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A review by sidharthvardhan
My Country Right or Left: 1940-1943 by George Orwell
5.0
The following is my list of chosen articles (in order of importance)
1. No, Not One
2. The Lion and the Unicorn
3. New Words
4. Looking Back on the Spanish War
5. The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda
6. Tolstoy and Shakespeare
7. Wells, Hitler and the World State
8. Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
9. Poetry and the Microphone
10. Review of Beggar My Neighbor by Lionel Fielden
11. The Art of Donald McGill
12. Charles Reade
13. Rudyard Kipling
14. The Rediscovery of Europe
15. Pamphlet Literature
16. Who Are the War Criminals?
The book contains author’s articles on a great variety of subjects and since these articles were independently published at first, there is a lot of repetition of repetition both within and inter the collection- for none of which author is to blame. The diaries in the end are best example of this type of redundancy.
The letters, specially smaller ones are mostly redundant – dwelling mostly on contemporary environment and government policies – and they often repeats what can also be said in other articles.
‘No, Not One’, for example is, Orwell’s argument against pacifism. The letters that subsequently followed – by his critics and his own reply to them all; establishes nothing beyond the point the author had already made.
‘Looking back at Spanish war shows how Orwell’s experience of war contributed to ideas of his book, ‘1984’.
Most of the articles concern at least one of following two themes:
(i) Language and literature (since author is a writer as well as critic)
(ii) war (Note that these were years of WWII)
Many of these themes are explored in "Animal Farm' and '1984'. In these essays, you find a sophisticated discussion of what prompted the ideas which make them legendary. The thing that ones loves about Orwell is his simpleness of the language in which he speaks - staying away, in fact questioning the jargon every now and then.
1. No, Not One
2. The Lion and the Unicorn
3. New Words
4. Looking Back on the Spanish War
5. The Frontiers of Art and Propaganda
6. Tolstoy and Shakespeare
7. Wells, Hitler and the World State
8. Review of Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
9. Poetry and the Microphone
10. Review of Beggar My Neighbor by Lionel Fielden
11. The Art of Donald McGill
12. Charles Reade
13. Rudyard Kipling
14. The Rediscovery of Europe
15. Pamphlet Literature
16. Who Are the War Criminals?
The book contains author’s articles on a great variety of subjects and since these articles were independently published at first, there is a lot of repetition of repetition both within and inter the collection- for none of which author is to blame. The diaries in the end are best example of this type of redundancy.
The letters, specially smaller ones are mostly redundant – dwelling mostly on contemporary environment and government policies – and they often repeats what can also be said in other articles.
‘No, Not One’, for example is, Orwell’s argument against pacifism. The letters that subsequently followed – by his critics and his own reply to them all; establishes nothing beyond the point the author had already made.
‘Looking back at Spanish war shows how Orwell’s experience of war contributed to ideas of his book, ‘1984’.
Most of the articles concern at least one of following two themes:
(i) Language and literature (since author is a writer as well as critic)
(ii) war (Note that these were years of WWII)
Many of these themes are explored in "Animal Farm' and '1984'. In these essays, you find a sophisticated discussion of what prompted the ideas which make them legendary. The thing that ones loves about Orwell is his simpleness of the language in which he speaks - staying away, in fact questioning the jargon every now and then.