Synopses & Reviews
There have been many studies of George Orwell's life and work, but nothing quite like this book by Alex Woloch--an exuberant, revisionary account of Orwell's writing.
"Good prose is like a window-pane," Orwell famously avers. But what kind of literary criticism is possible, face-to-face with Orwell's plain-style prose? Too often this style has been either dismissed by a seemingly more savvy critical theory, or held up as a reprimand against the enterprise of theory. In a series of unusually close and intensive readings--focused on the unstable event of writing itself--Woloch recovers the radical and experimental energies of Orwell's prose. Against accounts that would quickly naturalize Orwell's truthfulness or reduce his window-pane prose to bad faith, Woloch's study bears down on a propulsive irony and formal restlessness that have always been intertwined with Orwell's plain-style. Such restlessness, far from diluting Orwell's democratic and socialist politics, is at its aesthetic and conceptual core.
The first half of Or Orwell ranges across his nonfiction prose, including new readings of "A Hanging," The Road to Wigan Pier, and Inside the Whale. The second half develops an extended analysis of a single writing project: Orwell's eighty "As I Please" newspaper columns, written for the Socialist weekly Tribune. Moving through multiple forms and genres, testing the limits of each, Orwell emerges in Woloch's fine-grained account as a boldly unconventional writer and a central figure in twentieth-century literature and political thought.
Review
Woloch turns his considerable ingenuity and superb ear to the task of a slow, close investigation of Orwell's writing. He is razor‑sharp on the critical symptoms of several generations who wish to praise (or, less often, bury) Orwell and his ordinary language without exploring the stylistic object of their claims very deeply. An accomplished and subtle book. Jed Esty, University of Pennsylvania
Review
This is a fascinating and important work, probably the best and most original book on Orwell I have read. It is the first book on Orwell that truly attends to the complexities of Orwell's language, composition technique, and poetics. Aidan Wasley, University of Georgia
Review
Woloch's subject is the finest grain of attention (his own and Orwell's)--an attention that is always devoted to the over-looked in society, the marginalized, the unimportant. Both Orwell and Woloch are in pursuit of the aesthetic and the political meaning of 'the over-looked.' No one pauses over a phrase as often as Alex Woloch, and nobody has seen just what the payoff might be to the virtuosities of deep close reading. No one except Orwell himself. Woloch's book becomes a kind of homage to the tenacity of Orwell's purpose, to his sureness of touch, and to the importance of his tactics as a writer. Philip Fisher, Harvard University
Synopsis
There have been many studies of George Orwell, but nothing quite like this book by Alex Woloch--an exuberant, revisionary account of Orwell's radical writing. Bearing down on the propulsive irony and formal restlessness intertwined with his plain-style, Woloch offers a new understanding of Orwell and a new way of thinking about writing and politics.
About the Author
Alex Woloch is Professor of English at Stanford University and author of
The One vs. the Many.Stanford University