Oh, Alison, I thought you were talking to me :) and didn't realize these criticisms
were meant for the straw heads of the Guardian and European Digest urls or
shock horror biographers. If your point then is that in these works

There's always this
>undercurrent of expectation that a writer should be above whatever frailty
>they've fallen prey to,

perhaps that's so. I don't read biographies, of the shock horror variety or
otherwise, and this is so woefully the case that even those few bits of bio in your
mail (Brecht was a bastard? Saussure killed his wife?) was news to me. I
did know this bit about Larkin from reading the url posted the other day and
have some knowledge of the Heidigger controversy from reading at the time,
but that seems more complicated.  I went to google for  Muller's ideas
concerning Saussure but had little luck, though it's interesting that Saussure's
'biographies' online focus entirely on his work as a linguist and his book, there
is no bio in his biography, which must be due to that curious cultural trait
toward secrecy and a carefully guarded reservation of the treasure and the troll
to oneself of the Swiss, a trait I recognize as my father was Swiss. In
Switzerland, perhaps one has no biography, a couple of dates like
bookends at either end?

 And even with the question
>of Saussure: shouldn't any criticism of the work come from the work first?
>Or is all writing to be judged in the shadow of whatever perceived
>"personality" that made it?

Yes, I think the criticism of the work should originate in response to the work,
but I wasn't arguing for a rereading of Orwell's work or that his works be
judged in the shadow of this action of his delivering a list of names to the
government. All of my preoccupation was with that action.

My own take on this is that if anything the personality is the shadow of the
work,  Orwell's consciousness in writing the Wodehouse essay is larger and
more illuminating than in his writing of a list of names,  which seems in
comparison petty and personal. Any number of writers are shown up  in their
person by their work; for the work may be full of illuminations and complexities
and depths and generosities that the person sweating away at his or her desk is
a poor shadow of, mono to the work's stereo. I'm not surprised that writers
fall prey to their various frailities, for in this they are like everyone, but in their
work they may be unlike anyone. And while there's all sorts of reasons driving
shock horror biographies, I'd guess, including perhaps principally, writing
something that makes a lot of money, I think this 'expectation that writers
should be above' may be due to the contrast; admiring and loving the
shining treasure of the work, one is shocked by the troll who follows after, and
some in seeing the troll will perhaps become more aware of the chunks of coal
or lead slipped into the treasure. I see this though as human a trait or frailty as
the frailty that a writer may fall prey to, and would guess part of the interest is
just that, the "human interest" angle, seeing what others do. And so while I'd
argue for reading the work, and not by the dim light of the personality, I don't
expect it's an argument that will be successful, since in my view, people write
and publish and read shock biographies from certain innate human
predilections and interests.

You can't argue public interest (I
>mean technically, as a broadsheet journalist might) in the same way at all.
>What's the point of condemning Orwell's personal morality, I wonder? It can
>only be in order to call into question his writing, since nothing else about
>him can matter to us

Well, I think public interest can be argued concerning Orwell's delivering a list of
names to the government. It's the same sort of secret memo, undisclosed file,
private meetings, shadowy hallways, gathering information that may affect
many, that occurs in government all the time, and seems to me the sort of thing
a journalist would investigate, if it were considered important enough in
comparison to other matters, to warrant the time. I don't consider giving lists to
the government to be a private act, an issue merely of personal morality, even
though it may be undisclosed and topsecret, it seems to me political and public.

And I don't think it's about condemning Orwell's "personal morality," not
for me anyway, or I wouldn't have said I found it troubling. It's fairly easy, an
open and shut case, to condemn someone else's personal morality if that's what
one is about.  Troubling, however, means just that, that there are certain
questions which question me, in terms of this action, particularly since I view it
as public and political, in terms of these particular times.

And  Mark's url which was most illuminating was most helpful, making it more
possible for me anyway to see into this particular action, to find in its
troublingness a more human, humane sense of my own troublingnesses, an odd
state of being under intense stress (as Ken noted so passionately in his
questions)  fear (the run and duck in this case from death), someone saying an
ambiguous dearest, endless anxiety over what one is doing, all those erasures
and crossing out, I understand it, and I had to laugh too, especially at Orwell's
own remark "that every saint is guilty until proven innocent," so tres bien,

best,

Rebecca

---- Original message ----
>Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 17:19:41 +1100
>From: Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: orwell
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Rebecca
>
>I wasn't speaking of what you were saying, but responding to the kind of
>assumptions underneath the articles you pointed to.  There's always this
>undercurrent of expectation that a writer should be above whatever frailty
>they've fallen prey to.  Same with the shock horror biographies that said
>Brecht was a bastard, or the revelations about Larkin, or Saussure's murder
>of his wife, or Heidegger's collaboration with the Nazis.  I would say
>Orwell's action is quite deducible from things he said; it's not inscrutable
>or mystifying.  That's true of most of the rest, I think, except possibly
>Saussure, although Heiner Muller maintains that this too is connected with
>his philosophy (I don't know enough to comment).  And even with the question
>of Saussure: shouldn't any criticism of the work come from the work first?
>Or is all writing to be judged in the shadow of whatever perceived
>"personality" that made it?
>
>A writer isn't a public figure in the same way a politician is: for one
>thing, writers aren't running the country. (Ok, there are writer
>politicians, but they're politicians).  You can't argue public interest (I
>mean technically, as a broadsheet journalist might) in the same way at all.
>What's the point of condemning Orwell's personal morality, I wonder? It can
>only be in order to call into question his writing, since nothing else about
>him can matter to us. He's dead, and none of us know all  the facts anyway.
>But we can talk about what he wrote, and find plenty to question there.
>
>Best
>
>A
>
>
>
>Alison Croggon
>
>Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
>Editor, Masthead:  http://masthead.net.au
>Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com