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    George Orwell

    What a total dude.

    I'm sure there are other on this board who can write more eloquently about him than I, but it doesn't alter the fact he fucking rules, and is responsible for writing three of my favourite books ever.

    Good work, George.

    #2
    George Orwell

    Yep, word. What's the third, by the way? Wigan Pier?

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      #3
      George Orwell

      Down and Out in Paris and London.

      Check this out from his essay 'A Nice Cup of Tea'

      Lastly, tea--unless one is drinking it in the Russian style--should be drunk WITHOUT SUGAR. I know very well that I am in a minority here. But still, how can you call yourself a true tea-lover if you destroy the flavour of your tea by putting sugar in it? It would be equally reasonable to put in pepper or salt. Tea is meant to be bitter, just as beer is meant to be bitter. If you sweeten it, you are no longer tasting the tea, you are merely tasting the sugar; you could make a very
      similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water.

      Some people would answer that they don't like tea in itself, that they only drink it in order to be warmed and stimulated, and they need sugar to take the taste away. To those misguided people I would say: Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
      Man. I AM misguided. No more sugar for EIM after this morning's cup.

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        #4
        George Orwell

        I suppose it says something about me, that for all of Orwell's prescient and incisive commentary, the one that stands out for me is about taking sugar in your tea.

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          #5
          George Orwell

          Homage to Catalonia is my favourite. Great war reporting that doesn't try to paint things in black and white (his publisher tried to remove the two chapters referring to the fight between the Stalinists and the POUM, but he stood firm).

          Comment


            #6
            George Orwell

            That's due a reread I think. We had to study what I thought was a passage from it for GCSE English, but thinking back, I reckon it must have been from one of his essays, because I don't recall it from my first read of the book.

            One section of the book inspired me tow rite a story about an old fella who used to come in to the pool hall. It's on the old OTF, here. Fuck me, I was 21 when I wrote that. How time flies.

            Anyway, you can read loads of his writing on http://www.george-orwell.org It's how I've been passing my sleepless nights recently.

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              #7
              George Orwell

              Is the essay about the elephants on there? I don't think I could read that again, mind.

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                #8
                George Orwell

                Which are you three favourite Orwell books, EIM?

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                  #9
                  George Orwell

                  Bored of the Dance is currently a dead ringer for Orwell.

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                    #10
                    George Orwell

                    Oh, yes - George Orwell is/was one of the greatest ever.

                    I have read and re-read all of his work many times. I think what makes him so brilliant is that although he wrote so knowledgeably and intelligently on an enormous range of topics, his was never a bullying, lecturing or patronising tone. When I read him I am put in mind of a really interesting uncle, forever pointing things out that I myself might otherwise never have noticed. He was also a great social commentator and frequently extremely funny. In short, he seems to have been such a good man.

                    His work is still amazingly relevant today, and when he railed against the social and cultural decadence of 30s and 40s, you can't help wondering what the hell he would have made of our world today:

                    "Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the
                    English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we
                    cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is
                    decadent, and our language--so the argument runs--must inevitably share
                    in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse
                    of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to
                    electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes."
                    (Politics and the English Language)

                    This, from 1946!!

                    I would recommend anyone unfamiliar with his essays to read the following, all of which are at www.george-orwell.org :

                    A Hanging
                    Boys' Weeklies
                    Decline of the English Murder
                    Down the Mine
                    How the Poor Die
                    Shooting an Elephant
                    Such, Such Were The Joys
                    The Art of Donald McGill
                    The Sporting Spirit

                    The thing is, the man was just so entertaining.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      George Orwell

                      Harry Carpenter wrote:
                      Bored of the Dance is currently a dead ringer for Orwell.
                      I've never seen a picture of Bored, but I've seen a picture of Orwell. Harsh...

                      But anyway, yes, Orwell is my favourite author ever. I'm not feeling very brainswitchedon right now, but I thought I'd add my voice to the sound of the crowd anyway.

                      I don't always agree with him, of course. He's pretty cunty about vegetarians, for one thing.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        George Orwell

                        I'm wondering what Bored has been doing to himself of late.

                        Anyway, EIM is right of course.

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                          #13
                          George Orwell

                          Pants wrote:
                          Which are you three favourite Orwell books, EIM?
                          Animal Farm
                          1984
                          Down And Out...

                          Comment


                            #14
                            George Orwell

                            He's pretty cunty about vegetarians, for one thing.
                            What, the "bearded, sandal-wearing, fruit juice drinkers"? Heh.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              George Orwell

                              ant259 wrote:
                              He's pretty cunty about vegetarians, for one thing.
                              What, the "bearded, sandal-wearing, fruit juice drinkers"? Heh.
                              Indeed.

                              One could as easily extrapolate, from Orwell's own appearance, that meat-eaters look like a bucket with a dent in it.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                George Orwell

                                It was his journalism, more than his novels, that truly showed him at the top of his game, I reckon. He wrote with such elegant clarity. Those Tribune columns, which I studied at length for my uni dissertation, were brilliant.

                                I kind of feel a bit sorry for his memory, posthumously, that he is often disingenuously invoked by rightwingers or "decent leftists" to disparage the modern Left, along the wholly guessed lines that "Orwell would have had no truck with these so-called anti-war protesters".

                                I still don't think he should have shopped Tankies to The Man, mind.

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                                  #17
                                  George Orwell

                                  "Tankies" means Stalinists, right?

                                  If so, shopping Tankies is every human being's solemn obligation.

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                                    #18
                                    George Orwell

                                    Horses for courses. In the context of McCarthyism, say, I don't think people should shop Tankies, because you just have to resist something as sinister as McCarthyism with all means at your disposal. But there wasn't a McCarthyite witch-hunt under way in the UK at the time, and indeed the US style of reactionary "anti-Communism" hadn't really been born yet, and I can see why he felt he needed to do as he did.

                                    Remember that he didn't "name names" in the sense of betraying confidences or grassing people up: he flagged up people whose opinions were already in the public domain, precisely because they were in the public domain (and he was therefore worried they'd be influential). I suspect he's been retrospectively condemned, really: that if McCarthyism hadn't happened, there would have been less of a fuss when this stuff came out.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      George Orwell

                                      "you could make a very similar drink by dissolving sugar in plain hot water."
                                      No, I've tried that. It's not the same at all.

                                      What does "Shopping Tankies" mean? Is Tankies some sort of Soviet-themed supermarket?

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                                        #20
                                        George Orwell

                                        Shopping (verb) - to grass up, to inform the authorities
                                        Tankies (slang) - intra-leftie term for members of the communist party.

                                        Comment


                                          #21
                                          George Orwell

                                          Oh.

                                          I like my version better.

                                          Comment


                                            #22
                                            George Orwell

                                            No McCarthyism wasn't underway. What was underway, however, was The Ukrainian famine, The Moscow show trials, The betrayal of the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, The non-agression pact, The invasions of Poland, the Baltic States and Finland, The imposition of brutally muderous repressive regimes across all of Eastern Europe, The gulags. That takes us up to about 1949, innit?

                                            The lengths Tankies went to to justify or ignore this stuff makes them prime candidates for shopping, I reckon. If Orwell's actions kept Stalinists out of a single position of even minor power in this country then he did the right thing.

                                            Comment


                                              #23
                                              George Orwell

                                              E10 Rifle wrote:
                                              It was his journalism, more than his novels, that truly showed him at the top of his game, I reckon. He wrote with such elegant clarity. Those Tribune columns, which I studied at length for my uni dissertation, were brilliant.
                                              Agreed about the quality of his journalism (though I can't say it matched the best of his books). This is very good and I think there is an exhaustive online archive of his articles I used to have bookmarked and will have to find again.

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                George Orwell

                                                Bored of the Dance is currently a dead ringer for Orwell.
                                                Why did I know that this would appear in this thread?

                                                Pictorial evidence,for or against

                                                [IMG]http://links.pictures.aol.com/pic/4ff0*MMwNRcZu91Kp5t4jcnaDmuyLFN*V3Cyv4xQp5Fd3Ig=_l .jpg[/IMG]

                                                [IMG]http://links.pictures.aol.com/pic/4ff0*MMwNRcZu91Kp5t4jcnaDjuX3m9gKKUqv4xQp5Fd3Ig=_l .jpg[/IMG]

                                                Anyhoo, someone I really should read more of, not for any fashionable or peer-pressure reasons but because the one book I have read, Animal Farm, I loved and I am sure that I would love loads more of his.

                                                Simialr to Mark Twain, It does annoy me slightly that he is held up as some sort of oracle whose every word is true but that isn't his fault.

                                                He is dead wrong on the tea thing, for instance

                                                Comment


                                                  #25
                                                  George Orwell

                                                  Try drinking tea without sugar for, say, a fortnight and it is very unlikely that you will ever want to ruin your tea by sweetening it again.
                                                  He is right, you know. You could also try smoking 60 a day to fully achieve that haggard Orwell look.

                                                  Comment

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