On 24/1/05 8:43 AM, "Rebecca Seiferle" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> But Orwell is somewhat
> troubling too, or at any rate has been to me since I read these particular
> accounts, one from an old issue of the Guardian and another from European
> Digest.
I admire Orwell, mainly because I think he's a painfully honest and often
extremely brave writer, always thoughtful and often prescient (he's very
interesting to read right now). That doesn't mean that I don't read some of
his essays with my eyebrows raised. He has a huge blind spot about gender,
for example. His thoughts on patriotism, and his attempts to disentangle
patriotism from nationalism (he claims they are different things) are also
rather muddy; he never wholly escaped his English public school/civil
service indoctrination, and sometimes the traditional British officer jumps
into his thinking with startling clarity. He also hated English communists
and thought their allegiance to Russia little short of treacherous. His
offer to provide a blacklist is, I'm afraid, totally consistent with those
thoughts in his essays, and so doesn't surprise me.
Best
A
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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