James Wood on George Orwell
In last week’s New Yorker James Wood profiled the late George Orwell in the Life and Letters section (only abstract available without registration). I’ve been a fan of Orwell’s nonfiction and Wood’s analysis vocalized many of my own thoughts on his writings, like this acute observation:
Orwell worked at his journalism like a good novelist, the strange thing is that he could not work at his novels like a good novelist. The details that pucker the journalism are rolled flat in his fiction. Orwell needed the prompt of the real to speak as a writer.
Like Wood, I’ve always felt that the humanist truth found in Orwell’s essays has never been equalled in his two popular novels. This imbalance may account for his reputation as a revolutionary and social critic first and a writer second.
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