| CJFusco |
12-11-2007 05:42 PM |
To pique interest, this is the lead I wrote for the proposal package:
"“It is… no small thing to have the greatest political writer of the age on one’s side: it gives confidence, authority and weight to one’s own political views.”
These lines, written by Norman Podhoretz about George Orwell, seem, at first blush, to be accurate and concise. If Podhoretz does have Orwell on his side, then Podhoretz’s own political views are instantly granted considerable credibility. It is difficult to allow Podhoretz this credibility, however, when pundits on the completely opposite side of the political spectrum are making the exact same claim: namely, that, in terms of political views, George Orwell is one of them.
If one follows the line of academic conversation between literary critics on just about any significant piece of literature, one will invariably find a reception history rife with disagreement and variable interpretation. The confusing and often contradictory reception history of George Orwell’s work, however, poses a problem which is significantly more pressing and severe than academic squabbling over the semantics of a single line of poetry by Pound or Eliot. Orwell’s writings and indeed Orwell himself have been claimed as inspiration over the decades by politically-leaning literary minds from both sides of the political spectrum.
If Podhoretz is correct, and Orwell is worth claiming because having him on one’s side gives weight to one’s argument, this poses a problem because those who attempt to claim Orwell as their patron saint have done so for selfish reasons, in order to solidify their own political credibility. This situation does not seem terribly problematic on its own terms; what is truly troublesome about this situation is that many critics and politicians have occasionally evoked the man’s name and his text inaccurately – or in a way that misrepresents what Orwell had written – in order to manipulate the minds of their audience. When both sides claim the same man for disparate reasons, of course, both sides cannot be representing the writer completely accurately. Viewed through the lens of his own reception history, the real George Orwell has become obscured by a fog of shifting images and intentional misrepresentations.
But what is it about Orwell that appeals to opposite ends of the political spectrum? How could both the political Left and the political Right possibly make a compelling case that Orwell would stand among them in the contemporary era? And what is it about Orwell makes him a figure worth fighting over? Our Orwell, Right or Left will take a look at Orwell’s academic and cultural reputation during the writer’s life and in the decades since his death in order to find the truth through the fog. The book will take a look at the claims for Orwell, and juxtapose these claims with the author’s own writing in order to discern whether it is the Left or the Right who holds a convincing claim to the father of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm."
|
