Why Orwell MattersWhy Orwell Matters
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Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, , Available .Book, 2002
Current format, Book, 2002, , Available . Offered in 0 more formatsExamines Orwell's views on fascism, empire, feminism, Englishness, and the United States and debunks some of the myths surrounding the life and work of the radical political writer.
The author evaluates the life of George Orwell, taking a candid look at his revolutionary work and perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and England. 30,000 first printing.
Hitchens (liberal studies, New School for Social Research) offers a hagiography of George Orwell and his writings as part of a rather thinly disguised attempt to drape himself with Orwell's mantle. He examines Orwell's orientations towards empire, leftist and rightist contemporaries, women, the United States, and England, finding that many people have misrepresented his views over time. For Hitchens, Orwell's true importance lies in his "commitment to language as the partner of truth," demonstrating that it's not what you think that is important, but how you think. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Hitchens on Orwell:This is not a biography, but I sometimes feel as if George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity. This kind of tribute is often of the Rochefoucauldian type; suggestive of the payoff made by vice to virtue, and also of the tricks played by an uneasy conscience.What [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that "views" do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think, and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.Others on Hitchens:"I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delphino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens."-Gore Vidal"Christopher Hitchens's writing has sweep and flair. He is accurate where others are merely dutiful, unpredictable where the tendency is to go for the cliché. In short, brilliant."-Edward W. Said"May his targets cower." -Susan Sontag
In a true marriage of minds, Christopher Hitchens takes on George Orwell and the value of one of the twentieth century's great independent thinkers
The author evaluates the life of George Orwell, taking a candid look at his revolutionary work and perspectives on fascism, empire, feminism, and England. 30,000 first printing.
Hitchens (liberal studies, New School for Social Research) offers a hagiography of George Orwell and his writings as part of a rather thinly disguised attempt to drape himself with Orwell's mantle. He examines Orwell's orientations towards empire, leftist and rightist contemporaries, women, the United States, and England, finding that many people have misrepresented his views over time. For Hitchens, Orwell's true importance lies in his "commitment to language as the partner of truth," demonstrating that it's not what you think that is important, but how you think. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Hitchens on Orwell:This is not a biography, but I sometimes feel as if George Orwell requires extricating from a pile of saccharine tablets and moist hankies; an object of sickly veneration and sentimental overpraise, employed to stultify schoolchildren with his insufferable rightness and purity. This kind of tribute is often of the Rochefoucauldian type; suggestive of the payoff made by vice to virtue, and also of the tricks played by an uneasy conscience.What [Orwell] illustrates, by his commitment to language as the partner of truth, is that "views" do not really count; that it matters not what you think, but how you think, and that politics are relatively unimportant, while principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.Others on Hitchens:"I have been asked whether I wish to nominate a successor, an inheritor, a dauphin or delphino. I have decided to name Christopher Hitchens."-Gore Vidal"Christopher Hitchens's writing has sweep and flair. He is accurate where others are merely dutiful, unpredictable where the tendency is to go for the cliché. In short, brilliant."-Edward W. Said"May his targets cower." -Susan Sontag
In a true marriage of minds, Christopher Hitchens takes on George Orwell and the value of one of the twentieth century's great independent thinkers
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- New York : Basic Books, c2002.
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