Orwell: The Life

The Washington Post

To entitle a biography "the life" rather than "a life" might seem boastful, even if the intention was to distinguish the study of "the life" from "the work." However, D.J. Taylor has written not only the best recent biography of George Orwell (and this in quite a strong field of competitors) but also one of the cleverest studies of the relationship of that life to the written word. — Christopher Hitchens

Publishers Weekly

George Orwell (1903-1950), ne Eric Blair, seemed only a marginal Depression-era writer about disillusion and hopelessness among ordinary working types until the Spanish Civil War, when in 1937 he was shot through the neck and nearly killed, furnishing him with the lens to see totalitarianism and betrayal as, possibly, the future human condition. In his now classic Homage to Catalonia, then a commercial failure, he wrote of papers reporting facts that were lies, patriotism that was propaganda, loyalty that was treachery, heroism that was cowardice. The results, in a bleak career abbreviated at 46 by unremitting tuberculosis, emerged in the dystopian fable Animal Farm and in the mean urban wasteland of 1984, in which history is rewritten daily, and obedience is the only recourse for the brainwashed powerless. Taylor, author of an earlier biography of Thackeray, limns Orwell's life graphically, and relates his early fiction and journalism persuasively to the iconic postwar novels, describing his writing as "an endless scroll constantly refined and brought up to date, in which early entries reemerge to assume an expected resonance." Tendencies to clich disappear as Taylor warms up to his theme of an Etonian displaced in a remorseless world. A few brief chapters seem merely stuck in, but Orwell's essentially lonely and downstart life, and his triumphs almost too late to matter, make for compelling reading. 16 pages of b&w illus. not seen by PW. (Sept.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

This centenary year of George Orwell's birth has produced two major British biographies following lives by Bernard Crick (1980), Michael Shelden (1991), and Jeffrey Meyers (2000). Bowker (Pursued by Furies) covers the now-familiar terrain of Orwell's short life in fascinating-and sometimes controversial-detail. What emerges is the "human face of Orwell," as Bowker explores Orwell's complicated sexuality and womanizing, his persistent practice of deception, and his strong prejudices. He also assesses the impact that chronic illness had on Orwell's life and writings. As for new revelations, Bowker claims several: the influence of Orwell's early Catholic education, his obsession with black magic, his illicit liaisons in Burma, and a long-running affair with an early girlfriend. Finally, Bowker expands on new evidence about the Soviet pursuit of Orwell during the Spanish Civil War and Orwell's subsequent collaboration with the British Foreign Office in World War II (when he allegedly "named names" of Communist sympathizers). In Orwell, Taylor (Thackeray) fills in some gaps of his own-chiefly through the unpublished writings of Orwell's friends and contemporaries. Starting with a moving description of Orwell's funeral in 1950, Taylor vividly presents the years in India, the "down and out" adventures, fighting in Spain, Orwell's work with the BBC during the war, and his final great novels. Taylor breaks the chronological flow with nine brief, interpretive essays (e.g., on Orwell's face, voice, and paranoia). While light on literary analysis of Orwell's writings, Taylor's book is a fresh and compelling life of the man he calls "a light glinting in the darkness." Bowker and, to a lesser extent, Taylor each make understanding the life of this "secular priest" a lot easier. Both biographies are highly recommended for public and academic libraries.-Thomas A. Karel, Franklin & Marshall Coll. Lib., Lancaster, PA Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Carping portrait of the English patron saint of left-wing anti-communism, by a biographer who displayed a lot more enthusiasm for Thackeray (2001). Although Taylor writes that George Orwell (1903-50) "has obsessed me for the best part of a quarter of a century," the principal sign of his obsession here is endless quibbling with other Orwell observers' comments, which may or may not be familiar to readers of this work. Moreover, most of these comments are critical-Orwell was self-pitying, he was paranoid, he condescended to the working classes he professed to admire-and are refuted perfunctorily. (A particularly nasty diatribe from a Marxist guide to English literature is reprinted over three pages without any comment at all.) Certainly, in recent years much has come to light about the less attractive features of the author revered for his painfully honest scrutiny of socialism in The Road to Wigan Pier, his superb reporting from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War in Homage to Catalonia, and most of all for his scathing fictional depictions of totalitarianism, Animal Farm and 1984. But a biography ought to at least convey the qualities that made Orwell an increasingly important, controversial figure in English literary and political circles of the 1930s and '40s. The account of his early years as the son of a British colonial official, a scholarship boy at Eton, and a policeman in Burma is similarly shaped by the desire to cut Orwell down to size; his later reminiscences of those days, Taylor informs us, were highly selective and crafted with an eye to political symbolism-not exactly unusual strategies in autobiographical writing. Impressionistic chapters on "Orwell's face,""Orwell's voice" (horrors: he retained his upper-class accent), "Orwell's things," and on and on, do not further illuminate the personality of an admittedly reserved man who entirely fails to come to life in these pages. Like many volumes on the groaning shelf of Orwelliana, this reads more like a conversation with fellow monomaniacs than something for the general public. (16 pp. b&w illustrations, not seen) Agent: Gill Coleridge/Rogers, Coleridge & White