George Orwell by Bowker Gordon

Author:Bowker, Gordon [Bowker, Gordon]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781405528054
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

The reviewer noted that the book’s indirect, ‘conversational and slangy’ style, which made it so readable, carried not just a narrative but a running commentary on the state of the world. The author seemed to be saying that the old way of story-telling was over and readers must nerve themselves for the bad times ahead.101 There was also applause from The Times, heralding it as the answer to ‘one of the age’s puzzles’ – ‘the cult of the “little man”’.102

Kate O’Brien in the Spectator, thought it ‘above average’ but not as sharp as Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and detected signs of haste and weariness. She did, however, note that Orwell ‘manages to make his novels easily distinguishable from those of other people’, perhaps the first public recognition of the authentically ‘Orwellian’ voice.103 There was recognition, too, in the national press, where James Agate featured it prominently in his book column for the Daily Express. Most interesting, and perhaps significant, was a letter from Max Plowman who wrote, ‘My Golly! What a book! I could write another about it … It’s done to the life and your little man lives all right & so gets his immortality,’ adding the strangely portentous afterthought, ‘Imagining I know you, I rather hope you’ve started on a Fairy Tale by way of reaction!’104 Plowman was right, and, if Orwell is to be believed, that fairy tale was already ticking away in his mind and had been doing so for the past two years.

Two weeks after his book appeared his father’s condition worsened, and Orwell went home to Southwold to be with him. On 25 June, George’s thirty-sixth birthday, Richard was close to death. That day, the Sunday Times carried a review of his novel. At the very last it must have seemed that an erring son had somehow redeemed himself. In a letter to Moore he gave a touching account of the old man’s end:

I was with the poor old man for the last week of his life, and then there was the funeral etc., etc., all terribly upsetting and depressing. However, he was 82 and had been very active till he was over 80, so he had had a good life, and I am very glad that latterly he had not been so disappointed in me as before. Curiously enough his last moment of consciousness was hearing that review I had in the Sunday Times. He heard about it and wanted to see it, and my sister took it in and read it to him, and a little later he lost consciousness for the last time.105

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