pleas of a desperate lit major...
Rachel
I am a college senior currently writing a thesis on aesthetic and
ethical components of George Orwell's nonfiction. The catch? Although
my school has a fabulous British Lit. department, not a single
professor is conversant with Orwell's nonfiction. And I am left high
and dry.
What I'm hoping is that someone out there would be willing to
correspond with me about a handful of essays and Homage to
Catalonia--anything from a quick note or two to discussing and maybe
even reading my thesis as it develops.
I know this is a tall request, but I am very nearly at my wits' end.
I'll attach a partial bibliography, so you have some idea of what I'm
working on.
Thanks very much,
Rachel E.
By Orwell:
"Why I Write"
<u>Homage to Catalonia</u>
"Politics and the English Language"
"Shooting an Elephant"
"Why Socialists Don't Believe In Fun"
"Notes On Nationalism"
"The Lion and the Unicorn"
"Notes on Salvador Dali"
"You and the Atomic Bomb"
"My Country, Right Or Wrong"
By other folks:
Trilling, Lionel. "George Orwell and the Politics of Truth."
Martha Bridegam
Rachel wrote:
Rachel --
Here are a few opening comments that others here are invited to
supplement &/or dispute:
Out of the Orwell studies that your Mountain College Library Network
has, the best starting points are probably Rodden, Stansky, and
Woodcock, in that order. But don't forget the wonders of interlibrary
loan are available to you.
As you probably know, the main biographies are by Bernard Crick, Michael
Shelden, Jeffrey Meyers, and, most recently, Gordon Bowker and DJ
Taylor. Crick and Shelden really got most of the important stuff, but
the more recent three had the advantage of using Peter Davison's
wonderful documentary discoveries and footnotes all through the eleven
volumes of essays and letters in the Complete Works. Davison himself
wrote a "literary life" of Orwell that is probably good, since per the
footnotes Davison really has about as consistently solid a sense for
Orwell's character as any of the major writers who have "done" him.
Key studies of interest that are part memoir & part literary/aesthetic
judgment would be those by Richard Rees and T.R. Fyvel.
Alan Allport, a usual contributor to this site, has a good selection of
critical essays on Orwell at
<http://www.seas.upenn.edu:8080/~allport/chestnut/>. His site has I
think now been copied over to Charles' Orwell Links at
<http://www.netcharles.com/orwell>, which also has other good things.
You can probably find some help among folks here (especially if you need
the 'mice' joke in *Aspidistra* explained), but it sounds like you might
really want to approach one of the professors specializing in this area.
Tell us more about your project, maybe?
/Martha Bridegam
San Francisco
Rachel
It's mainly an examination of the balance of and interaction between
the aesthetic and the didactic in Orwell's nonfiction. I'm starting
with "Why I Write," and the bulk of the project consists of an
examination of a handful of Orwell's other essays and Homage to
Catalonia through the lens of the criteria Orwell himself sets out in
"Why I Write." Finally, I want to briefly look at Orwell's own life in
terms of the ideals he expresses in his nonfiction, much as I'll have
examined that nonfiction in terms of the ideals Orwell describes in
"Why I Write."
More background?
This whole thesis grew out of a short paper I wrote on Homage to
Catalonia about the implicit distinction between a writer as an artist
and a writer as a person. I love Orwell's nonfiction, and I'm
fascinated by the way in which he seems to use a combination of craft
and passion to, in his own words, "make political writing into an
art." His essays have a simple eloquence that impresses the hell out
of me. They're wry and honest without slipping into cynicism.
And Orwell's life mirrored his work--he seems to have approached the
world with a singularly effective combination of idealism and action.
Does that answer your question? I have a full outline, but it seems
like it'd be silly to post it...
Thanks,
Rachel Edidin
Martha Bridegam
Rachel wrote:
"Didactic" is a really interesting word. Do you mean he was seeing
himself as a teacher of the less well informed, rather than, for example,
a participant in a debate?
/M
Edward Belsky
Rachel <red...@warren-wilson.edu> wrote in message
news:bf45f6ab.03112...@posting.google.com...
> > Tell us more about your project, maybe?
>
> terms of the ideals he expresses in his nonfiction, much as I'll have
> examined that nonfiction in terms of the ideals Orwell describes in
> "Why I Write."
His life comes out of ideals and non-fiction comes out of ideals, eh?
But it is important to remember that he was an evolving person. He was not
a socialist in the period described in "Down and Out in London and Paris."
He might have become one through the writing of it. As cruelly brief as GO's
life was, there was a considerable lapse between the time he reached his
powers and his death. Don't read back into his mind during his poor Paris
days the opinions that he had at the time of writing 1984. Throughout
Orwell's life his vision was extended in one realm and then applied to
another. He discovered the layer of the poor in England because he had
found his way to the poor in France. He could not have found the poor in
England without having his eyes widened in another country where he was
socially a free agent. Some parts of his oeuvre are startling for the lack
of osmosis between realms. The kind of street-start political wisdom that
he showed in his Partisan Review dispatches did not find its way into 1984.
He could have used it there to describe the Party in its early days.
Martha Bridegam
Edward Belsky wrote:
> Rachel <red...@warren-wilson.edu> wrote in message
> news:bf45f6ab.03112...@posting.google.com...
> > > Tell us more about your project, maybe?
> >
> Finally, I want to briefly look at Orwell's own life in
> > terms of the ideals he expresses in his nonfiction, much as I'll have
> > examined that nonfiction in terms of the ideals Orwell describes in
> > "Why I Write."
>
> His life comes out of ideals and non-fiction comes out of ideals, eh?
> But it is important to remember that he was an evolving person. He was not
> a socialist in the period described in "Down and Out in London and Paris."
> He might have become one through the writing of it. As cruelly brief as GO's
> life was, there was a considerable lapse between the time he reached his
> powers and his death. Don't read back into his mind during his poor Paris
> days the opinions that he had at the time of writing 1984. Throughout
> Orwell's life his vision was extended in one realm and then applied to
> another. He discovered the layer of the poor in England because he had
> found his way to the poor in France.
Because, I suspect, he had felt uncomfortably prevented from taking the side of
the poor in Burma.
> He could not have found the poor in
> England without having his eyes widened in another country where he was
> socially a free agent. Some parts of his oeuvre are startling for the lack
> of osmosis between realms. The kind of street-start political wisdom that
> he showed in his Partisan Review dispatches did not find its way into 1984.
True.
>
> He could have used it there to describe the Party in its early days.
Nother thing I always come back to is that I'm certain Spain gave him a nasty
case of what's now called post-traumatic stress disorder. After Spain he never
quite felt safe anywhere again.
/M
Rachel
> Rachel wrote:
>
> > > Tell us more about your project, maybe?
> >
>
> "Didactic" is a really interesting word. Do you mean he was seeing
> himself as a teacher of the less well informed, rather than, for example,
> a participant in a debate?
>
> /M
I think I've been spoiled by alternative education...I tend to see
anything deliberately thought or discussion provoking as educational.
-Rachel
Rachel
excellent point, and a reminder I very much needed--I've been focusing
almost exclusively on post-Spain essays. Do you think it would be fair
to say that Orwell learned what he was against
(totalitarianism/imperialism) in Burma, but didn't really know what he
was for until the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War?
-Rachel
Martha Bridegam
Rachel wrote:
What about the very definite beliefs stated in the second half of *The Road to Wigan Pier*?
/M
Alan Hogue
Martha Bridegam wrote:
>
>Nother thing I always come back to is that I'm certain Spain gave him a nasty
>case of what's now called post-traumatic stress disorder. After Spain he never
>quite felt safe anywhere again.
>
>/M
>
>
>
Interesting. Where do you find evidence for this? (Or is it obvious?)
Alan H.
Martha Bridegam
Alan Hogue wrote:
I've argued it many times here -- see
<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=alt.books.george-orwell+Martha+PTSD&ie=ISO-8859-1&hl=en>.
Probably the strongest evidence is the sense of relief and naturalness with which
he approached the Blitz, as opposed to the uncomfortable apprehension he displayed
both before *and after* the war. It's typical of PTSD: if something dreadful isn't
happening, the traumatized person goes around expecting something dreadful to
happen. If something dreadful *is* happening, that's "normal" to the traumatized
mentality, and so the victim functions comparatively well.
/M
Alan Hogue
Thanks. I'll take a look at the old posts.
Alan H.
Rachel
Agreed. I'm a rape crisis advocate, and Orwell's response to Spain is
pretty textbook. From a neuropsychological perspective, the specific
details and ommissions in H to C fit that profile as well: PTSD is
related very closely to the biology of memory, particularly memory of
sensory details.
for a good overview, try
http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/traumaptsd/a/trauma.htm
-Rachel
Alan Hogue
Well, it has been a while since I've read the book, but as I recall
Orwell presented the war as mainly boring and filthy. The main events
are getting shot in the neck and having to hide in Barcellona. While
those can't have been any fun, are they enough to trigger such a reaction?
Alan H.
Rachel
I'd guess so. Different events/experiences can serve as catalytic
trauma for different people--what to one person might be at most very
disconcerting might to another comprise sufficient trauma to trigger
PTSD. But my guess comes not so much from any specific event, but
rather from the nature and concentration of detail within the
narrative, because what I know about PTSD is mostly terrible technical
and neurological rather than abstract and psychological.
-R
Martha Bridegam
Alan Hogue wrote:
>
> >
> >
> >Agreed. I'm a rape crisis advocate, and Orwell's response to Spain is
> >pretty textbook. From a neuropsychological perspective, the specific
> >details and ommissions in H to C fit that profile as well: PTSD is
> >related very closely to the biology of memory, particularly memory of
> >sensory details.
> >for a good overview, try
> >http://mentalhealth.about.com/cs/traumaptsd/a/trauma.htm
> >-Rachel
> >
>
> Well, it has been a while since I've read the book, but as I recall
> Orwell presented the war as mainly boring and filthy. The main events
> are getting shot in the neck and having to hide in Barcellona. While
> those can't have been any fun, are they enough to trigger such a reaction?
>
> Alan H.
Absolutely.
You might add, being helpless to prevent friends of his from being imprisoned under conditions
that killed one of them (Bob Smillie).
In a way, though, I wonder if bits of his PTSD started earlier. If St. Cyprian's didn't
traumatize him, then the murder investigations he conducted as a police officer might have been
enough. There's that suggestion that he already had frequent nightmares even in Burma -- the
business about his servant who used to wake him as gently as possible by tickling his toes (!).
Rachel, that's really interesting what you have to say about the influence of PTSD on memory. You
might want to compare what Stansky & Abrahams said about Orwell's selectivity in choosing
incidents to recount. At the symposium Stansky was quoting from the double book he wrote with
William Abrahams in the '70s -- *The Unknown Orwell* and *Orwell: The Transformation*, talking
about GO's selective choice in "Such, Such Were the Joys" of only those incidents that would
portray St. Cyprian's as an oppressive place.
I haven't gone back to see if they said similar things about H to C in the book back then, but at
the symposium this week, Stansky's opening paper was about Orwell frequently rearranging facts &
portrayals in order to be loyal to principles, and he included H to C in the stuff he thought had
been rearranged.
He said at the time they were writing that early book, he thought Orwell was merely selective for
writerly reasons in choosing incidents to recount in "Such, Such Were the Joys," but later
research suggested Orwell had in fact rearranged incidents that happened to other people --
particularly that (if I have this right) a schoolmate told Crick another child had been the
bed-wetter. On St. Cyprian's he suggested three articles by Robert Pierce (sp?) One in the
Journal of Educational Administration and History in 1991, one in Notes and Queries, and I'm
sorry, I didn't catch the third.
Another example was the famous transposition of the woman cleaning the drainpipe in Wigan from
the street where he saw her according to his diary, to the train window he claims to have seen
her from in the finished book.
As for whether Orwell really shot the elephant, Stansky sounded like he wanted to believe it was
true, and he made a crack about "certain political scientists" (I think he meant Crick) insisting
too strongly on having hard evidence for everything.
Stansky said he mentioned some of these reservations about Orwell's truthfulness to James Miller
(See "Is Bad Writing Necessary? George Orwell, Theodor Adorno, and the Politics of Language,"
Lingua Franca 9, no. 9, December/January 2000.) and Miller said the other things wouldn't bother
him so long as nothing turned out to have been changed in *Homage to Catalonia*.
Stansky thinks Orwell did at least slant some things in *Homage to Catalonia*.
About H to C, he specifically criticized the Trilling preface, saying it did "a great disservice"
to Orwell by making him out to be a "saint." He quoted "Reflections on Gandhi" about Orwell
thinking saints should be "judged guilty until proven innocent" etc.
Stansky said Orwell might have overstated his support for the POUM, noting that he came back to
Barcelona intending to join the International Brigade, but on discovering the POUM was under
attack, found he did not have to ask himself which side he was on etc. As evidence Stansky noted
the "startlingly amiable" letter to Frank Jellinek in 1938 (From Marrakech, dated 20 Dec. 1938,
item 513 in the Complete Works Vol. XI, or item 145 in the Collected Essays, Journalism and
Letters Vol. I.). He noted how Orwell apologized in this letter for "...a lot of mistakes and
misleading statements..." and later wrote, "...Actually I've given a more sympathetic account of
the POUM 'line' than I actually felt, because I always told them they were wrong and refued to
join the party. But I had to put it as sympathetically as possible, because it has had no hearing
in the capitalist press and nothing but libels in the left-wing press...."
Stansky ended up saying, "I don't believe that the literal serving of truth was his primary
goal." Rather, he thought Orwell's main goal was well stated in the famous "Why I Write"
paragraph about "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written,
directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism, as I understand
it..."
---
Further re: psychology
Later on, I used my chance to ask a question to bring up Eileen's psychology training and ask if
anyone felt it had an influence on Orwell's work -- mainly because one of the panelists, a
Stanford English professor named Alex Woloch, had written previously on the intersection of
psychology and literature. In response, Stansky corrected my use of the phrase "Freudian
psychology," saying Eileen's work wasn't necessarily Freudian, and that the professor she worked
with had gotten into trouble for falsifying data, including something about race. (Sounds ugly.
Anyone know who it was?) He went on to say he guessed Eileen was not an intellectual influence on
Orwell -- "There's that autodidact" sense about Orwell, he said. Woloch picked up the question
and talked about Freudian interpretations of Orwell and suggested Orwell was probably fairly
aware of his own kinks; George Packer, a fan's fan, pointed out Orwell was always interested in
ulterior motives & frequently used psychology as a polemical weapon (he's right -- cf. "James
Burnham and the Managerial Revolution"). Orville Schell said something more detached that I
didn't quite catch, I think about Orwell making himself a whole person by combining a socialist's
interest in groups and categories (which seemed a little unfair to socialists) with a strong
interest in the individual.
I'll try and summarize the rest of the symposium shortly.
/M
Martha Bridegam
Rachel wrote:
> ....Different events/experiences can serve as catalytic
> trauma for different people--what to one person might be at most very
> disconcerting might to another comprise sufficient trauma to trigger
> PTSD. But my guess comes not so much from any specific event, but
> rather from the nature and concentration of detail within the
> narrative, because what I know about PTSD is mostly terrible technical
> and neurological rather than abstract and psychological.
> -R
Can you say more about what aspect of "the nature and concentration of detail" suggests PTSD to you? This
is really interesting.
/M
Don Aitken
<brid...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>Later on, I used my chance to ask a question to bring up Eileen's
>psychology training and ask if >anyone felt it had an influence
>on Orwell's work -- mainly because one of the panelists, a
>Stanford English professor named Alex Woloch, had written previously
>on the intersection of >psychology and literature. In response,
>Stansky corrected my use of the phrase "Freudian psychology," saying
>Eileen's work wasn't necessarily Freudian, and that the professor
>she worked with had gotten into trouble for falsifying data,
>including something about race. (Sounds ugly. Anyone know who it was?)
Could this be Cyril Burt? Sorry, I don't know anything about Eileen's
career, but the Burt story has been written about at length by various
people, including Stephen Jay Gould in "The Mismeasure of Man" - see
http://fp.bio.utk.edu/skeptic/reviews/Gould-Mismeaure.html for one of
the many online reviews. Of course, none of this came out until long
after the Blairs were both dead.
--
Don Aitken
Mail to the addresses given in the headers is no longer being
read. To mail me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com".
Martha Bridegam
Don Aitken wrote:
> On Sun, 07 Dec 2003 00:21:49 -0800, Martha Bridegam
> <brid...@pacbell.net> wrote:
>
> >Later on, I used my chance to ask a question to bring up Eileen's
> >psychology training and ask if >anyone felt it had an influence
> >on Orwell's work -- mainly because one of the panelists, a
> >Stanford English professor named Alex Woloch, had written previously
> >on the intersection of >psychology and literature. In response,
> >Stansky corrected my use of the phrase "Freudian psychology," saying
> >Eileen's work wasn't necessarily Freudian, and that the professor
> >she worked with had gotten into trouble for falsifying data,
> >including something about race. (Sounds ugly. Anyone know who it was?)
>
> Could this be Cyril Burt? Sorry, I don't know anything about Eileen's
> career, but the Burt story has been written about at length by various
> people, including Stephen Jay Gould in "The Mismeasure of Man" - see
> http://fp.bio.utk.edu/skeptic/reviews/Gould-Mismeaure.html for one of
> the many online reviews. Of course, none of this came out until long
> after the Blairs were both dead.
If so, ick. Hard to tell, though.
The Bowker biography, which is the one on my desk at the moment, says
Eileen had graduated Oxford and was studying for a psychology M.A. at
London University. Does that narrow it down at all?
/M
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam wrote in message
> The Bowker biography, which is the one on my desk at the moment,
says
> Eileen had graduated Oxford and was studying for a psychology M.A.
at
> London University. Does that narrow it down at all?
Burt was Prof of Psychology at University College London from
1931-1950, and the case of his dodgy (or worse) research has been
pretty widely discussed over the last twenty years. I guess he's well
within the frame.
Tom
Don Aitken
For a good summary, see
http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/burtaffair.shtml. I suppose it would be
too much to hope that "Margaret Howard" or "Jane Conway" was a
pseudonym for "Eileen O'Shaughnessy", but abgo has come up with
weirder things!
Tom Deveson
Martha Bridegam wrote (among much else -- many thanks, and for more
symposium material to come)
> In a way, though, I wonder if bits of his PTSD started earlier. If
St. Cyprian's didn't
> traumatize him, then the murder investigations he conducted as a
police officer might have been
> enough. There's that suggestion that he already had frequent
nightmares even in Burma -- the
> business about his servant who used to wake him as gently as
possible by tickling his toes (!).
Here's a sort-of relevant piece from a recent Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1098943,00.html
Tom
Alan Hogue
I have to say that, although for all I know you both may be right, this
whole question strikes me a little odd. What is it exactly that Orwell
having PTSD would explain? The fact that H to C is very detailed? Is
there a simpler explanation for this? Maybe I haven't read enough of
your old posts on the topic.
Alan H.