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rosekk 's review for:
The Road to Wigan Pier
by George Orwell
This has been my least favourite of Orwell's writings (of which I have now read quite a few).
The writing style felt much less engaging than in his other non-fiction, and I found a lot of his arguments far less persuasive.
Likewise the pace and organisation of the book is a bit off. The first part focuses on observing the living conditions of miners and other industrial workers, and reporting on them. The second part is much more ideological, focusing on Socialism's failure to grab the imagination of the general public. The lurch between the two with little to bridge the gap feels odd.
The thing that really put me off, though, was that his anti-feminism is most in evidence here. I've noticed it more and more as I've read Orwell's work, and here it's explicit. It's disappointing, because in many other ways he's very observant, and interested in the lives of others, and often able to notice the prejudices he's picked up over the years, and usually makes a conscious effort to rid himself of them. Somehow, the opinions he's inherited about women seem to have escaped that treatment.
I mostly disliked the book because it has forced me to acknowledge a glaring imperfection in the thought process behind the writing of someone I have always admired.
The writing style felt much less engaging than in his other non-fiction, and I found a lot of his arguments far less persuasive.
Likewise the pace and organisation of the book is a bit off. The first part focuses on observing the living conditions of miners and other industrial workers, and reporting on them. The second part is much more ideological, focusing on Socialism's failure to grab the imagination of the general public. The lurch between the two with little to bridge the gap feels odd.
The thing that really put me off, though, was that his anti-feminism is most in evidence here. I've noticed it more and more as I've read Orwell's work, and here it's explicit. It's disappointing, because in many other ways he's very observant, and interested in the lives of others, and often able to notice the prejudices he's picked up over the years, and usually makes a conscious effort to rid himself of them. Somehow, the opinions he's inherited about women seem to have escaped that treatment.
I mostly disliked the book because it has forced me to acknowledge a glaring imperfection in the thought process behind the writing of someone I have always admired.