Customer Reviews

Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Jeffrey Meyers set to work on his authoritative biography of George Orwell with the advantage of an engaging writing style and the opportunity to right mistakes by other historians. Meyers, a thorough and conscientious researcher, finished his 400-page book at a later stage of the game, well after names such as Peter Stansky, William Abrahams, Bernard Crick, and Michael Shelden published their efforts with varying results.

Anyone interested in writers' lives should familiarize himself with Meyers, whose publishing history includes books on Hemingway, D. H. Lawrence, Conrad, Poe, Fitzgerald, and Katherine Mansfield. Fusing thorough research with lucid prose, Meyers makes biography stimulating and entertaining; his work is of the page-turner variety that few biographers manage to achieve. And in the case of Meyers, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, this achievement seems nearly without effort.

Not that Meyers has to go out of his way in making 'Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation' an exciting book. Anyone in search of an interesting person to read about cannot go wrong with Orwell, the Englishman whose journalism and novels drastically altered the world political scene for all times. Meyers's biography is a superbly-handled account of Orwell from birth to death (1903-1950), describing his social life, career path, political commitments, and eccentricities in rich detail.

Meyers, who has researched Orwell at various points in his career, is the first biographer to make use of Peter Davison's 'Complete Works,' a twenty-volume, 8,500-page collection of Orwell's novels, essays, letters, diaries, and miscellaneous papers. Until recently, biographers faced a repression of key documents by Orwell's surviving wife Sonia Brownell or an inability to locate their whereabouts. With Orwell's truly 'collected' works now published and his unpublished holdings at University College, London, now freely accessible, Meyers's interests in Orwell have an ideal time to flourish.

The main text of 'Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation' is divided into seventeen chapters, each reflecting a phase of Orwell's social development. His public and private life are equally considered, drawing from primary sources and interviews with those who knew him, including David Astor, Jacintha Buddicom, Susan Watson, Anne Popham Bell, and his adoptive son Richard. Meyers tracks Orwell's life in strictly chronological order, allowing us to follow his progression from Eton scholar to Burmese policeman to London pseudo-tramp to ill-fated enlistee in the Spanish Civil War, a conflict that solidified his position against Communism.

Meyers describes Eric Arthur Blair - he became 'George Orwell' upon publication of his first novel - as the product of a rigid, middle-class upbringing. Eric's father Richard Blair was a minor official in the Indian Opium Police for his entire working life; Eric and his two sisters were raised by mother Ida Limouzin Blair, a woman 18 years Richard's junior, on her own in England. While Eric hardly knew his father until young adulthood, he received an upright education at the dreary St. Cyprian's School in Sussex and renowned Eton College.

Eric's childhood is presented as one of guilt and repression, feelings that the George Orwell of 'Down and Out in Paris and London' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' constantly struggled against and looked to purge. Meyers uses recollections by Orwell's intimates, published writings, diaries, and letters to prove that he fought a constant war against his childhood, always sympathizing with the underprivileged classes but never able to fully shed his elitist background. The result was a writer firmly dedicated to social justice and journalistic integrity, though at times it was laughably overblown.

Illness also figures heavily in Orwell's life, especially the years 1947-50 when he alternated between home and hospital with worsening tuberculosis. Despite having TB for nearly his entire forty-seven years, Orwell did little to reduce its symptoms, smoking heavily and engulfing himself in the worst living conditions possible. For four years, Orwell and his first wife Eileen lived at The Stores, a dilapidated cottage without electricity or adequate heating in Wallington, Hertfordshire; following Eileen's death in 1945, Orwell lived for extended stretches on Jura, an undeveloped island 16 miles off the west coast of Scotland where the bulk of 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' was written. Besides a desire to live simply and privately, Orwell also exhibited a self-abasing, masochistic streak through his crude homes and neglect of his well-being.

This embrace of poverty largely inspired the writings for which Orwell is known today. Orwell had an uncanny knowledge of socioeconomic conditions around the globe, helped greatly by first-hand experiences with the poor, distant travels, a brief stint as commentator for BBC Radio, and mastery of language. An author of nine novels and truckloads of essays, Orwell's determination to separate fact from propaganda has made him a revered figure throughout the literary world; in his own time, he won support from many literary names while alienating plenty of others who chose to toe political lines.

To the biographer's credit, Meyers does not fall into idol-worship that has become rather common in describing Orwell. Meyers explains that Orwell was a remarkable man but not a 'saint,' as V. S. Pritchett once called him (he also called Orwell the 'wintry conscience' of Meyers's subtitle). The usually kind writer also had a sadistic bend, confessing, for example, to fairly rough treatment of the Burmese he was policing and cutting open a jackdaw that he and a friend killed at Eton. It appears that Orwell was much a lady's man, having dawdled with Burmese prostitutes and enjoyed post-marital excursions with female friends. He disrespected Eileen during these affairs (though she appears to have been just as unfaithful) and talked her into wasting a university education on tending animals and living in squalor.

Still, the pervading idea of Orwell is a warmhearted, though remote, figure who tried to separate his public life from what was private. Besides his cozy circle of friends like Arthur Koestler, Malcolm Muggeridge, David Astor, and Cyril Connolly, he also befriended people you would never have expected him to - T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and to an extent, P. G. Wodehouse. His legacy as a writer endures through an unwavering commitment to socialism and a fiery opposition to totalitarianism that became the prime subject of 'Animal Farm' and 'Nineteen Eighty-Four.'

If there is a flaw to be pointed out in Meyers's book, it is the noticeable lack of photographs. Since photos of Orwell and his intimates have been constantly printed and seen by the reading public, Meyers has limited this section to 32 images, several of which had never been committed to print. Unfortunately, there are moments in the text when Meyers describes well-known photos of Orwell that can be found in other books but not in his own. I am not sure if Meyers chose to do this because of space considerations or issues of copyright, but it was frustrating to rely on memory. The text also feels slightly weighted towards Orwell's later years, moving at a rather brisk pace through his childhood and adolescence. So neatly does Meyers bring the life story to a close, however, that it's barely noticeable.

Orwell died sadly, but he realized fame in his own time and his presence in world literature was bound to increase. He certainly ranks as one of the greatest political commentators in the English language and may very well rank as the greatest journalist of the modern era. While far from an ideal man, Orwell felt strongly enough about his convictions to make them the guiding spirit of his work. Meyers always brings this element of Orwell to the fore, galvanized by his superb investigation and engrossing style. The book, published by W. W. Norton, is a must-buy for studiers of twentieth-century English literature and those with political or journalistic interests.

George Orwell was a brooding intellectual who was very uncomfortable
with the social brutality and political treachery and the suffocating
class system of his birth. Through his writings he forged a new social
consciousness that has elevated modern intellectual thought. He warned
the world about the looming political totalitarianism (aka: Big Brother).
Jeffrey Myers has dissected the complex life of this intellectual giant
whose visionary writings gave us the great anti-utopias of the 20th
century literature. George Orwell is an intellectual cult hero and a
fierce critic of all the political jack boots in our world.