Does anybody else get tired of pretending that 1984 and Animal Farm are the only books that George Orwell ever wrote? I know that he has legitimate readers, myself included, but tons of people who call themselves his fans don’t seem to have read anything other than those two books.
Why are they only books that anybody ever claims they’ve read? Because it sounds good in a conversation. That’s the whole point of reading to some people.
Keep the Aspidistra Flying was a beautiful and twisted story about angst, passion and poverty. Who ever talks about that? Who conserves electricity and contributes to a coalworkers union because of The Road To Wigan Pier?
Does this bother anyone else about this or another author? Kafka, Hemingway, Huxley, Tolstoy and Ayn Rand are great examples, too.
Bless you all. I wish I had a points wand.
6 Responses
they are prescribed in high school so even weiners can pretend they are cool by quoting concepts.
I tried to ask an intelligent question about Wittgenstein, Bird and Berlioz and have gotten no where. Join the club. You could get millions of responses if you asked about Brittney Spears or Brad Pitt.
lol
I like Brad P.
I have always enjoyed Politics and the English Language. It’s a fantastic essay.
Well, i should admit that im a fan of Orwell’s 1984, but not of Orwell.
At one point, I read almost every book of Hermann Hesse just to be able to say im a fan of him [and, of course, because i loved all his books hehe], at the other point, try to find any other books by Orwell in lithuania – its simply impossible. We, as a postsoviet country, have everything by all kinds of russian authors, and now print everything by contemporary authors, but the most of the ones who had written like 30 and more years ago are not forgotten, but simply unaccessible.
and its our loss.
Don’t forget Homage to Catalonia and the Essays. If you haven’t read the essays, hop down to your local library asap and borrow a collection of them. He’s so damn *sane* – read his one on Nationalism and you’ll see through an awful lot of what we’re force fed today.
Life is short. Books are long. If we want to read some of every great author, sometimes we’re going to have to skip some of the stuff on the back shelves. At least not everyone’s reading the da Vinci bloody code. It’s always nice to be reminded that there are still real readers in the world. Aspidistra was a clever little book, I liked it a lot.