Orwell is frequently cited by both the left and right as the most clear-headed social critic of the millennium. But he is not a corrective to muddle-headedness. He was, indeed pretty muddle-headed himself. His early works, Down and Out, and The Road to Wigan Pier, were, he later admitted, largely fictionalized, lavishly embellished accounts of his adventures among the exploited and desperately poor. The conditions he described were not untrue, but they were dramatized. He entered the Spanish Civil War on the highly romanticized left and quickly became disillusioned and revealed the Soviet Union's betrayal of the Left, the side he had joined. Prior to that. shortly after graduating from the foremost... (read more)
Orwell is frequently cited by both the left and right as the most clear-headed social critic of the millennium. But he is not a corrective to muddle-headedness. He was, indeed pretty muddle-headed himself. His early works, Down and Out, and The Road to Wigan Pier, were, he later admitted, largely fictionalized, lavishly embellished accounts of his adventures among the exploited and desperately poor. The conditions he described were not untrue, but they were dramatized. He entered the Spanish Civil War on the highly romanticized left and quickly became disillusioned and revealed the Soviet Union's betrayal of the Left, the side he had joined. Prior to that. shortly after graduating from the foremost... (read more)