4 comments about Inside George Orwell: A Biography.

1. I studied George Orwell years back in College and wish I had had this book to read then. It's the best I've read so far, not only well and clearly written and firmly-based in research (including some fascinating new discoveries), but also a real page-turner. I hadn't realized how adventurous Orwell's life was (not only as a man but also as a man of ideas) and how closely his writing followed his experiences. This book is very convincing in exploring Orwell's state of mind - as a down-and-out in London and Paris, as a fighter in Spain, living through the Second World War in England, and writing '1984' at the start of the Cold War. It also very good in showing just how his last two books were misunderstood in the US. I took this book to read on a plane trip and found myself absorbed in it completely till we landed.



2. This book is the best of the newer Orwell biographies, but it still falls short in some respects. Bowker does a far better job than D. J. Taylor at creating a sense of continuity and purpose in Orwell's life. Bowker is a good writer, occasionally showing bits of inspired analysis, but still there are passages of utility-grade stuff.
   
   The two biographies, Bowker and Taylor, published in the same year, offer readers an opportunity to compare two quite different treatments of the same life, treatments that both use previously unknown materials. Taylor's treatment is more episodic and seems to lose no opportunity to highlight something dark, unflattering, or unpleasant about Orwell.
   
   Bowker gets at Orwell's quintessential Englishness. I was happy he used exactly that word, Englishness, which I think is an important and appealing aspect of Orwell. It is a word I've always associated with Orwell much as I do with figures such as Dickens or Graham Greene. This is a quality virtually ignored by Taylor, unless you accept his references to old-boy school snobbery as a rough substitute, references I believe are clear distortions.
   
   Bowker is sympathetic to his subject without ever being servile or sentimental, a position which is right for a biographer. While Taylor makes some effort to convince us of his old admiration for his subject, his words ring false. Taylor displays strong antipathy towards his subject, releasing it slowly through the book, and to my mind this is never the correct position for a biographer. Moreover, the clash between Taylor's claims of admiration and his clear antipathy introduces a howling note of falseness that warns of the author's intent.
   
   Bowker does an excellent job of summarizing the saga of Orwell's widow (his second wife) Sonia and his literary legacy - a tale in which the new Cold War becomes an important element - an interesting topic with which Taylor doesn't do much. Bowker also does a nice job of explaining why a biographer would write about Orwell despite the author's well-known wish that he wanted no biography.
   
   The portion of new material in either book dealing with Orwell's sex life does not shed a pleasant light on part of his character. I couldn't help thinking of passages in Benita Eisler's Byron dealing with the poet's grotesque servant-boy swapping and Mediterranean tours to buy boys in various countries - activities that would put him in prison today - passages that frankly left me feeling as though I needed fresh air. No, Orwell wasn't as twisted as Byron, but he was double-dealing in his sexual affairs and apparently sometimes found the charms of young girls selling themselves in exotic lands an irresistible purchase.
   
   I very much agree with Arthur Koestler's observation, quoted in Bowker, "I don't think George ever knew what makes other people tick, because what made him tick was very different from what most other people tick." Orwell was in many ways what contemporary speech might describe as "out of it." He was, if you will, an authentic English eccentric. This may help explain why Orwell was such a powerful critic and observer while remaining a second-tier novelist.
   
   In a way, something like this may be said of many incisive critics and great artists. The divine Mozart with his scatological letters and often buffoonish behavior. Beethoven's constant moving to new apartments, thunderous emotional storms, and self-destructive attachment to a worthless nephew. The ticks and quirks of the magnificent Samuel Johnson. Dicken's unbelievably obsessive, compulsive behavior.
   
   At the more extreme end of the scale, we have Rousseau's bizarre temperament, always ready to attack friends and admirers. The strange Herman Melville who may just have murdered his wife. Marcel Proust's sadistic penchant for sticking pins into live mice.
   
   Sometimes I think it is better just to enjoy the work of genius rather than digging too deeply into the lives of its creators. For this reason I am almost fearful of reading Norman Sherry's third volume on Graham Greene (reported to focus heavily on the unsavory aspects of Greene's life), one of my favorite twentieth-century writers and critics. But then again, we want to understand, and we find it almost irresistible to read about the lives of artists we have come to love. And whatever unpleasant we may learn, it remains the greatness of their work that drew us to them.
   
   Orwell wrote some of the twentieth century's best essays and occasional pieces, and, in 1984, not long before his death, he displayed a kind of penetrating political insight rarely seen before or since. Since great writing is so often the work of mature people, we undoubtedly missed a great deal when he died at 46.



3. The title is indeed descriptive as the author probes the inner workings of the great author - Eric Blair (aka George Orwell). Bowker exposes the dualism of Blair/Orwell to describe many of the man's layers.
   Blair, in his twenties, was a policeman for the empire in Burma. He came to loathe the job and what he did. Just what he did can only be conjectured - but one can imagine the power of a colonial authority in Burma in the early 1900's. In later years George Orwell would write about power in a far more pervasive atmosphere - notably in his two great twentieth century works - "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four".
   While it is true, as Bowker says that his two major works were miss-interpreted, they are so substantial and multi-faceted in scope that they can be given many different interpretations. In their beauty, power and longevity they are multi-faceted. I feel that Bowker left out one for "Nineteen Eighty-Four" which is the cult of mediocrity (as seen through the proles). We certainly have been experiencing this for many years on TV, newspapers and magazines which constantly aim for the lowest common denominator.
   Also, while Bowker explores Orwell's relationship to several British authors (Maugham, Wells), he has skipped over the American side. What about Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tools" which is the most popular book on the Spanish Civil War. As Bowker points out it was Orwell's participation with the Republicans in Spain that led almost directly to "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty-Four". Also what of Sinclair Lewis whose social satire books were extremely popular during Orwell's era?
   Nevertheless he does paint a portrait of an extremely troubled man - his many affairs, his constant health problems. His dualism to experience poverty with people who were barely literate I found perplexing and as Bowker says anthropological. His accent would immediately set him apart and made him ill-suited to assimilate with homeless people - even though it led to his `poverty books'.
   Also Orwell could miss-read events - he sided with Chamberlain on the Munich appeasement. During the onset of war (the London Blitz) he predicted a forthcoming revolution to a classless society.
   Bowker's description of Orwell's essay on Dali's paintings is illuminating. Was Orwell seeing something of his inner self in the surreal and underworld Dali paintings - perhaps getting an all to close glimpse of himself in Burma, his philandering and sexual mis-treatment of women (Orwell was not one to shy away from direct sexual approaches to woman).
   Orwell died at age 46 - what other major works were hidden within him?



4. In general this is a useful biography of George Orwell. However, after at first clearly distingushing between the POUM, the lefist party in whose militia Orwell fought during the Spanish Civil War, and Trotskyism, the author then goes on to refer to "Trotskyists" in Spain and equate the POUM and Trotskyism. The POUM weren't Trotskyists. This is made clear in all the credible works on the history of the Spanish Civil War. This is a small point but it indicates some lack of understanding on the part of the biographer of the larger political context of the Spanish Civil War.
   
   Also, on page 235, the author refers to "the distinguished American Journalist Stephen Schwartz." Schwartz is a long time San Francisco colorful character and professional repentant former leftist whose work as a journalist has been limited mostly to his former job as an obituary writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. In the 1980's he worked as a public relations man for the Nicaraguan Contras and the Reagan Administration's war moves in Central America. Today Schwartz is a minor league neo-conservative war bird. There are no grounds on which Schwartz can be described as "distinguished," let alone as a distinguished journalist.
   
   The following article explains this further.
   
   Neo-conservatism and Stephen Schwartz: the further adventures of an obituary writer.
   
   [...]
   
   Kevin Keating

1 comments about Journal Of Experimental Fiction 34.

1. I've read A-WAY With It published by JEF in 2003 and
   am really looking forward to reading this issue. A-WAY WITH IT
   was a great challenging read but also very rewarding. I'm sure
   this issue shall be more of the same and am really eager to
   get it on. Definitely purchase this if you are interested
   in experimental fiction in any form or to any degree.

5 comments about Son Of The Rough South: An Uncivil Memoir.

1. I was motivated to buy this after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. A native of Mississippi, I was interested in his accounts of the Neshoba County murders of three civil rights workers, and of the riot which occurred on the Ole Miss campus when National Guardsmen arrived to help James Meredith enroll there. The author has been present to record, and sometimes participate in, history, but the most interesting part was his recollection of his impoverished Depression-era childhood. The writing style is conversational and easy to read. You can definitely tell he's a journalist by trade. Well worth any price you pay.



2. My granddaughter recommended this book to me. She is studying the civil rights movement at Rutgers University. It is one of the most outstanding books I have ever read. It is sad, funny, colorful, and true.
   Karl Fleming is my new hero. I am also from North Carolina, went to the same college, and am only a few years younger, so I can identify with many of his experiences. He is a very brave person to have taken a stand against segregation when he did. Many of us cringed at the mistreatment of Blacks in those days but were afraid to speak up.
   In addition, Karl's ability to describe surroundings and provide details made me feel that I was there. Sometimes I was there. I, too, took modern dance from Joy Kirchner,the red headed teacher at Appalachian. I knew the English professor who was crazy about Shakesphere and had liquor on his breath. But, that is not what makes the book outstanding. Karl Fleming is just a great, great writer. You will be glad you read this book



3. This is a terrific book: a personal story that is vivid and candid.
   A history of the black & white civil rights struggle.
   A poignant picture of growing up orphaned and Southern.
   Portraits of the leaders of the 1960s civil rights movement, plus the indelible events of the time.
   
   Fleming writes with impeccable detail and drama.
   He blends his difficult upbringing with the difficult era of black people vying for respect in America.
   Interesting: Fleming shows the subtle side of this conflict: how a white Southerner reacts to blacks and to Northerners.
   
   If you like memoirs, read this; if you are attracted to American history, this is a vital piece of it.
   
   This is the kind of book that should be a big selling book. But don't worry, it will be remembered as an essential document of the ways Americans sought to build a society of dignity.



4. I was hoping for an informed history of the civil rights movement in America. Instead, I found this book to be Fleming's catharsis. I don't care about his sexual experiences, and although they may have scarred him or contributed to his personality quirks, they have nothing to do with the civil riights movement. The "I was a poor orphan", while touching, could have been reduced from 300 pages to about 30. Do not waste your time.



5. This is an important book for anyone interested in understanding the USA
   in the 20th century. Rich, detailed and well written. A great cant-put- down read. I will read it again.

No comments about Right in Her Soul: The Life of Anna Louise Strong.

5 comments about Walking Broad: Looking for the Heart of Brotherly Love.

1. He captures the great and not so great things about this city that only an insider that loves Philly can do. Honest, funny and compasionate.



2. Walking Broad is yet another contribution to the ever-growing literary genre that consists of gratuitous and unwarranted attacks against the city of Philadelphia. Sure Philadelphia has its faults, but Buschel focuses on Philadelphia's faults to the exclusion of its many merits. Any person who reads this book and lives in and loves Philadelphia will at some point have the urge to punch this hack in the gut.
   
   Buschel's book is based on his hypothetical stroll down Broad Street which serves as a very loose framework for him to tie together an unending and largely unrelated string of hackneyed attacks that consist of an exaggeration of every Philadelphia stereotype ever foisted upon the city and its residents.
   
   He is so consumed by his desire to attack Philadelphia, he even makes up facts. For instance, in to further his attempt to color Philadelphia with the brush of institutional racism, he writes that the Phillies - as the last all-white team in baseball - won the World Series in 1950. As any person who follows Philadelphia sports - he claims to be such a person - should know, the Phillies did not win a World Series in 1950. In fact, they won their FIRST and ONLY World Series in 1980.
   
   Buschel plays fast and loose with facts about the City he claims to love in a naked attempt to exorcise his own personal demons left-over from a very, very troubled youth. Whatever his personal history, it does not justify the mean-spirited gonzo-journalism perpetrated by this garbage.
   
   Sadly, people who are not familiar with Philadelphia will read this book and assume that the author has penned an accurate portrayal of Philadelphia. In their mind, this book will confirm the worst stereotypes Philadelphia has to offer. And that's just too bad. Because Philadelphia has a lot going for it - especially if the city could shake free from all the stereo-types foisted upon it by the likes of Buschel.



3. It's clearly the best thing ever written about Philadelphia, as it finally locates the city not as some colonial relic at the confluence of two rivers, or as a culturally ineffectual grid between D.C. and NYC, but as an urban metaphysic that tracks from north to south along the unique spine that is Broad Street, the spine that supports and defines all Philadelphians' relationship to the city, to themselves, and to each other.
   --Matt Damsker, former arts critic for the L.A. Times and Hartford Courant
   
   Like the Phillies, Walking Broad will bring you great joy and then break your heart. --Steven Levy, Newsweek writer
   
   Interviews with quirky Philadelphia characters aren't unexpected in a book subtitled "Looking for the Heart of Brotherly Love." Nor are evocative descriptions of the urban landscape. What does surprise about Buschel's chronicle is its complexity and elegance. His walk down Broad serves a larger psychic purpose. As Buschel concedes, the plan to find oneself by walking Broad Street can be "baby boomer perdition or Walt Whitman rapture." I tore through Walking Broad and laughed at almost every page. That I was pissed off when I put it down is a testament to how rich it is.
   --Liz Spikol, Philadelphia Weekly
   
   Walking Broad is a 13-mile journey filled with personal insights, a joyous overview, and a Marx Brothers attitude.
   --Robert Downey, a Prince and a Filmmaker
   
   
   In this charming book, Bruce Buschel returns home to the Philly of his youth to look back and remember those times of yore. Walking down the city's main drag, Broad Street, Buschel not only
   recollects the stories that defined him, he goes on to examine the soul of the city and the evolution that continues to change it to this day. Laced with humor and full of heart, Walking Broad
   is at once a history of a city and a passionate declaration of love to the place he called home.
   --The Strand Bookstore
   
   This painfully honest and blunt memoir reveals how Buschel's love-hate relationship with the city is inextricably connected to his painful Broad Street youth: the death of his father when Buschel was three, his troubled relationship with his hard-working and hard-drinking mother and the abuse he suffered after being sent at age seven to a city boarding school for orphans.
   --Publisher's Weekly
   
   Buschel is an amusing companion who successfully avoids the folksy lovability of, say, Studs Terkel. But ultimately, Walking Broad is not so much a coherent whole as a series of entertaining pit stops. Then again, as he might say, so is Philadelphia.
   --Los Angeles Times
   
   A gem. Very Philly. And great fun--jaunty, highly engaging, fast but never superficial.
   --Tim Whitaker, Philadelphia Weekly editor



4. This book range true to me, an ex-Philadelphian who chafed at its parochialism while I lived there but who remembers with fondness the city's refusal refusal to change its small-town mindset.
   
   I was there when Sally Starr and Gene London ruled TV, when Jerry Blavet and WFIL ruled the music scene, when Richie Allen became Dick Allen, when Rizzo was a character in "Doonesbury", when Rocky was installed at the Art Museum, and when the Phillies won the World Series; ah, good times. Then Wilson Goode bombed MOVE, I graduated from college, and left for New York. It was time to move for me, too.
   
   Any Philadelphian who was in the city in the 60s, 70s, and 80s will recognize the Philly Bruce Buschel remembers and discovers in this book, but Buschel and his brother are funnier than I and my friends could ever be. His transliteration of the Philly accent is pitch-perfect (Chapter 3), and he gets the defiant "We're not NY and we're not DC and we don't care" addytood of the natives just right (every chapter).
   
   I visited Philly in 2005 and was surprised that it finally did something with the waterfront. The historic area is unequal in its treasures (don't miss Elfreth Alley!) and will raise a lump in your throat with pride at what happened here. Sterile Veteran's Stadium has been razed and the Phillies now lose in a wonderful new old-fashioned stadium. Visit!
   
   But read this book before you go. You'll learn how people in Philly coped with living amid reminders that your hometown used to be the most important place in the colonies, but lost something somewhere for some reason. You learn to ignore the bad and shrug off the absurd, and the only thing that really matters is where the best cheesesteak is made. That's Philly, to me.



5. I truly don't know why the author didn't just say 'Philly Sucks' and be done with it. Why drag it on and on the way he did? I couldn't get past the 3rd chapter of this hatchet-job, lousy book. Hey Buschel, you owe me $18.00!!! What an utter waste of paper. Just Awful!!!

No comments about Letter from Washington, 1863-1865 (Great Lakes Books).

No comments about Along with Youth: Hemingway, the Early Years.

3 comments about No Ordinary Joe: A Life of Joseph Pulitzer III (Missouri Biography Series).

1. As you watch the national news it is easy to see how the national organizations have blurred news and entertainment. Any attempt on their part to present all sides of a complex story disappears if they can find a blown up vehicle or an injured person. Politicans have learned that the few second sound byte has to convey the message they want or the message isn't getting on the air at all.
   
   Further, there are only a handfull of newspapers that attempt to provide a full story. During the reign of Joseph Pulitzer III, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch was one of that handfull. Politically liberal, the paper prospered during the years that other newspapers were failing, merging or converting to tabloid style.
   
   This biography of Joseph Pulitzer III covers his life, but his life was never far removed from the newspaper. This book presents the story of a man not seen so often. Trained by his father from birth to run the paper he had the problems of employees not liking his style, of friction within the rest of the family, and more. It is a fascinating story, well researched, and well told.



2. No Ordinary Joe: A Life Of Joseph Pulitzer III provides a very fine scholarly biographical survey of the man who created the widely known Pulitzer Prize. Joseph was trained for succession to the Pulitzer media empire and worked hard to maintain his family's paper's liberal philosophy even as competitors began mixing news with entertainment. His many achievements in the newspaper world are detailed alongside interviews with over seventy who knew or worked with him: the result is a study spiced with personal insight and celebrating Pulitzer's impact on the publishing world as a whole.



3. No Ordinary Joe: A Life Of Joseph Pulitzer III provides a very fine scholarly biographical survey of the man who created the widely known Pulitzer Prize. Joseph was trained for succession to the Pulitzer media empire and worked hard to maintain his family's paper's liberal philosophy even as competitors began mixing news with entertainment. His many achievements in the newspaper world are detailed alongside interviews with over seventy who knew or worked with him: the result is a study spiced with personal insight and celebrating Pulitzer's impact on the publishing world as a whole.

5 comments about Ahead of Time: My Early Years as a Foreign Correspondent.

1. Many of you who see the CBS miniseries will be reading and loving HAVEN,the book, but may be puzzled that the material on Ruth's experiences in 1930s Germany are --missing. Look no further! The information is here. If you are hooked on HAVEN you will want to read this book also, because the flashbacks to Germany are entirely taken from AHEAD OF TIME. It's also a great book. As Joan Michel wrote in HADASSAH MAGAZINE upon first publication in 1991:

   -"Talk about courageous pioneers and voyages into uncharted waters, about plumbing the depths of the human spirit, of discovering new worlds and uncovering hidden teasures..Ruth Gruber takes us on an extraordinary personal journey."

   Ruth Gruber, my stepmother, is 89 and I can vouch that she remains one of the most brilliant and adventurous women you could ever hope to meet, as well as THE BEST storyteller. She learned story telling from a consumate artist, Virginia Woolf, on whom Ruth wrote the very first doctoral thesis, conferred by the Univerity of Cologne in 1931 when she was but twenty. The University boasted that Ruth was "the world's youngest PhD" and in honor of her achievement, Cologne's Lord Mayer Konrad Adenauer presented her with a gift of two magnificent art books. As she left his chambers, the future United Nations leader placed his hand on her head, as in a benediciton."Bless you my child. May God go with you."

   And- it seems as though God did!




2. I was inspired to purchase this book along with Haven after watching the mini-series on TV. Ruth Gruber is a woman definitely ahead of her time. She puts modern day "women's libbers" to shame. This is a woman who, when she decided to do something, didn't live her amazing life so she could show the world what a woman could do. She lived her amazing life because she took advantage of any and all opportunities offered her. She didn't say, "Let me do it so I can show the world a woman can do it." She just said, "Let me do it because I can." She should be an example to all -- men and women alike. I would recommend this book and Haven to anyone interested in learning more about the history of the period as well as to anyone simply interested in a good read. Ms. Gruber writes her books in a way that brings them alive. They are not historical textbooks, nor are they "me" books. They are simply wonderfully inspiring books about a wonderfully inspiring woman.



3. I bought this because I was interested in early women's lib-ers who "just did it" and in her 1930s era access to Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. She certainly is an interesting woman with a will power, but her access and her insights into these two countries were minimal and superficial. While she ackowledges that she was a pawn, the information she does present adds nothing to the understanding of those two countries or to what it must have been like to BE there. The Artic adventures are more promising, but like the rest of the book suffer from a really quite juvenile writing style that does little to effectively or movingly capture the moments she experiences. Finally, her lack of introspection seem to suggest that she really did "just do it" without much of a real reason and without much struggle and that just isn't very interesting reading.



4. This very engaging book covers so many experiences that you have to keep reminding yourself it's only about Ruth Gruber's first 25 years. While others have commented negatively on her simple writing style, I found it refreshing. She doesn't come across as a Ph.D. disseminating her vast knowledge, but as the young woman she was at the time, amazed at being able to have all the experiences she had. She seems to write from that viewpoint, so that even though she wrote this book much later in life, you feel like you're having a chat with "Rut," as the Russians call her, who is a very intelligent, but still very young woman. She apparently based this book on notes she took at the time, so its youthful attitude is authentic. Be warned, though, if you're older than 25 you're going to come away from this book feeling like a complete slacker.



5. the author,ruth gruber,tells a fascinating story.she is an amazing woman,very bright and gutsy.one feels as if he or she is going along with ms. gruber on her journeys. she is an accomplished writer and journalist. i recommend this book for others who want to go with her on her journeys.

No comments about A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army.