Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays (Complete Works of George Orwell) (Hardcover)

~ (Author), George Packer (Editor)
Key Phrases: casual ward, Moon Under Water, Spanish War, Hong Kong (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Best known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form. The range of subjects is considerable, from Shooting an Elephant to remembrances of working in a bookshop (The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence...); from recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War to culinary oddities such as a Defence of English Cooking and A Nice Cup of Tea; to the broad-stroke masterwork of boarding-school irony, Such, Such Were the Joys. New Yorker contributor Packer (The Assassins' Gate) keenly assembles and introduces this selection, bringing into high relief Orwell's range of experience and committed humanism, showing how, as Orwell put it, to make political writing into an art. (Oct. 13)
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Product Description

George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist. From his earliest published article in 1928 to his untimely death in 1950, he produced an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived and wrote. "As soon as he began to write something," comments George Packer in his foreword to this new two-volume collection, "it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent."

Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell's development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites classics such as "Shooting an Elephant" with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell's boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these narrative essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (October 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151013616
• ISBN-13: 978-0151013616
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #113,948 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A nice sample of Orwell's essays, October 31, 2008

By	Stephen R. Laniel (Cambridge, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

George Orwell is unavoidably associated with 1984, as well he should be. And if that's what it takes to keep the man's reputation going through another generation, then by all means let that be his main claim to fame. Orwell should be almost as famous for Homage To Catalonia, his heartbreaking report on the Spanish Civil War. Like many Europeans and some Americans (Hemingway among them), Orwell was on the losing side, fighting the fascists and losing much of his idealism along the way.

Most of the essays in Facing Unpleasant Facts come after Homage to Catalonia, so they all have a realist and rather bleak view of the world. The message throughout is that we all know certain facts about the world, but that somehow people have just avoided saying them; hence the title of the collection. Elsewhere, in his famous essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell notes that the language itself has become impoverished and calcified; without someone to sandblast off the rubbish, it will be impossible to talk straightforwardly about the way the world actually is.

Orwell honors that goal in Facing Unpleasant Facts. He is the master of the common English sentence. He tells stories about British colonialism that are devastating and to the point, as in "Shooting an Elephant" -- a perfect little gem of an essay, in which Orwell recounts killing the beast just so that he won't look like a fool before his Burmese subjects. In this sort of essay, the story doesn't spin very far from Orwell himself; he lets the audience draw its own inferences about the nature of colonialism. In others -- quite a few others -- he's more impersonal but just as concise: "England, Your England" is a series of flicks of the knife directed at the British government. The acid bubbles:

And yet somehow the ruling class decayed, lost its ability, its daring, finally even its ruthlessness, until a time came when stuffed shirts like [Anthony] Eden or [Lord] Halifax could stand out as men of exceptional talent. As for [Stanley] Baldwin , one could not even dignify him with the name of stuffed shirt. He was simply a hole in the air.

Beneath it all is a visceral sadness for the suffering of mankind. Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War because he wanted to help people. In "Clink," he gets liquored up and tries to get arrested, so that he might document the viciousness of the police. (Perhaps to his dismay, they weren't all that vicious.) In "How The Poor Die," he recounts a few weeks he spent recuperating in a public hospital for the poor in France; the doctors hardly noticed that the sacks of flesh they were working on were human beings. In "Such, Such Were The Joys," we get a Roald Dahlish taste of the barbarity of British schools. Orwell sees great potential in the world, and much suffering; those further up in the hierarchy, whether deliberately or not (mostly deliberately) force those below them to suffer.

Facing Unpleasant Facts also contains some trifles not really connected to the collection's title. For instance, there's a little essay on how to make a proper English cup of tea. There are a few pages in defense of British food. There's a charming essay on the return of spring; I have to imagine that essay rescued a few London moods at the height of the Blitz. A man can't argue the virtues of socialism all the time. I think it's safe to say, though, that socialism is where Orwell's heart lay; the springtime merely paid the bills.

Facing Unpleasant Facts is a fun, quick read. Its staying power lies in understanding Orwell more than it lies in understanding Britain, or socialism, though it's valuable on those as well. It's most valuable to budding essayists, who want to study at the feet of a master.

2 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Orwell's Narrative Essays, December 21, 2008

By	Paul J. Morris II "Skip" (Kansas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

You have to like Orwell quite a bit to buy his non-fiction work. I do like him quite a bit, and I happen to be writing a bunch of creative non-fiction essays about my own life growing up in America. So I purchased the volume that contains his narrative essays to see how he makes his own personal life universal.

I've read most everything he's written. My favorite fictional work is his first: _Burmese Days_. It's rather bleak, and so are some of his essays. "Shooting an Elephant" may be one of the best essays ever written about the effects of colonialism on the colonizers. I highly suggest it as bedside reading for any budding neo-conservative.

Not all of the essays in this volume are great, but they give you a nice glimpse into the mind of a true English leftie. Orwell lived a full but short life, and this book chronicles how he lived what he wrote--from living in "spikes" (what we would call homeless shelters) to fighting in the Spanish Civil War. I don't think Packer needed to put his war-time diary in the the book--a section that I basically perused. And I could care less about how Orwell likes his tea or his defense of English cooking. But Orwell lovers won't be disappointed with this volume.

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A blend of autobiography, memoir and social observation, November 16, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

George Orwell was an essayist before all, producing many short nonfiction works on the events of his times. This reveals his narrative essay skills, packing in a blend of autobiography, memoir and social observation in an outstanding collection. Many different types of collections will want this, from college-level libraries strong in Orwell studies to libraries with broad overall strengths in essays and literature.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch