Eric Blair in Brief
WOODCOCK, GEORGE
Eric Blair in Brief_ George Orwell: The Road to 1984 By Peter Lewis Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 128 pp. $12.95. Reviewed by George Woodcock Author, "The Writer and Politics," "Anarchism," "The...
...Background material has been drawn largely from either snippets of letters or secondary sources?notably books about Orwell by his friends, including those of Julian Sy-mons, Cyril Connolly and myself...
...Eric Blair (his real life alter ego), it will be recalled, asked in his will that no one write a biography of him...
...At first glance it is tempting to dismiss Lewis' effort as a lazy man's guide to a prominent figure...
...Lewis gives us a reading of Orwell's major books, strung out like Wigan washing on a thin lifeline...
...The rather brief text matter is really neither criticism nor biography...
...I remember how, during the 1940s, he was delighted with a piece in this vein that I wrote for Dwight Macdonald's Politics...
...I suspect George Orwell would share mine were he able to read it...
...Reviewed by George Woodcock Author, "The Writer and Politics," "Anarchism," "The Canadians" WORKS such as this one by the English writer Peter Lewis inevitably produce mixed feelings...
...To begin with, he has clearly taken to heart Orwell's famous injunction to write prose like a window pane...
...It was why I structured my book about him, The Crystal Spirit (one of those that Sonia did approve), as primarily an account of his writings, and introduced the story of his life by showing how Orwell's talent had transformed that life into literature...
...Not for him the painstaking original research that characterized the massive George Orwell: A Life by Bernard Crick or the curious two-volume semi-biography, The Unknown Orwell and Orwell: The Transformation by Peter Stansky and William Abrahams—who were denied the use of any copyrighted material by their subject's widow, Sonia...
...Explaining this ultimately impossible request, Sonia remarked: "He believed there is nothing about a writer's life that is relevant to a judgment of his works...
...The format is that of a picture book, with some of the photographs and other illustrations actually documenting Orwell's life while others have no more than a peripheral relevance...
...He concentrates on the works, letting the biographical data slip in to link them together...
...Indeed, though his tone is generally temperate and his conclusions judicious, he makes a few judgments that are positively Orwellian in their outrageous un-tenability...
...Why do I think George Orwell's reaction would not have been entirely negative...
...Of this Orwell would have approved, as he would have appreciated Lewis' clear and unaffected use of the English language...
...No serious Orwell scholar is likely to need this essay, but those who appreciate him in a nonacademic way may find it and the accompanying pictures a worthwhile keepsake...
...I suspect his main objection to letting someone else poke around his life was, rather, that in Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier, Homage to Catalonia and numerous essays he had presented fragments of purported autobiography...
...Yet if Lewis fails to add a single new fact to what is already known about his subject, neither is he offering a mere rehash designed for those who want easy access to an author they lack the time to actually read...
...Certainly Orwell never minded any talk about him that focused primarily on his literary development...
...On the whole, therefore, this book fulfills its purpose: It is a good, short introduction to Orwell...
...Many people found her a difficult custodian of Orwell's copyrights, as well as of his reputation...
...Peter Lewis is on the same track...
...His comments are usually to the point, and when he is disputing an accepted interpretation of what Orwell intended they often have an attractive pungency...
...Lewis claims to have written with the late Sonia's blessing, and from the number of Orwell quotes he uses we may safely assume that was the case...
...Lewis will undoubtedly find a healthy market in university bookstores, for students of English literature who are in search of a concise crib or pony could do much worse...
...I doubt that Orwell really had such a rigidly New Criticism attitude...
...Having carefully reshaped actual events into artistic form, he simply did not relish the possibility of a literal-minded biographer finding him out...
...It is hard to understand, for example, why she approved this slight undertaking and not the thorough going approach of Stan-sky and Abrahams...
...He also has a solid command of the material he does use...
Vol. 65 • April 1982 • No. 8
