homage to dystopias: why Orwell never goes out of style

    Glover, Dennis. The Last Man in Europe: A Novel. Overlook Press, 2017.   
    Lynskey, Dorian, The Ministry of Truth: the Biography of George Orwell's Nineteen Eight-four. Doubleday, 2019. (Contents: History stopped -- Utopia fever -- The world we're going down into -- Wells-world -- Radio Orwell -- The heretic -- Inconvenient facts -- Every book is a failure -- The clocks strike thirteen -- Black millennium -- So damned scared -- Orwellmania -- Oceania 2.0 -- Afterword.)   
    Orwell, George. Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative Essays. Compiled and with an introduction by George Packer. Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
    Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. With an introduction by Lionel Trilling. Harcourt Brace & Co., 1980.


“On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.” – George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." – first sentence of Nineteen Eighty-Four

     George Orwell is one of the few creative artists, even fewer writers, to have an adjective named after him. ‘Orwellian’ went into the zeitgeist long ago, thus placing him in some pretty fast company – Wagnerian, Kafkaesque, Hitchcockian, et al. An elite group indeed. Part of the explanation may be that the word rolls off the tongue in such a pleasingly mellifluous fashion. Consider for example the possible adjectivization of other creators of dystopian classics: Huxleyian, Burgessian, Dickian, Koestlerian, Bradburyesque, Macaulayesque [1]. They don’t have quite the same magic. To be fair, Wellsian is pretty good, though it comes with the unfortunate peril of being confused with ‘Wellesian’ (relating to all things Orson Welles), a term that entered the lexicon some time ago. But a pleasing aural quality and ease of pronunciation can’t be the only reasons the term has stuck. Indeed, and only appropriate given Orwell’s egalitarian worldview, the word has a utilitarian, all-purpose quality and has been used, abused and misused mightily by all sides of the ideological spectrum: like the man himself, the word ‘Orwellian’ has been appropriated by both the Left and the Right. Perhaps most revealing, and most ironic, is that there’s no real consensus on what the word actually means.
    Be that as it may, and despite the ubiquity of the word, and more so, the plethora of dystopian novels, television programs, and movies today, it all serves to underscore, three quarters of a century on, that Orwell really had no successors. Even in his day there were few who could be mentioned in the same breath. Perhaps a useful comparison is the eccentric American film critic James Agee, who was an almost exact contemporary of Orwell, and who, uncannily, also passed on at the untimely age of forty-six [2]. Like Orwell, he was something of a literary polymath, and, also like Orwell, a bit erratic and unpredictable in his views. In addition to his film critiques, Agee also wrote poetry, letters, essays, novels, short stories, journalism and a work of quasi-documentary non-fiction. Like Orwell he sometimes ventured into politics, but the emphasis was reversed: Orwell wrote mostly about politics and sometimes dabbled in film and theater reviews. Both were prolific writers, and a close reading of their work sometimes reveals a grinding it out in the salt mines quality at odds with their supposed profound utterances. Unlike Orwell, Agee’s fame doesn’t rest (mostly) on one work, and in an age when we prefer the specialist over the generalist, it’s Orwell who has endured, but not Agee who, despite being revered in cinematic circles, is mostly unknown to the general public.
    It's interesting to theorize whether the two men knew each other’s writings. There’s no evidence but considering their respective prominence it’s hard to imagine they didn’t. In any case, like Orwell, Agee’s work holds up well, and after languishing in semi-obscurity for decades, he’s enjoying a modest second wind these days. Like Orwell he always stuck to his guns and had little regard for trends or fashions. As a result he had a small if loyal following in his own lifetime. And like Orwell he was frequently prescient in his assessments [3]. Some films he championed that were initially met with indifference or disdain have over time assumed the status of classics, examples being Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux and Val Lewton’s psychological horror films. Also worthy of note is his anticipating the auteur theory that emerged full blast two decades later.
    Agee, like Orwell, was wrong sometimes, well, often really, but like Orwell, he was nonetheless unfailingly fascinating and forthright in his wrongness. But in certain respects the two men were different. The prose style in particular is a study in contrasts. Orwell’s tightly focused, not-a-word-too-many prose contrasts with Agee’s twisty-turny writing style, which has a certain charm but is often maddening to read, and even more difficult to divine exactly what he said, or meant, never more so than when he set his critical pen to the field of politics [4]. After reading an Agee paragraph, even a sentence sometimes(!), it’s unclear whether his sympathies were with the Left or the Right. And it’s impossible not to mention the stunningly self-evident fact that Orwell, for all his progressive bent, was at heart old school British in his outlook while Agee was quintessentially American. Finally, despite both men’s forward-looking visions, both were creatures of their time. Agee did most of his film criticism in the 1940s and was a product of that era, while Orwell, as alluded to above, for all his egalitarian bent, never completely shed his old boy attitudes and their attendant social and cultural biases.
    But getting back to Orwell’s more progressive strain, one of the great ironies of his opus maximus, Nineteen Eighty-Four [5], is its pervasive presence in our modern world, along with the invoking of the term ‘Orwellian,’ a kind of Big Brother-is-watching effect, with Orwell looking down from the heavens and shaking his head in disapproval, even disgust. The simple fact is that Orwelliana — not just of the literary type in the form of biographies, letters, critiques, memoirs, tributes, graphic novels, comic books, parodies and homages, but also plays, movies, operas, musicals, ballet, blogs and heaven knows what else — runs rampant in our world. Some of it is insightful, but much of it not so insightful, or, perhaps even worse, blandly hagiographical (one might even cite this essay as being an example of the latter).
    The other irony is that, befitting his real calling as a journalist, Orwell was an essayist at heart, this despite the indisputable fact that his two novels are by far his best-known, and thus most influential, works. Still, the essay was a good fit for Orwell, and he used this eminently flexible format to opine on an impressive range of subjects. Which brings us to the present collection, appropriately titled Unpleasant Facts, a combination of memoir, autobiography and social commentary. In his sprightly introduction, George Packer points out that:

   “ … Orwell, who produced a produced a staggering amount of prose over the course of a career cut short at forty-six by tuberculosis, was a working journalist, and in the two volumes of this new selection of essays you will find book, film and theater reviews, newspaper columns, and war reporting, as well as cultural commentary, political criticism, autobiographical fragments and longer personal narratives. In Orwell’s hands, they are all essays. He is always pointing to larger concerns beyond the immediate scope of his subject.”

    Unpleasant Facts then has a remarkable variety, as well as an unapologetic tendency to subjectivity, though sometimes a reading between the lines is necessary to flesh out Orwell’s real message. Nonetheless each entry reflects Orwell’s great compassion and insight, whether he describes the sordid living conditions in “Marrakech;” recollects wistfully, if wryly, his experience in “Bookshop Memories; or recounts with great pathos "Looking Back on the Spanish Civil War." My personal favorites are “Wartime Diary,” “Why I Write,” and the aforementioned “Bookshop Memories.”
    For the Orwell novice or casual reader of the novels, this stellar collection is about the perfect and painless introduction to his nonfiction works. One quibble: there’s no index, usually an inexcusable sin in such a name- and concept-rich book. However, since Orwell is the author, and the content so good, I’ll overlook the omission. Aside: both in tone and content I prefer Unpleasant Facts over All Art, thus its inclusion here as the subject of a review. Interesting that I initially thought the reverse would be the case.
    But to move on to arguably weightier material: written in 1948, published in 1949, and originally titled The Last Man in Europe, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a novel for the ages, well, at least the Twentieth Century, for which it’s probably the definitive work of fiction. A work that’s always resonant and stubbornly all too contemporary, the novel has ensconced terms like "Big Brother," "doublethink," "newspeak" and “thought police” so much they’ve become embedded in all forms of discourse, not just the political.  
    As described by Orwell, the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four is a Hadean cauldron of newspeak and doublethink in which history is rewritten at the convenience of, and always friendly to, the all-powerful ruling class, which is comprised of members of The Party. Reality and accuracy don’t exist in this thick forest of fog and mirrors, drowning in a morass of slogans and approved phraseology. The similarities to today’s world have not been lost on commentators, not least of all author Lynskey when he states in his introduction to The Ministry of Truth that: “Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, language is distorted, power is abused, and we want to know how bad things can get.”
    In any case the rigidly-controlled society of Nineteen Eighty-Four features the aforementioned Ministry of Truth that distorts reality, and with the ever-watchful eyes of Big Brother, keeps tabs on citizens' behavior. The ruling society is also engaged in perpetual wars – war is peace, peace is war – that take place in vague, far-flung frontiers. Citizens receive frequent reports, all positive, on the progress of said wars. The world presented in Nineteen Eighty-Four has particular resonance in our current culture which is plagued by the misinformation, disinformation, outright lies and propaganda that lards all forms of media these days (especially the infamous social media), in both state- and non-state controlled societies. To be fair, there is also a goodly amount of accuracy and reliability online these days, at least in ostensibly free countries, if one takes the time to look hard enough.
    As prescient as he was in the political realm, Orwell didn’t get everything right. His dismissive attitude toward gay males and the ridiculing of vegetarians seems wrong-headed, even reactionary, in light of Twenty-first Century sensibilities. Similarly, he missed the eventual primacy of the mega corporations and the totalitarianism of the dollar. And he couldn’t possibly have foreseen what would have been deemed high tech miracles in his day that today we take for granted.
   Suffice to say that such technological miracles have come with a price, literally, an Orwellian bargain if you like. And not just in the rampant, some would say inevitable, commercialization and commodification of the internet, but the sad reality that anyone online is constantly being Big Brothered by companies wanting to push their products, not unlike Nineteen Eighty-Four’s low-tech peeking into the lives of ordinary citizens. Today’s mega-companies, however, with their ever more sophisticated technologies and ready supply of cyber gurus, are far more expert at collecting data than Big Brother’s clunky machines ever were. As Thomas Pynchon wrote in the foreword to a 2003 edition, the internet is "a development that promises social control on a scale those quaint old 20th-century tyrants with their goofy moustaches could only dream about."
    In The Ministry of Truth, author Dorian Lynskey does an admirable job of discussing the origins of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the social and political culture in which Orwell resided, and the book’s publication and subsequent reception and influence in high and low culture. It’s Lynskey’s thesis that Orwell’s six months fighting in the Spanish Civil War was the defining influence on the basic philosophy of the novel, not necessarily the fighting itself but the Stalin sympathizers’ manipulation of the facts. Lynskey isn’t a great literary stylist and he jumps around a lot, and those looking for an in-depth analysis or review of the novel itself will be disappointed. As the subtitle implies this is a history of the book itself, in particular its impact, and not an exercise in literary criticism. The Ministry of Truth then is a welcome addition to the Orwell deluge: it should fascinate and delight devotees and Orwell beginners equally. Index, precis, and extensive notes, but, alas, no general bibliography.
    Fast backwards a decade or so and we get Orwell’s far less well known but no less profound, and arguably best book, Homage to Catalonia, his account of his fighting on the Loyalist (Republican) side in the Spanish Civil War in 1937. The war was a magnet for journalists, novelists, leftists, adventurers, grifters, idealists, and not least, two very interested client state benefactors, Stalin on one side and Hitler and Mussolini on the other. However, few chroniclers can claim to have actually fought in the war, as did Orwell on the Loyalist side. Seldom has the outright futility and stupidity of war been portrayed so unflinchingly and from the standpoint of the ordinary soldier. Especially unforgettable is the dismayingly detailed account of the very moment a bullet fired by a sniper pierced his neck, barely missing a major artery.
    Orwell was a member of the POUM (Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista) militia, one of several socialist groups in Spain that grew out of the Great Depression. The POUM was essentially a workers’ party, and its main focus was working conditions in Spanish factories. The POUM had little interest in the power structures in Moscow and little sympathy for the communism practiced by Joseph Stalin. Therefore it’s fascinating to read Orwell’s multi-layered discussion of the various groups and political factions fighting on the Loyalist side, not always co-operating amid their ever-tenuous relationships with their would-be masters in Moscow. It’s illuminating to read the evolution of Orwell’s initial infatuation with communism and subsequent gradual disillusionment, brought about by his observations in the war, the result being his savage lampooning in Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The 1980 edition also benefits from Lionel’s Trilling’s perceptive if trifle long-winded introduction.
    Toward the end of the book Orwell writes eloquently, even affectionately, about his experience in the war which left him with perhaps ambivalent emotions. Moved by the little kindnesses he observed and experienced while put off by the larger social and political systems present, nonetheless in the end he survived, and not with a totally jaundiced view of humanity: “This war, in which I played so ineffectual a part, has left me with memories that are mostly evil, and yet I do not wish that I had missed it. When you have had a glimpse of such a disaster as this — and however it ends the Spanish war will turn out to have been an appalling disaster, quite apart from the slaughter and physical suffering — the result is not necessarily disillusionment and cynicism. Curiously enough the whole experience has left me with not less but more belief in the decency of human beings. And I hope the account I have given is not too misleading.”
    It should be no surprise that Orwell’s life and work have inspired several fictional accounts, and one of the most recent, and best, is Dennis Glover’s novel The Last Man in Europe, which covers Orwell’s life from 1935 to his untimely death in 1950. As much as Last Man ostensibly focuses on the great man’s magnum opus, which (co)incidentally was originally called The Last Man in Europe, only about a third of the book actually covers the last years at Barnhill on the Scottish island of Jura and the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Among other things these sections include unvarnished accounts of the primitive living conditions and Orwell's progressively failing health, complete with unsettling details of treatments for his tuberculosis at hospital. Glover has a smoothly readable prose style and is an expert storyteller. It’s been said some nonfiction works read like fiction but here the order is reversed: Glover’s quasi-academic yet eminently reader-friendly narrative, along with his undoubted command of the facts, are so compelling we’re convinced that it’s a true story we’re reading and not a fictionalized account. Much as Glover draws his material generally from actual real-life events, he creatively embroiders and enhances the story in interesting and entertaining ways. Perhaps this accounts for more background and ‘telling’ in this version than snappy repartee, though I did like the dinner party with H.G. Wells and both men’s edgy back-and-forth.
    But Last Man is ultimately a serious work: the book is more a meditation of concepts and philosophy, specifically Orwell’s, than sparkling dialogue. As Glover writes so perceptively in his afterword, “ … Orwell’s nightmare future was not an imaginative work of science fiction (a genre he often criticized) but an amplification of dangerous political and intellectual trends he witnessed in his time.” Last Man in Europe will certainly appeal to Orwell buffs and especially those who have read Nineteen Eighty-Four and is a welcome addition to the vast Orwell literature.

    Further reading: Richard Rhodes, Hell and Good Company: The Spanish Civil War and the World It Made, Simon & Schuster, 2015; Amanda Vaill, Hotel Florida: Truth, Love, and Death in the Spanish Civil War, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014. 2014; James Agee, Film Writing and Selected Journalism, Library of America, distributed in the U.S. by Penguin Putnam, 2005; Rebecca Solnit, Orwell's Roses, Viking, 2021.

    1 ‘Macaulayesque’ is a term I've coined in honor of Rose Macauley, whose 1919 dystopian novel What Not is said to have anticipated, and possibly influenced, both Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World. Macauley also penned a book about the Spanish Civil War, And No Man’s Wit, which has an uncanny parallel to Orwell’s memoir Homage to Catalonia, discussed herein.
   2 One might have thought the obvious choice was Christopher Hitchens, who wrote at length on Orwell and was an accomplished essayist himself. But Hitchens has a certain sharp edge and almost self-conscious sense of irony, along with a tendency to pomposity, none of which are present in Orwell’s writing. Thus I thought Agee would be the more interesting, and more apropos, choice for comparison.
   3 And sometimes he missed the boat, his lack of interest in film noir being a prime example.
   4 As was the case with many writers of the Thirties and Forties, there’s a leftist tilt in the writings of Agee and Orwell. However, they were not always consistent or predictable in their views.
   5 Orwell invariably insisted on the full spelling of the novel’s eighteen letters as the book’s true title, not the digits ‘1984’.
  6 The two volumes Packer refers to are Unpleasant Facts and its companion volume All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays.