a discursive ramble…
Book review:
Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays
by George Orwell (1903-1950)
Jeremy Paxman, intro.
New York: Penguin Books, 2009
375 pages
Of course, Shooting an Elephant has Orwell’s must read piece: “Politics and the English Language” (1946).
“Why I Write” is a peacefully discursive ramble in the mind of a consummate writer. Orwell candidly says “…I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose.”
These are:
- Sheer egoism—“It is sheer humbug to pretend that this is not a motive, and a strong one.”
- Aesthetic enthusiasm—“Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.”
- Historical impulse—“Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.”
- Political purpose—“using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”
“Bookshop Memories” is half a martini’s worth of good reading for any book lover who has spent a little time (or a lot of time) in an old used book store that has that old book smell, and shelves stuffed with books from floor to ceiling so you have to kneel down to inspect the ones on the bottom shelf, and an old guy with a careless beard at the ancient cash register, and a cat that can’t be bothered to pay any attention to the loitering bibliophiles…
Orwell is one of the writers that Coleridge had in mind when he mentioned that good prose is “words in their best order.”
Paxman’s introduction is a decent substitute for a reflective conversation with Orwell about writing.
Shooting an Elephant has almost two dozen examples of what Orwell could do with pen and paper. He died too young.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2019 All rights reserved.
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She wrote so many of the right words…
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