Subject: (urth) Graves & Orwell, also St. Peter

From: Alice Turner <al at interport.net>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 07:30:20 +0000

Alex,

Why don't you see if your friend who wrote the St. Peter paper for Kessel
can send it to you as an email attachment? Then you could forward it to
those of us who would like to read it, me for instance.

> 1984 isn't obscure, but most of his best writing (Road to Wigan Pier &
>the essays in general) is.  1984 is an important book, but it isn't all
that
>well written, except for a spots here and there (the opening and the
finale).
> I wonder why it happened to Orwell.  To bring us on topic, Wolfe's
>talked about his two favorites, also far more obscure than they deserve to
be,
>Kipling and Chesterton.  You can see political/social agendas lurking
behind
>those falls from critical favor, but that really shouldn't hurt Orwell--I
mean,
>having argued with Gollancz and criticized Shaw and the Webbs isn't exactly
>cause for blacklisting now that nobody defends Stalin...

I don't think Orwell is as forgotten as you think. Check out Amazon.
Literally dozens of editions of Animal Farm and 1984. Half a dozen
biographies within the last 20 years. Oodles of Cliff notes and the rest.
And I frequently run into an essay on him in some place like The New York
Review of Books. The last one was pretty recent, and the essayist argued
that his best book was Homage to Catalonia and his worst (which he admitted)
Keep the Aspidistra Flying. But even that is still in print. Serious
journalists still study Orwell for form, as well they might. Especially for
war coverage. I'd bet anyone that Roger Cohen, researching his new book on
Bosnia that is getting such raves, read Orwell.

I'd also argue that Graves still lives. Anyone interested in mythology at
all has Greek Myths on the shelf (and learns how to read it---the salt
cellar must remain nearby), while The White Goddess practically gave birth
to the New Age goddess movement--it has never been out of print. Masterpiece
Theater kept the Claudius books alive. Aside from these, he may not be as
current as Orwell, but he's certainly hanging in and perhaps will make a
comeback once he's in public domain.

Chesterton and Kipling are both in public domain now, and there's a
surprising amount of them out there. Kipling will obviously live forever as
a children's writer---once you pass the portal in that field you're
immortal. There's still a sort of cloud hanging over him as an "imperialist"
otherwise, though I've never bought that. To me, Kipling is alive, but I
have doubts about Chesterton. (I've never read -The Man Who Was Thursday-
though.)

-alga

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 12:14:03 +0000

> those of us who would like to read it, me for instance.

I will.  Chaffee (author of the paper) is out of town until Friday, but I'll
ask him when he gets back if he has an electronic copy.  Anyone who wants a
copy can write me (off-list).

> Bosnia that is getting such raves, read Orwell.

	I suppose so; perhaps it's just that Orwell sometimes doesn't get the
full respect that he deserves?  I think the most well-read crowd does know
Orwell, and especially among literati in England the essays and such are very
big.  I'd say though that the second-tier of readers does tend to think of him
as a one-trick-pony author of anti-Communist dystopias.  In other words, if you
get your education in English literature from classes at American universities,
that's all you'd know about him (someone the other day said she was surprised
to see him on the Modern Library list, and asked me "So Orwell was a
journalist, too?")  As opposed to Kipling and Chesterton who were once very
big, and still matter a great deal to a certain crowd (in his day Orwell wrote
an essay about the distaste for Kipling, but suggested Kipling would endure),
but seem to be completely missing in most English Lit. departments.
	I would contend that their importance at the time (think how often
Chesterton comes up in other people's writing of his day--Eliot, for example)
would merit more of a place in the classroom.  But people who have
extra-curricular literary knowledge (which does not include most English
majors) do tend to know them.  
	And yes, Graves is still alive & well.  I like Graves, but don't think
you can argue he's had much less attention than he deserves.  Kipling lives
everywhere except in the classroom (mainly because he's one of the great
English makers of fiction, and thus hard to hold down).
	As to Chesterton, I think he's important and a major figure in any
complete picture of his time.  He appears to be alive for Wolfe in the same way
that he is for most real Chesterton fans; we almost speak of him as a dead very
good friend we never happened to meet.  Chesterton fans in general tend to be
people who somewhat agree with his religious and social ideas--thus Wolfe and
Lafferty (or myself).  Although Orwell was given to defending Chesterton and
certainly thought his religious ideas were foolish, and Martin Gardner isn't
exactly Catholic in thought.  But I think Chesterton should be really annoying
if you strongly disagree with him or even are just unsympathetic.
	Which leads to a thesis about Wolfe:  if you tend to agree with Wolfe's
ideas that's icing on the cake, but you could HATE most the
religious-philosophical-political matrix underlying his works and still love
the writing and be a Wolfe devotee (for instance, John Kessel adores Wolfe's
work, but I think I can safely say politically and religiously they'd be at
each other's throats in a moment).  This does set a writer apart from someone
like Chesterton, who is fun, and a master at what he does, but seems likely to
be unrewarding to anyone who dislikes his world-view, although lovable in a way
that Wolfe isn't to those who agree (Wolfe can be Chestertonian in his essays,
though--I admired Wolfe as a writer before I read any of his non-fiction, but
only felt a great liking for him as a man once I'd read some of his essays).
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 12:28:14 +0000

At 07:30 AM 10/20/98 -0400, alga wrote:
>Keep the Aspidistra Flying. But even that is still in print. 

In fact, the most recent NYROB piece on Orwell was about _The Complete
Orwell_, a 20-volume scholarly edition of literally everything the editors
could find ever written by Orwell, from juvenalia to, I believe literally,
grocery lists. 

The reviewer started off by asking, "Why Orwell?" but then quickly admitted
that the collection was fascinating and sets a new high-water mark in the
presentation of the works of a canonical author.

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html