In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology:This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writingunder the name Matt Lowefor John Middleton Murrys Adelphi. As he told his diary:Thus the evidence that supposedly shames Orwell by contrast is in fact supplied bynone other than Orwell himself! This is only slightly better than the other habit of his foes, which is to attack him for things he quotes other people as saying, as if he had instead said them himself. (The idea that a writer must be able to afford to write is somewhat different and, as an idea, is somewhatto use a vogue term of the New Leftproblematic. If it were only the bourgeois who were able to write, much work would never have been penned and, incidentally, Orwell would never have met Garrett in the first place.)
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About Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens was a 20th-century American and american author and journalist. Christopher Eric Hitchens was a British and American author and journalist. Known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism, he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker. Read more on Wikipedia →
Themes
- Politics — Governance, civic duty, and the structures of power