Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation

Rating:
Summary: A true prophetic moralist...
Review: Jeffrey Meyers is a biographer of some renown. An accomplished writer of criticism, his works focus mainly on literature, covering subjects from 'Homosexuality and Art' to studies on the mechanics of biography itself. He has published portraits of many literary figures - Robert Frost, D.H. Lawrence and Ernest Hemingway, displaying an uncanny genius for research. ~Orwell - Wintry Conscience of a Generation~ is one of his more recent contributions that has given us a new and more down to earth portrayal of one of the most admired literary cult-figures in English letters. This book is not a hagiography, a monument-chiselling-excercise, creating more myth than fact: in this biography we are introduced to a human being, at times dark and disturbing, who received the calling to write somewhat late in life, and who showed a staunch integrity that today is quite rare.

Personally, reading Orwell is similar to sitting in the principal's office, being told in no uncertain terms the hard facts about the world, to then come away with a much firmer hold on reality. Orwell is a wake-up call, shattering any illusions you might have of a so-called just and fair society, revealing the numerous machinations of power under superficial propaganda that those in a position of influence want us to believe. While others were band wagoning, blowing any way the political and philosophical breeze was heading at the time, Orwell held fast to what he knew to be the truth - and eventually paid the price.

I found it interesting that Eric Blair (Orwell) suddenly dropped his career as a colonial policeman in Burma, (a truly detestable job for any man of conscience) to become a full time writer without having really written anything of significance. From the point of this 'calling', until his early death from tuberculosis at 47 years of age, wrote some of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, not to mention a myriad of essays, articles and reviews, which scholars, historians, and political scientists are pouring over to this day. Another interesting point - Orwell believed that if a writer produced anything less than 100,000 words a year, they were not doing their job. Anyone who writes professionally or other wise, knows this to be a daunting task.

At the beginning of Orwell's writing career, his actions showed considerable courage, a self-imposed guilt, believing that a rough, tramp-like existence was absolutely necessary: "...Every suspicion of self advancement, even to "succeed" in life to the extent of making a few hundreds a year, seemed to me spiritually ugly, a species of bullying...My mind turned immediately towards extreme cases, the social outcast: tramps, beggars, criminals, prostitutes...what I wanted, at the time, was to find some way of getting out of the respectable world altogether." As Meyers simply explains, "Living rough and becoming a writer were part of the same route out of the respectable world." (p.79)

One of my favourite novels, 'Down and Out in Paris and London', describes this conscious escape from the privileged Victorian middle class into the dark recesses of working class poverty. Orwell is of that particular writing school where, in order to write about it, you have to live it - and he did so, plunging himself continually into personal and political conflict.

Jeffrey Meyers has done us all a big favour, giving us a gritty astonishing portrait of a man of letters, who fought for social justice, informing us through his actions and writing the importance of personal and political integrity - Orwell is a true prophetic moralist.

Rating:
Summary: Straightforward Biography of Orwell
Review: Jeffrey Meyers is the author of this clearly written biography of George Orwell (Eric Blair). The biography covers the whole of Orwell's life, including his socialist but anti-Stalinist left wing beliefs, time fighting for the Anarchist/Trotskyite POUM in the Spanish Civil War, lifelong battle over his health and his infatuation with various women as he grew older.

In our time Orwell has been claimed by the right wing (something that would have appalled him) yet Meyers shows his definite, though rocky, affiliation with Englands leftist movements which he kept to the end of his life. Another pervasive element is Orwell's constant money problem's finally resolved, ironiclly, when he was literally on his deathbed.

For clarity of writing this biography can't be criticized. It reads quickly because the style is so straightforward. Meyers, who's written several biographies, is certainly a master at his craft. I'd recommend this as a good read and overview of Orwell's literary and personal life. Good biography.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting if short Orwell biography
Review: Jeffrey Meyers' new biography of George Orwell, the brilliant British Socialist writer, is worth reading if short. Meyers does a more than adequate job of chronicling Orwell's varied and sometimes sad life, his personal relationships, and his books and major essays. An odd feature of the book is Meyers' meticulous description of photographs he doesn't include; several of the Orwell photographs he describes have never, to my knowledge, been reproduced elsewhere and might have been interesting in place of the often-reprinted shots featured in the book. It makes me wonder, in fact, if Meyers wanted to print more photographs and the publisher refused. All in all this is a decent, eminently readable biography and should prove a good introduction to Orwell's life. Orwell was, in my view, the finest essayist in the English language in the last century and probably within the last two centuries, and remains the conscience of his time and even of ours. In an age that prides itself on "I've got mine, to hell with you" (to paraphrase Sir Richard Rees, Orwell's friend, writing about Orwell), Orwell remains a staunch defender of a currently unpopular Socialist ideal that calls on all of us to care for one another and strive together to achieve for society what we selfishly and greedily grasp for ourselves now. Readers interested in knowing more about Orwell should also read Michael Shelden's "Orwell," which is more detailed and comprehensive (although it should be noted that Meyers includes some new information of his own) and Bernard Crick's "George Orwell: A Life" which some have discredited but which remains a incisive look at Orwell's works and his politics.