As a critic, George Orwell cast a wide net. Equally at home discussing Charles Dickens and Charlie Chaplin, he moved back and forth across the porous borders between essay and journalism, high art and low. A frequent commentator on literature, language, film, and drama throughout his career, Orwell turned increasingly to the critical essay in the 1940s, when his most important experiences were behind him and some of his most incisive writing lay ahead.
All Art Is Propagandafollows Orwell as he demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary. With masterpieces such as Politics and the English Language and Rudyard Kipling and gems such as Good Bad Books, here is an unrivaled education in, as George Packer puts it, how to be interesting, line after line.
Orwell demonstrates in piece after piece how intent analysis of a work or body of work gives rise to trenchant aesthetic and philosophical commentary.
GEORGE ORWELL(1903–1950) served with the Imperial Police in Burma, fought with the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War, and was a member of the Home Guard and a writer for the BBC during World War II. He is the author of many works of nonfiction and fiction.
GEORGE PACKERis a staff writer for theNew Yorkerand author ofThe Assassin's Gate: America in Iraqand other works. He lives in Brooklyn.
Keith Gessen was born in Russia and educated at Harvard. He is a founding editor of
n+1and has written about literature and culture for
Dissent, the
Nation, the
New Yorker, and the
New York Review of Books. He is the author of the novel
All the Sad Young Literary Men.Charles Dickens
Inside the Whale, March 11, 1940
Inside the Whale and Otl*
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