1300 pages of Orwell

Found a neat book at the library: the Everyman’s Libary edition of Essays by George Orwell. Over 1300 pages… it took awhile. Then I read it again, taking notes this time. Orwell is one of my favorite writers– every couple of years I re-read A Collection of Essays, a mere 300-page book. If you have a moderate interest in Orwell, read that one– every essay is good. It’s a little odd that reading Orwell is so relaxing. I expect he’d be surprised himself… he was used to everyone disagreeing with him, but beyond that, isn’t a political writer supposed to be something of a gadfly? The first thing is… he was a gadfly, but in almost everything he was a gadfly about in 1935-49, he was right. In one essay he says everything he writes is “against totalitarianism and *for democratic socialism”. Both parts of that look good today. I think the atmosphere of those times, in Britain and Europe, is not grasped or remembered. We’re used to what seems like the eternal dominance of capitalism. But in…

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