A friend who is not a dedicated reader but has more common sense and worldly knowhow than I’ve ever possessed tells me he plans to reread Animal Farm and 1984. Neither have I read since junior-high school, probably the ideal time for such books, which are among the most overrated in our tradition. I don’t read fiction for “ideas.” In fact, ideas are preferably absent or minimal in novels and short stories, which are not allegories. For another example consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin – part melodrama, part sermon and all unreadable as literature, though its importance in history is undeniable.
I read
fiction for its “literary” qualities, which are admittedly difficult to define.
As a stylist, Orwell is one-dimensional and ham-fisted. He is a propagandist. Fiction
like his is too often judged by whether the reader agrees with the ideas
contained in the text. Admittedly, Orwell wrote a handful of good essays,
including those devoted to Dickens and Kipling.
Nabokov famously
dismissed “Orwell’s clichés.” When a new edition of the second novel he wrote in English, Bend Sinister (1947),was
reissued in 1963, Nabokov wrote in his introduction: “There exist few things
more tedious than a discussion of general ideas inflicted by author or reader
upon a work of fiction.”
My friend reading Orwell noticed a post I had written recently about Turner Cassity and his first collection, Steeplejacks in Babel (1966). Something about my judgment of the book moved him to order a copy and he is enjoying the wittiest of American poets. I appreciate the total unexpectedness of his choice.
Trying to imagine George Orwell writing the screenplay for "Animal House." LOL
ReplyDeleteI would not call George Orwell a propagandist. In fact, I find it rather offensive that you call him that.
ReplyDeleteAnimal Farm and 1984 are polemics.
They're not great literature as such, and of course it's absurd if anyone places them next to the likes of Tolstoy or Dickens, but they do have value. In Animal Farm and 1984, I see a mirror of the society in which I grew up, and he introduces certain concepts that explain some toxic tactics in the West today. Is authoritarianism a joke to you? It's not to me. It is extremely condescending of you to call George Orwell a propagandist.
I rather enjoyed Orwell's novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying, which I don't think is any more a novel of ideas than James's Princess Casamassima.
ReplyDeleteI tend to lean in your direction, but then again, aren't "general ideas" a part of life? Aren't they as much a legitimate subject for fiction as any other part of life?
ReplyDeleteThe problem - for me - is that it seems that so few people handle them well, not they they shouldn't be handled at all.
And to say that Orwell "wrote a few good essays" goes beyond damning with faint praise. I (among many others, I think) find Homage to Catalonia and Down and Out in Paris and London indispensable.
Generally, I’d agree that didactisim has no place in art, but I don’t think we should be dogmatic about it. I think Dostoevsky’s “Demons” or Tolstoy’s fables (“How Much Land Does a Man Need?” for instance) are all great works of art, though undoubtedly didactic.
ReplyDeleteI’d prefer to call Orwell a polemicist rather than a propagandist, if only because the latter has unsavoury connotations. And I think he was a good polemicist. His novels (the big two excepted) aren’t up to much, I agree, but his journalistic works (“Down and Out in Paris and London”, “Homage to Catalonia”, “The Road to Wigan Pier”) seem to me excellent. And he was a fine essayist.
But yes, his fame depends primarily on his big two novels. “Ideas,” you say, “are preferably absent or minimal in novels and short stories, which are not allegories” - but that is precisely what “Animal Farm” is - an allegory. And, it seems to me a very good one, depicting with vividness and clarity the progress of a revolution. The last time I read it, there seemed to me to hang about it an air of great sadness, and I don’t think I’d be able to detect such a thing if the book were no more than a political tract, devoid of artistry.
“1984” could, frankly, have benefited from another draft, but Orwell was very ill at the time, so I think I can cut him some slack on that point. But once again, I do not think it is a mere tract devoid of artistry: it is among the very few works of 20th century literature whose concepts and images have entered into public consciousness, even the consciousness of those who haven’t read it. We all know what is meant by “Two minute hate” or “Room 101” or “Big Brother is watching you”. To make such an impact is itself a remarkable achievement, but I think the novel goes further: the climactic moment, the moment of ultimate betrayal, makes so profound an impact on the reader - on this reader, at least - that it’s hard to believe that it could be the product of an author lacking imagination or artistry. Literary qualities are, as you say, hard to define, but imagination and artistry seem to me literary qualities.
Orwell is, I agree, often overrated as a novelist by those who have read few other novels, but that is no reason to underrate him. “Animal Farm” and “1984” both seem to me considerable works of the literary imagination.