Sanctified Sinner - Orwell & Graham Greene
Mark
A review about Graham Greene's book "The Heart of the Matter" by George Orwell.
The New Yorker, July 17, 1948.
http://home.planet.nl/~boe00905/Orwell1948.html
Mark
Bonnie
"Mark" <deboer-v...@planet.nl> wrote in message
news:1bc9213d.03012...@posting.google.com...
I like this review - not for what Orwell has to say about the book but
because he reveals so much about himself - as in " And one might add that
if he were the kind of man we are told he is - that is, a man those chief
characteristic is a horror of causing pain - he would not be an officer
in a colonial police force." Some of his dry wit which I find so amusing
is in there too: "Hell is a sort of high-class night club, entry to which
is reserved for Catholics only..." and "Every novelist has his own
conventions, and just as in an E.M. Forster novel there is a strong
tendency for the characters to die suddenly without sufficient cause, so
in a Graham Greene novel there is a tendency for people to go to bed
together almost at sight and with no apparent pleasure to either party."
But GO felt a little bit bad about the negative review - he writes to
Anthony Powell (25 June 1948), "If you happen to see Graham Greene,
could you break the news to him that I have written a very bad review of
his novel [The Heart of the Matter] for the New Yorker. I couldn't do
otherwise - I thought the book awful, though of course don't put it as
crudely at that."
ßonnie
Kelwin Delaunay
Thanks.
Kelwin
Otto
twilight zone ***
What amuses me most about this review is how Orwell can give the book and Mr
Greene a thorough lashing but end by saying, " However, one must not carp
too much. It is pleasant to see Mr. Greene starting up again after so long a
silence...". I have always been amazed by Orwell's ability to shift gears in
the same piece, the nurturing friend/teacher and the relentless hammer of
criticism. Sobering, insightful and hilarious.
Otto
"Mark" <deboer-v...@planet.nl> wrote in message
news:1bc9213d.03012...@posting.google.com...
Nigee
I've posted this here ages ago but there is a para in THOTM that I
really "dig".
"In the evening the port shines for about five minutes in a pink
beauty. It is the hour of contentment, and men, having left the town
forever, sometimes on a grey, wet and cold evening in London remember
this pink shining and the glowing splendour, which, as soon as
noticed, already disappears again. Then they ask themselves, why they
had hated this coast so much, and as long as there is still a drop in
their glasses, they are longing to return..."
N
Martha Bridegam
Nigee wrote:
"Come Back to Mandalay," isn't it.
/MAB
Bonnie
"Nigee" <aspidi...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4ea39b1c.03012...@posting.google.com...
That is great writing. Believe it or not I was thinking of this very
passage recently- the setting sun was making the really ugly hills around
here look magnificent with a glorious pinky*-coral colour. I laughed to
myself thinking it would last 5 minutes like in that paragraph, but damn!
I couldn't think of where it was from. LOL, the "..they are longing to
return...." part does not actually occur here though.
ßonnie
*Orwell is amusing again in the review: "In Brighton Rock, on the other
hand, the central situation is incredible, since it presupposes that the
most brutishly stupid person can, merely by having been brought up a
Catholic, be capable of great intellectual subtlety."