From: Michael S. Lorrey (retroman@turbont.net)
Date: Wed Mar 22 2000 - 06:39:58 MST
Technotranscendence wrote:
>
> On Tuesday, March 21, 2000 8:12 PM Michael S. Lorrey retroman@turbont.net
> wrote:
> > > > Orwell never spent any time in a communist
> > > > nation, he only knew what he heard by hanging out with the Cambridge
> > > > bred aristo-communists popular in Britain in the 30's. Ask Sasha
> > > > Chislenko what he thinks...
> > >
> > > Orwell also spent some time in Spain during the Spanish Civil War
> > > (1936-1939). He even joined a militia there. He did get to see how
> > > Communists, especially Stalinists, operate up close and personal. In
> fact,
> > > he wrote a book on it, _Homage to Catalonia_ in 1938. This is a far cry
> > > from just hanging out in Cambridge.
> >
> > Yes, I heard about that the other day on the anarchist newsgroup.
>
> How come it took Michael so long?:) I've known about this because I've read
> some of Orwell's works -- and, well, because he's kind of a name in
> literature. Not knowing about Orwell's time in Spain is almost akin to not
> knowing Stephen King lives in Maine.:) If I were told to list, say, 100
> 20th century writers I knew, he [Orwell and, yeah, King too:)] would
> probably be on it. Also, if I were told to attack someone's character, I
> would do a little research about the person... It's not like Orwell hid his
> life story.:)
>
> > His
> > animosity towards Stalin was because Josef supposedly didn't keep his
> > promises to the spanish communists. However, Spain was hardly a
> > communist country at that point, it was merely a rather ravaged country.
>
> I never claimed it was a communist country, but the point is Michael's above
> quoted comments make it seem like Orwell lived a sheltered life. (Ditto for
> other artists. What of A. Solzhenitsyn (just about any book by him) or Ayn
> Rand (_Anthem_ and _We the Living_; the former should be compared with
> _Nineteen Eighty-Four_, especially in the area of Newspeak) -- two writers
> who wrote about communist countries who had an inside view of things?)
>
WHile Orwell was wounded in the throat (shaving?) in the Zaragoza area
after spending serveral boring months there, it turns out the group he
had enlisted in (POUM) was considered to be allied with Franco.
Additionally, in his own words, he was from the "lower-upper middle
class" and was a graduate of Eton, so yes, he did live a sheltered life.
Granted when he decided to become a writer, he intentionally spent a
good amount of time living among the poor and destitute, washing dishes,
etc. However the reason he used the pen name George Orwell, (rather than
his given name of Eric Blair) was because he wanted to separate himself
from his life of priviledge, as well as the fact that he had been
employed as a policeman for the Colonial Office in Burma.
As for Solzhenitsyn, he actually spent time in the gulag for his
dissident activities. When he finally got kicked out of the USSR, he
settled here in Vermont, and has lived off of the western royalties for
his books ever since, while also doing some stints as a college
professor of literature. Now he's back in Russia, and I am told remains
an object of adoration and hate, while continuing to poke his nose into
dark places, at least figuratively.
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