GEORGE ORWELL AND THE AMERICAN CHARACTER:

...These papers featended, we were earlier told, to pro- Gordon has a grievance against "the ture continuous serials about boys' pubvide a record of history...

...Historians confronting recalcitrants into line, force abroad The Collected Essays contain four- present realities and asked to account to whip lesser breeds into line...

...in the dozen years before his death in the advertising agency where "most boys who are "clean-living, keep in early in 1950...

...and body...

...tional disease is power...

...Five years later, Orwell did a simi- volving an American army deserter and The pair run over a girl on a bicycle, lar then-and-now contrast between two a young English girl...

...The money...

...In one up for admiration, "taking their cooking from France and of the wartime letters he wrote for their politics from Russia...

...A pa- The murderer should be a little significantly, was committed by an man of the professional class-a triot as well as a gentleman, on the American and an English girl who has dentist or a solicitor, say-living occasion of Victoria's Diamond Jubilee, become partly americanized...

...His essay "Raffles with pleasurable rememberings of the the dog races...

...He finished Animal Farm in 1943...

...its seedy wastes police systems, dictatorial methods, the Remain to speak of half of what we know...

...murthe change in popular attitude that this lish Murder," starts out mildly enough der a cab driver and spend his £ 8 at probably implies...

...That's too easy, and already overshadowed by In an early novel, Keep the Aspi- tween the ages of twelve and eighteen, other headlines...

...and no gentlemen...

...His insights and of the men were the hard-boiled, Amer- hard training, wash behind their ears, crotchets, in prose like a windowpane, icanized, go-getting type to whom never hit below the belt...

...slow The brutalities, the sadisms and per- To change its colors, still at last it breaks versions of Yank mags, American Its pulpy round: its seeds speak that we grow...

...given a lift, taking her coat and handdifference in moral atmosphere and His essay, "The Decline of the Eng- bag, throwing her into the river...

...No year-old English girl he picked up in Americans treated the place like oc12 April 1974: 136 cupied territory, an "old-fashioned, the package, admired the product, and changes reflected in Mr...

...As for the winds from the writing...

...Army truck...

...papers whose appeal is to boys be- the English school child or working Commonweal: 135 boy...

...I don't know American underworld," this book con- how far this may be the normal tains eight murders, an unassessable These classic murders had style...

...In one of his letters to secretary or the wife of a rival cesspool...

...but if the intellectuals bought Ignorance, and teach us what we are...

...What dis- From ignorance, and thereby learn to give...

...Commonweal: 137...

...the process of erasing and rerecord- sure that the fretful young bookstore First, those popular in his own childing perhaps as many as nine separate clerk, Gordon Comstock, speaks for hood, still published, though slipping, and contiguous segments" of a tape in- his author, but it is likely that he does...

...Consider, among the great a rogue as the gangsters...

...In the lectuals he knew were too poor to af- of brilliantly colored adverts urging you Yank Mags (Fight Stories, Action ford French cooking, and were more to spend your money on trash...

...The Eng- the murder that filled the Sunday sup- children...

...Stories, etc...

...Again and again he of beastliness...

...More- expression of the American counnumber of casual killings, innumerable over, a man could feel a kind of retenance, as against the English beatings, tortures, rapes...

...The anyone and who avoids violence, "pre- most talked about murder of the year, ferring to carry on unarmed...

...a world in which older forms of domi- In ways foreseen yet unforeseen, we live nation give way to rule by self-per- From day to day surprised by what we know petuating elites: managers, technicians, We know, but did not know at all: we grow bureaucrats, intellectuals...

...futurist plotting the course of history references to recent writings of Senator (he predicted that Hitler would win Fulbright (The Crippled Giant), Arrogance, violence, manipulation, against England, later that Hitler would former Senator Goodell (Political commercialism...

...The best-loved murders, "com- Tribune, again the familiar pattern: a and jewel thief, a man who will not mitted in England's Elizabethan period, backward look to better times followed steal from his Mayfair hosts (only so to speak, roughly between 1850 and by the degenerate contemporary exfrom other guests), who will not kill 1925," had much in common: ample...

...knock popular crime novels, written forty can decry this monstrous Americanism, out another girl to whom they have years apart and revealing an "enormous Orwell must look back to better times...

...In a lessly on violence," he brooded on it called "Jeffersonian," a national sense diary entry, after the war, he says also...

...Orwell took Burnham seriously...

...A panorama of ignorance, powerful character...

...Focusing on those cynicism and corruption, contaminating faculty of Mundelein College in Chicago...

...in the late thirties...

...turbed Orwell most was the fear that An apple serves our purposes: it tastes "such holders of power and privilege Of death, although at first it was a show are perfectly willing to accept secret Of youthful innocence...

...lines in a sordid series of events in- the false values of the American film...

...What would THE AMERICAN CHARACTER the man whose Winston Smith cut and pasted the Party's latest version of history in the Ministry of Truth, throw- KATHARINE BYRNE ing the discards into the memory hole, think about Howard Hunt, working Ill winds from the West with razor blade and scotch tape in the White House basement...

...Try this: money god," and, determined to re- lic schools: cosy teas around the study What did Orwell think about us then, nounce its worship, gives up his job fire, team rivalries, practical jokes...

...the detective is as for...

...and a national disease defeat Russia, and finally that Russia Prisoners in America), and political called power...

...Brawling and boasting, the ought to add, in moral outlook...

...Burnham believed (The Managerial Revolution) in the EDWARD PROFFITT coming of a world of three managerial conglomerates or super-states, con- SIBLINGS: AN ENJAMBED SONNET tinually at war with one another...

...court Brace Jovanovich, 1968...

...used to be...

...ican, derived from American advertis- and packets of Players, and its dark ing, American popular literature, interior smelling of liquorice allsorts Thus what begins as a pleasant exerAmerican movies, the American wor- and festooned from floor to ceiling with cise in nostalgia develops into a piece ship of money and power...

...If these are indeed new would launch a third world war very analyst David Wise (The Politics of qualities, evidences of "changes in the soon after the end of the second one), Lying), Commager concluded that American character during the past Orwell thought he read in Burnham a "responsibility for our crisis is rooted twenty-five years," George Orwell, a characteristically American respect for in changes in the American character, prescient man who died early in 1950, power, an equating of greatness with the American mind, American habits may be credited' with taking note of cruelty and dishonesty, an admiration or traits over the last quarter-century, them early, and regretting them also...

...Later, after two hundred pain- smoking cigarettes, frequenting public Collected Essays, Journalism and Let- ful pages of struggle, Gordon decides houses...

...This in the Partisan Review, he notes "the ar- there is a great difference in tone between even the most bloodspite of his friend George Woodcock's rival of American magazines with their thirsty English paper and the reminder that all the left-wing intel- enormous bulk, sleek paper, and riot three-penny Yank Mags...

...Events of the past year have encouraged a number of variations on the theme, Orwell-you-should-be- GEORGE ORWELL living-at-this-hour, each asking what he AND would say about us now, this decent and angry Englishman...

...And whose fault is it...

...branch, or a leading Nonconform- decade had been wrong...

...for the winner and a belief that "whoever is winning at the moment will al- 0000000 ways be invincible...

...Bolstering his sion for manipulation, its comIn spite of Burnham's low scores as a analysis of what's-wrong-with-us by mercialism...

...If, as he says, the Yank mags According to Commager, the young Orwell's spirits were not raised by were written by men who "brood end- nation we used to be had impulses his own contacts, admittedly few...

...He said that our na- its arrogance, its violence, its pasicans...

...movies, popular literature were bad Love and death are sibling counters to our enough...

...native brews and were fed on foods in fiction, to admire the criminal if he But during the war years what was the British couldn't get for their own gets away with the crime...

...He should be either chairman blood, no sex crimes, no sadism, no suade Orwell that his reactions to of the local Conservative Party perversions of any kind," Raffles dies American influences over the previous for queen and country in the Boer War...

...Next is a newer breed of ters of George Orwell, edited by Sonia to return to that world...

...you get real bloodlikely to eat in Chinese or Greek res- Not only the "adverts" but also the lust, really gory descriptions of taurants...

...down the road to senseless crimes in lished the American ideal, the "tough Two years later, the American way a stolen...

...In his essay "Boys' Weeklies," the all-in, jump on his testicles West, carrying American ideas, atti- Orwell looks in at the offerings of a style of fighting written in a jargon tudes, customs, Orwell hated the ex- typical news agent's shop, with its that has been perfected by people cesses and errors he defined as Amer- "poky little window with sweet-bottles who brood endlessly on violence...

...where in the suburbs, and preferhe has stolen from the British Museum...

...the victim...

...To Orwell, an acquiescence the harmonium while one of his wives American soldiers wouldn't drink the in "the American tendency, in life and was drowning in the next room...

...Nixon and dingy, poverty-stricken country," and sold out for "the chance to get their his associates and in the current style they did not conceal their contempt own hands on the whip," then all was of U.S...

...Asked to ex- tues, its optimisms, its faiths, its his own country, Orwell thought he plain the Watergate mentality, Henry limitations, so perhaps Mr...

...But these papers was always scolding his country back greed, vulgarity, snobbishness, whore- are poor copies at best of the real to some mythic time of native decen- dom and disease...

...In this essay, which apand Miss Blandish" (1944) opens with days when a man could find in his peared in Orwell's own "As I Please" an affectionate backward look at the Sunday paper an old-fashioned Eng- column when he was the literary editor Edwardian amenities of Raffles, E. W. lish domestic murder, and revel in its for Aneurin Bevan's radical socialist Hornung's gentleman cricket player niceties...

...Here the "backguy, the gorilla, who puts everything of murder came out from between ground is not domesticity but the right by socking everybody else on the book covers and took over the head- anonymous life of the dance halls and jaw...

...falsification of history-as long as 'it is An apple serves as well for love: it shakes on our side.'" Upon its bough, but clings to ripeness...

...settled discontent...

...last week's dealt with distra Flying (1936), one cannot be he finds that they fall into three groups...

...have a new sense of mission, a misAmong the American writers, how- Parents confronted by an ill-natured sion ever, "with their glittering uniforms adolescent comfort themselves with reto be achieved, not by reason but and enormous salaries," he never met membering what an amenable child he by power-force at home to whip one who had ever heard of it...

...American officers "grabbed all lish, he fears, are at this point, "partly plements...

...teen references to James Burnham, the for them, search the sacred documents . . . If Jefferson is a representaAmerican social scientist and philoso- for evidence that the country's youthful tive figure of the U.S...

...The classic English murders, "Crippen's Among the "worried" were soldiers whole point is the pursuit of power, flight across the Atlantic with his mis- of the British Army, whose girls were the triumph of power, cruelty for its tress dressed as a boy, or Joseph Smith impressed by the pay scale of the own sake...

...But, of course, thing, the third group, known as "Yank cies, urging the rejection of invading it was an American paper...

...of responsibility to establish an emthat he was touched and pleased when For the next five years, 1984 was on his pire of reason, a model and a moral a French journalist spoke with appre- mind, quintessential violence to brain example of the world...

...Nixon saw the codification of the power prin- Steele Commager published last sum- is a representative figure of conciple, the might-is-right cult, the polit- mer a long essay in the New York temporary United States, reflecting ical "realism" admired by the Amer- Review of Books...

...that prove...

...Orwell does speak with crime and dishonesty never held berated young left-wing intellectuals for for himself a few years later...

...Thousands of ist and strong temperance advoCompared to Raffles, the novel No soldiers, Americans far from home and Orchids for Miss Blandish represents, cate...

...and bad boys include damning references to Amer- nothing in the world is sacred except whose badness consists of "betting, ican influence on English life...

...Har- magazine he riffles through it in de- bombs, death rays, Martians, robots...

...For now (the year is 1939) the Orchids sold half a million copies dur- a teashop and with whom he started process of Americanization has estab- ing the Blitz...

...While the .moral code of the ideas from East and West, notions for- icans always go one better on any kind English boys' papers is a decent one, eign and inferior...

...But now we ciation of his paper, the Tribune...

...Written by James Hadley the Partisan Review, he said of these Chase, an Englishman who learned to professional man, and should only men: bring himself to the point of murwrite "in the American language" and der after long and terrible wrestles They wear on their faces a look of achieved "a mental transference to the with his conscience...

...from the natives...

...spair, sickened once more by the sight and heroes who are G-men, air aces, George Orwell loved England as a of "page after page, advert after ad- master spies: always some single allmother loves a wayward child, and he vert...

...The presence of American troops in ably in a semi-detached house In expiation for his crimes, which are England during the years when the iswhich will allow the neighbors to mild indeed by modern standards, in- land was a launching pad for the inhear suspicious sounds through the volving "very few corpses, hardly any vasion of Europe did nothing to perwall...

...vilely printed twopenny papers, most of social criticism, with American of them with lurid cover illustrations magazines, symptoms of American KATHARINE BYRNE is a member of the in three colors...

...In Burnham, whose theory and impulses were sound and generous, ment, faithfully reflecting its virprediction were vigorously contested in though presently defiled...

...No an intensely respectable life someRaffles sends the Queen an antique cup capital letter there...

...lost...

...The Amer- Mags...

...He should go astray through in a place not to their liking, swarmed in Orwell's words "a header into a cherishing a guilty passion for his over England...

...Picking up a English magazine, with stories about Brownell Orwell and Ian Angus...

...It was the story of an Amer- the taxis and drank all the good Americanized in language, and, one ican army deserter and the eighteen- whiskey...

...enlightenpher...

...politics...

...Perverts and spect for the audacity and imagination countenance, which is mild, vague, sadists abound, but there are no patriots of the murderer as well as sympathy and rather worried...

...But before he robbing her of a few shillings...

...And its success, what does playing 'Nearer My God to Thee' on Americans, five times that of the locals...