The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage [Paperback]

George Orwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 8, 1961

Here is Orwell’s work in all its remarkable range and variety. The selections in this anthology show how Orwell developed as writer and as thinker; inevitably, too, they reflect and illuminate the history of the time of troubles in which he lived and worked. “A magnificent tribute to the probity, consistency and insight of Orwell’s topical writings” (Alfred Kazin). Introduction by Richard H. Rovere.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

GEORGE ORWELL (1903-1950) was born in India and served with the Imperial Police in Burma before joining the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Orwell was the author of six novels as well as numerous essays and nonfiction works.

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books (March 8, 1961)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156701766
• ISBN-13: 978-0156701761
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #60,369 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Homage to Orwell, August 6, 2006

By 

Joseph Martin "pomonomo2003" (NJ, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage (Paperback)

The honesty and realism of Orwell never ceases to amaze. He opens 'Shooting an Elephant', the first story in this collection, by telling us that he was hated by many people. He will spend the rest of the essay showing us why. The pointless death of an animal no longer harmful becomes the legal murder we witness in 'A Hanging'. In both cases we see people becoming their jobs, counting doing one's duty more important than being human.

He sees "the dirty work of Empire at close quarters" and knows that " imperialism is an evil thing" but continues to do his duty as both imperialist and colonist would see it. The amazing thing is that he is not alone in this. In "A Hanging" the hangman is a convict and after the deed is done we see both Europeans and natives laughing and drinking together. In "Shooting an Elephant" he is stuck between "hatred of the empire" and "rage against the evil-spirited little beasts" that made his job impossible. But again, we witness crowds of natives expecting him to be a Sahib.

Orwell's stories show us the demoralizing duties, the pompous gravitas of Imperialism. It dehumanizes both rulers and ruled, turning them into the role they play rather than allowing them to become who they might have been. Both fortunately and unfortunately, he also knows that, "the British Empire is dying [...] it is a great deal better than the younger Empires that are going to supplant it."

This collection is pure Orwell. His unsentimental love of ordinary people, coupled with the easy, natural, sympathetic description of complex characters, relationships and motivations, reveal Orwell as a man who was genuinely at home with ordinary people. Only he could write movingly of how imperialism traps (freezes!) both rulers and ruled into roles and duties, of the daily humiliations of colonialism, and the little lies that keep the system going, and still show the oppressors as human beings. Even people we might miss. The only one I have ever read who comes close is Camus on Algeria.

In '1984' (only excerpted in this collection), a prophesy of what the Empires destined to replace the British empire could become, it was his ear for the corruption of language by permanent war that struck me, when I first read it well over three decades ago, as the perfect lens for viewing the lies spoken daily by both sides during the Vietnam War. Also, Orwell's insight into the political necessity of continual crises to keep the people both frightened and grateful for protection explained rather nicely how the communists (or Islamic Fundamentalists today) could work with us (and we with them) whenever it was politically convenient to do so.

In the collection of literary pieces what surprises is that a man of the left like Orwell, who was always a socialist, could appreciate authors as patriotic and conservative as Dickens and Kipling. We should always measure men by whether they can appreciate the strengths of their enemies. To my mind it is the height of civility in our twisted world to be able to admire an enemy whom someday you may have to kill. We need to remember that there always is, or at least always should be, something beyond (and above) politics.

But much of Orwell's posthumous fame comes from his writing on communism. As well it should, he was among the very few famous intellectuals (Camus and Koestler also come to mind) who forthrightly criticized the Soviet dictatorship. But he always remained a man of the left. It was during the cold war that this admirer of decency, virtue, and honesty; to say nothing of socialism, was dishonestly dragooned into being a cold warrior by, among others, Commentary magazine. They went so far as to call him a neo-conservative, twenty-five years before the fact!

They should learn how to read. And `Homage to Catalonia', also excerpted in this collection, is an excellent place to start. Yes, the critique of totalitarian communism is there, perhaps expressed better than anywhere else. Here he is interacting directly with the type of Monster dimly limned in 1984. He didn't need to read about the communist's mania to dominate every coalition they enter into, he lived through it. He saw in Barcelona the destruction of a genuine working class movement by the disgraceful collusion of liberals and communists.

When Franco led much of the Spanish army into revolt it was the workers who spontaneously resisted. They formed workers' committees to run the factories and workers' militias to win the war. In Catalonia, the anarchists, the radical wing of the worker's movement, were stronger than the socialist parties. In Madrid, a loose governing coalition of liberal and socialist parties was attempting to win the war not only on the battlefield but in the court of world opinion. In plain English, this meant do not appear too radical. You see, socialism worried liberal, capitalist nations like England and France; but anarchism scared them to death.

As time went on the government drifted to the right. Orwell was not shocked by this. He understood the diplomatic necessities as well as anyone. What did surprise him was that this rightward drift coincided with ever strengthening ties with the Soviet Union. You see, all the Soviets cared about was the defense of the Soviet Union, and to them this meant the politics of the Popular Front. In the thirties this meant an alliance between everyone (communists, liberals, conservatives) against Hitler and Fascism. An alliance at any cost. So farewell workers control, workers' councils, and workers' militias; this would be just another bourgeois war.

And that's what shocked him. Even though Orwell initially favored this policy, as did most of the European Left, he changed his mind when he saw it in action. He too had believed that the most important thing was to win the war. But the suppression of independent socialists like the (Troskyite) P.O.U.M., the gradual repression of the anarchists, and the lies in the international press about all this turned him around.

And isn't that vintage Orwell? This man of honesty and integrity, who would report exactly what happened, even when it went against what he believed or wanted. This is why Chomsky called 'Homage to Catalonia' the best book on the Spanish Civil War. It would have been an honor to have George Orwell as a friend, an ally, - or an enemy. Men like this illuminate our world.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Moveable Feast, May 7, 2008

By 

M. G Watson "Miles Watson" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage (Paperback)

The blurb on the back of the book calls THE GEORGE ORWELL READER "a feast of reading for the thinking person." It is. For years this book was virtually my Bible, occupying a permenent place on the nightstand and accompanying me on every long trip, until it assumed its present, scribbled on, food-stained, dog-eared appearance.

Orwell has been called "the conscience of his generation", but more than that, he possessed an intellectual honesty which is utterly extinct among today's political writers - all of them, Left and Right, are either blinkered, ivory-tower idealogues, rabble-rousing demogogues or line-toeing party hacks. Whether you agree with Orwell's own political views (often, I don't) is immaterial; his ability divine and expose hidden motives, to sniff out hypocrisy, and to call a spade a spade and then use it to slice open those who refused to do so, are simply unmatched. Seldom if ever since Johnathan Swift has anyone written with such an utter disregard for tact, diplomacity, or political orthodoxy. A die-hard Socialist who was shot fighting with a quasi-Marxist militia during the Spanish Civil War, Orwell actually spent at least three-quarters of his intellectual life scourging and ridiculing Leftism and Leftists (those who "got their crockery from Paris and their political opinions from Moscow"), not out of self-sabotage, but because he hated cant, lying and cruelty and found a surplus of these traits on his own side of the isle.

The READER combines all three types of Orwell's work, including a sampling of some of his best essays and reportage ("Shooting An Elephant", "Second Thoughts on James Burnham", "Politics and the English Language", "Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool", etc.), and lengthly excerpts from his novels BURMESE DAYS, A CLERGYMAN'S DAUGHTER, COMING UP FOR AIR, KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING, and 1984, his nonfiction works THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER, DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON and HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, and the seminal essay "The Lion and the Unicorn." For Orwell fans, it's a sort-of "greatest hits" album, and for strangers to his work, it works a terrific primer, providing a very diverse and wide-ranging sample of his thoughts.

There will probably never be another Orwell: humanity has marched too far down the road of blind party loyalty, one-issue voting and material selfishness to produce one. But thanks to books like this, there is no need for a replacement. Whenever we feel ourselves getting too complacent, too stupid or too hypocrtical, Georgie boy and his trusty literary spade will be there to stab us in the arse.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Introduction to Orwell. But buy the originals., March 26, 2008

By 

J. Libson "jlibson" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Orwell Reader: Fiction, Essays, and Reportage (Paperback)

This book has been my introduction to Orwell. He is an amazing writer and thinker. Despite the fact that my politics diverge considerably from his (I consider myself an avid capitalist) I have so much respect for his clarity of thought and his unparalleled skill as a writer.

That said.

I would rather buy the originals than these excerpts. Which is what I am going to do now. :)