Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation - Hardcover

Meyers, Jeffrey

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 039304792X ISBN 13: 9780393047929

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 2000

Synopsis

Drawing on the collected works of the visionary writer, as well as interviews with family and friends and unpublished materials in the Orwell Archive, the author paints a vivid portrait of the writer who penned, 1984 and other modern classics. 12,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Jeffrey Meyers, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, has written biographies of such literary greats as D. H. Lawrence, Robert Frost, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Reviews

A discerning psychological reading of a highly fraught writer's life.Meyers (Gary Cooper, 1998, etc.) sifts through Orwell's celebrated adventures, finding strands of anxiety that influenced his great works. To begin with, Orwell's father was no authority figure: a mid-level civil servant in British India, he made little money overseeing the cultivation of opium and was absent for most of his son's childhood. In grammar school and at Eton, Orwell suffered from his status as a scholarship boy, succeeding academically but socially never fitting in. Despite his antipathy toward his father and the culture of his public school, however, Orwell went on to join the Burmese Imperial Police-a sign of the grip his background had on him. Meyers argues that this conflict recurred throughout Orwell's life. He was regularly caught between a sense of duty and his own unique, and often critical, perspective of the institutions that influenced him. Meyers links this analysis with allusions to fiction and essays (like "Shooting an Elephant") to show how art took its cue from life. Tramping around France and England-dropping out of life, pitching the dilemma entirely-helped resolve this conflict enough for him to work as a schoolmaster and write his first book. Leaving everything behind and taking the big risk (i.e., fighting in the Spanish Civil War) inaugurated the blossoming of his career, however. He overcame his feelings of inadequacy and began actively developing his political theories, asserting that totalitarianism on both the Left and Right were jeopardizing democracy and individualism. The gentler side of Orwell comes out in Meyers's discussion of his family life. His rather mundane (yet sweet) courting of Eileen O'Shaughnessy, the strain WWII placed on the marriage, and their adoption of a son placed Orwell in a rare role. He seemed wide-eyed and open, a far cry from his usual self-tormented or icily perceptive self.A biography that rounds out a writer whose life has been distorted by the mythic proportions of his experiences. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Two major biographies sit on shelves dedicated to George Orwell (1903-50)DBernard Crick's Orwell: A Life (LJ 3/15/81) and Michael Shelden's Orwell: The Authorized Biography (LJ 10/1/91). Is another detailed look at Orwell really necessary? The answer is an unqualified yes. Meyers, a prolific biographer and critic, has contributed widely to the Orwell literature, and this is his first reassessment of the writer in 25 years. It is also the first important study to utilize the 20-volume The Complete Works of George Orwell (Secker & Warburg, 1998). With freshness, clarity, and compression, Meyers presents the now familiar saga of Orwell's difficult and ultimately tragic life, effectively interweaves excerpts from letters and interviews with Orwell's contemporaries (appending his account of difficulties with interviewees), and generously describes and critiques Orwell's writings, placing him firmly "in the English tradition of prophetic moralists." His writing about Orwell's persistent womanizing may surprise some readers, and his account of Orwell's activities during the Spanish Civil War is especially lucid. More readable and insightful than Crick's effort, though not as substantial as Shelden's, which is better suited to true Orwell aficionados, this will be welcomed by general readers and Orwell admirers. Highly recommended for all academic and public libraries.
-DThomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 039304792X
• ISBN 13: 9780393047929
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320