no recent Westernwriter has had to live out the logic ofhis argument so literally.

The reluctant pamphleteer

What is important in terms of the resi-lience of Orwell's reputation is that hisposition (propounded in very differentcircumstances) is considered worthy ofengaging with half a century later by oneof the world's major young writers. Par-ticularly and repeatedly in his essays,Orwell remains a distinctive argumenta-tive voice and a stimulating opponent.He provides a challenge rather than aguide to other intellectuals, even those(and perhaps especially those) who dis-agree with his own opinions. As with theessay itself, the discursive process ismore important than the product. Nodoubt Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four will continue to challenge and tostimulate many readers. But as the cen-tury ends in which they were small butsignificant parts in the jigsaw of culturalmythology, Orwell's essays offer them-selves as a valuable component of hisliterary output, and a fresh element forconsidering his worth in the future.Orwell had a clear sense of how he hadbeen marked by the times in which helived, but perhaps misread its ultimateimpact. Ìn a peaceful age', he suggests in`Why I Write', Ì might have writtenornate or merely descriptive books, andmight have remained almost unaware ofmy political loyalties. As it is I have beenforced into becoming a sort of pamphle-

teer.' This denigrates both the pamphletand the pamphleteer; but V. S. Pritchett'sreview of Orwell's extended essay `TheLion and the Unicorn' (1941) recuperatesboth:

George Orwell has many of the traits of thebest English pamphleteers: courage, an indi-vidual mind, vehement opinions, an instinctfor stirring up trouble, the art of appealing tothat imaginary creature the sensible man andof combining original observations withsweeping generalization, of seeing enemieseverywhere and of despising them all . . . hewrites a lucid conversational style whichwakes one up suddenly like cold waterdashed in the face. The sting of it is some-times refreshing; sometimes it makes onevery angry.9

The acuity of this judgement onOrwell's greatest attributes survivesbetter than the essay which inspired it.Pritchett's comments, indeed, hold truefor the best of Orwell's writing, and forthe stance of the critical, independentintellectual which sustains and invigo-rates that work. Orwell's writing con-tinues both to refresh and to anger, andto provide one powerful model for theengaged, perceptive thinker.

John Rodden suggests that Orwellwould have been compromised byhaving to take sides in the 1950s and1960s, but in fact taking sides lies at thevery centre of his most searching, pro-vocative and, ultimately perhaps, hismost enduring work. Though he held toparticular political and cultural positionsand biases, and developed certain themesand concerns (language and its control;the role of the intellectual; the complex-ities and the contradictions of socialism;the pleasures of nature; the need fordecency), Orwell was not a systematicthinker. His emphatic, transparent prosehints at an almost transcendental cer-tainty, and the provocativeness of hisideas, as Pritchett notes, can be refresh-ing. Paradoxically, Orwell continues tobe adopted and quoted by figuresacross the political spectrum because his



style suggests finality, certainty, ratherthan the process of analysis and argu-ment that his essays undertake. Oneshould not confuse clarity with correct-nessÐthe blunt person can be wrong. Butthat person can continue to question thevalidity of both his or her own thoughts,and those of others. Among his writings,Orwell's essays best represent this pro-cess, the act of engaging spiritedly andopenly in debate. Perhaps uniquelyamong twentieth-century writers, theclarity of his prose, whether one acceptsthe arguments or not, allows that he canbe argued with by intellectuals and non-intellectuals alike. The anecdotal evid-ence that Orwell is one of the mostquoted of English writers only reinforcesthis interactive quality.

The complex forces and tensions whichcombine to construct, remodel and dis-mantle reputations make predictionshazardous as to Orwell's fate in the nextcentury. One could argue that the sup-posed death of a text-based culture mightquickly render such a language-fixatedauthor as Orwell redundant. Againstthis, of course, his warnings about thecontrol of ideas have a real currency in aninformation age. More prosaically, thevery existence of the Collected Worksargues against the imminent disappear-ance of the book, and the book culture,down the memory hole. That set exists asa monument to a dauntingly productiveliterary life, but Orwell's own criticalview of saints requires that the volumesnot be seen as a shrine, nor Orwellhimself as an icon. He should be treatedas invigorating and flawed, and some-

times as invigorating because flawed. Forthose still keen to prostrate themselves,one form of the sanctified Orwell lives onin the remarkably persistent set of photo-graphic images adorning books, maga-zine features and (a wonderful irony,given `The Art of Donald McGill') post-cards. One could describe this enduring,iconic Orwell as a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache andruggedly handsome features. But thedangers of worship are all too obvious,for these words are lifted verbatim fromOrwell's description of Big Brother.

Notes

1 The Collected Works of George Orwell, ed.Peter Davison, London, Secker & Warburg,1998.

2 John Rodden, The Politics of Literary Reputa-tion: The Making and Claiming of `St George'Orwell, New York, Oxford University Press,1989, p. 95.

3 Georg LukaÂcs, Òn the Nature and Form ofthe Essay', in Soul and Form, Cambridge,Mass., Merlin Press, 1974.

4 George Orwell, `Why I Write', CollectedWorks, vol. 18, p. 319.

5 For an analysis of Chomsky's views onOrwell see Milan Rai, Chomsky's Politics,London, Verso, 1995.

6 Raymond Williams, Òrwell', in Politics andLetters, London, New Left Books, 1979.

7 E. P. Thompson, Òutside the Whale', in Outof Apathy, London, Stevens & Sons, 1960.

8 Salman Rushdie, Òutside the Whale', inImaginary Homelands, London, Granta,1991.

9 V. S. Pritchett, cited in Bernard Crick,George Orwell: A Life, Harmondsworth, Pen-guin, 1992, pp. 411±12.


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