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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
Orwell is who I want to be. I want to be like Orwell. That's my biggest takeaway. When I started this three book tour de Orwell, I didn't really know what to expect. Sorry for the page and a half review. This is the one of the most important books people don't read.
Both Homage and Down and Out both stuck to a formula of plain-speaking the mundanity of the reality of the poor and their hygiene and habits, or the bleakness of life on the front in Spain fighting against the Fascists. From time to time Orwell opines or inserts a chapter of commentary on his observations. It's almost like a Science report in that he attempts to keep his bias out of his story-telling, but then comes along to smack you with his editorial anyway. I loved those chapters of his the best, because his commentary is smart, concise, and wickedly penetrative.
The Road to Wigan Pier takes the above effect to the extreme. The first half of the book describes the squalid conditions of life as a coal miner in the 1930's, painting a life so bleak and dark that I really have to consider ever having complained about my own work/life balance. He also paints in detail the sparse and grimey home lives of those living in unemployment. The descriptions make you want not take up food for a bit. It's an effect a lot of Orwell's writing has on you. You kind of sit and look at your food and knives and forks and avocados and milk in cartons and say, "God fucking bless America".
But there was very little commentary, and I didn't really know what he was getting at, beyond being a clinical reporter. Then Part II hits, and Orwell just goes on this EPIC analysis of Socialism and Fascism, and their prospective proponents and opponents, and how each views the other. It's quite an under-taking that shows a consciousness that I can't imagine a progressive today entertaining, much less attempting to write.
He torches the left and ideologues in all of the ways that they deserve to be torched, and he does so to better them, so that they can more capably confront their opposition. Today the left even calls out the idea of 'Devil's Advocacy'. It's either hive-mind agreement, or you're excised from the group.
Orwell weighs Socialism against Technology and Machines, and notes that the ideology requires technology. He makes an observation that Socialism could only have arisen from an Industrial age, and I think that's a valid and true point that modern Progressives don't acknowledge enough. Their entire ideology thrives ONLY in the system that they detest. It was incapable of growth or competition at any other time in history.
This and a handful of other observations led me to think about Orwell's wizardry. I don't know if Orwell was a magician, but you get this sense that he had resolved duality, and understood the true natural laws. A quote of his, "The truth is that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or difficulty; but the tendency of mechanical progress is to eliminate disaster, pain and difficulty." After that thought, he follows up with this interchange between Work and Play being the same thing viewed differently. He illustrates time and time again that he's able to resolve opposites, something most people aren't capable of.
Orwell gets a lot wrong in this book, but he gets a lot right as well. "It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party." That could have been read aloud at any time in the last five years without a sense that it's source was a century earlier.
Orwell fully admits that he was an oppressor who committed grave sins, and then spent the rest of his life attempting to absolve himself of those sins. This whole three-book tour came about as a way for him to attempt to ameliorate his previous sins. So there's a handful of interesting observations within that I think I see a lot of my peers today working through.
"I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. I suppose that sounds exaggerated; but if you do for five years at a job that you thoroughly disapprove of, you will probably feel the same. I had reduced everything to the simple theory that the oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong: a mistaken theory, but the natural result of being one of the oppressors yourself."
This is one of those books that should be read more than it is, specifically in places where ideology abounds, as a self-check. We need writers like Orwell who are capable of seeing the entire raging tempest, and showing people where the light is within it. We need people willing to call out our intellectual agreements and show us where they may alienate others. He was a bridge builder, and so should we all be.
Both Homage and Down and Out both stuck to a formula of plain-speaking the mundanity of the reality of the poor and their hygiene and habits, or the bleakness of life on the front in Spain fighting against the Fascists. From time to time Orwell opines or inserts a chapter of commentary on his observations. It's almost like a Science report in that he attempts to keep his bias out of his story-telling, but then comes along to smack you with his editorial anyway. I loved those chapters of his the best, because his commentary is smart, concise, and wickedly penetrative.
The Road to Wigan Pier takes the above effect to the extreme. The first half of the book describes the squalid conditions of life as a coal miner in the 1930's, painting a life so bleak and dark that I really have to consider ever having complained about my own work/life balance. He also paints in detail the sparse and grimey home lives of those living in unemployment. The descriptions make you want not take up food for a bit. It's an effect a lot of Orwell's writing has on you. You kind of sit and look at your food and knives and forks and avocados and milk in cartons and say, "God fucking bless America".
But there was very little commentary, and I didn't really know what he was getting at, beyond being a clinical reporter. Then Part II hits, and Orwell just goes on this EPIC analysis of Socialism and Fascism, and their prospective proponents and opponents, and how each views the other. It's quite an under-taking that shows a consciousness that I can't imagine a progressive today entertaining, much less attempting to write.
He torches the left and ideologues in all of the ways that they deserve to be torched, and he does so to better them, so that they can more capably confront their opposition. Today the left even calls out the idea of 'Devil's Advocacy'. It's either hive-mind agreement, or you're excised from the group.
Orwell weighs Socialism against Technology and Machines, and notes that the ideology requires technology. He makes an observation that Socialism could only have arisen from an Industrial age, and I think that's a valid and true point that modern Progressives don't acknowledge enough. Their entire ideology thrives ONLY in the system that they detest. It was incapable of growth or competition at any other time in history.
This and a handful of other observations led me to think about Orwell's wizardry. I don't know if Orwell was a magician, but you get this sense that he had resolved duality, and understood the true natural laws. A quote of his, "The truth is that many of the qualities we admire in human beings can only function in opposition to some kind of disaster, pain or difficulty; but the tendency of mechanical progress is to eliminate disaster, pain and difficulty." After that thought, he follows up with this interchange between Work and Play being the same thing viewed differently. He illustrates time and time again that he's able to resolve opposites, something most people aren't capable of.
Orwell gets a lot wrong in this book, but he gets a lot right as well. "It is quite easy to imagine a middle class crushed down to the worst depths of poverty and still remaining bitterly anti-working class in sentiment; this being, of course, a ready-made Fascist Party." That could have been read aloud at any time in the last five years without a sense that it's source was a century earlier.
Orwell fully admits that he was an oppressor who committed grave sins, and then spent the rest of his life attempting to absolve himself of those sins. This whole three-book tour came about as a way for him to attempt to ameliorate his previous sins. So there's a handful of interesting observations within that I think I see a lot of my peers today working through.
"I was conscious of an immense weight of guilt that I had got to expiate. I suppose that sounds exaggerated; but if you do for five years at a job that you thoroughly disapprove of, you will probably feel the same. I had reduced everything to the simple theory that the oppressed are always right and the oppressors are always wrong: a mistaken theory, but the natural result of being one of the oppressors yourself."
This is one of those books that should be read more than it is, specifically in places where ideology abounds, as a self-check. We need writers like Orwell who are capable of seeing the entire raging tempest, and showing people where the light is within it. We need people willing to call out our intellectual agreements and show us where they may alienate others. He was a bridge builder, and so should we all be.
Orwell's review of conditions in England in the 30s and his critique of how socialists we're failing to reach the middle and working classes. Interesting and packed with wit. But I'm still no sold on socialism.
challenging
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
This was a difficult book to get through, though not one that people should avoid. Heavy insight as to what life was like for many people back then.
A hard read, the contents are good but it feels like I read the longest opinion piece in the world at times.
dark
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Almost unbelievable how the problems of the socialist movement back then are so similar to those of today. I could even relate to him roasting hippies and so on. Absolutely worth reading!
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced