But both these aspects of the essay are problematic. (Aspiring writers love to collect lists of writing tips instead of actually writing.) Second, it is savagely contemptuous of politicians and what they say, an attitude that never goes out of fashion. But the enduring popularity of "Politics and the English Language" in particular derives from two things. So why do so many people still genuflect in its direction? Media invocations of Orwell's virtues increased markedly after 9/11, when it seemed to some opportunist intellectuals as though his life and oeuvre prophetically justified the pre-emptive invasion of far-off sandy places. Much of it is the kind of nonsense screed against linguistic pet hates that anyone today might compose in a green-text email to the newspapers. "Politics" is Orwell's most famous shorter work, and probably the most wildly overrated of any of his writings. This year also marks the more pleasantly round number of 110 years since his birth (on 25 June), so there is a Radio 4 series about him forthcoming, and Penguin are reissuing his works, including a standalone edition of "Politics and the English Language". On Monday it is "Orwell Day", the 63rd anniversary of his death. I t's a melancholy fate for any writer to become an eponym for all that he despised, but that is what happened to George Orwell, whose memory is routinely abused in unthinking uses of the adjective "Orwellian".
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |