I am just about finished with this collection of Orwell essays. Man, there is a frankness that may now be gone. Everyone lies now. Me thinks Orwell came at a moment of truth that passed within itself and in his very writing. As soon as it arrived it was gone.
Just as Marxism's practical utopianism was turning its corner and western civ's waking up from centuries of royal rule...it broke. And Orwell was there to report it all -- the Spanish Civil War was the moment maybe? And as the young bride turned flush around the corner, sweet and smiling...her life and life's mission were gone.
O.K., so everyone knows this about Orwell already, but...
Now I am to read about Nathan Shapell and am ordering Witness to Truth, his memoir about his experiences in Auschwitz and his life following. This may be way to much for me to bear. The factness of the Holocaust is not something we see here now. The blown off legs of American soldiers, if even on the cover of the newspaper do not persuade us to "disengage." To what?! All language is politics. Me thinks Orwell came at a moment of truth that passed within itself and in his very writing.
To warm myself up I am going to read Primo Levi first.
I will read myself to sleep with a glass of milk beside the bed. And I will keep my milk in a Care Bear glass. I hope to invoke childhood reverie before I sleep so I do not dream so drearily.
Just as Marxism's practical utopianism was turning its corner and western civ's waking up from centuries of royal rule...it broke. And Orwell was there to report it all -- the Spanish Civil War was the moment maybe? And as the young bride turned flush around the corner, sweet and smiling...her life and life's mission were gone.
O.K., so everyone knows this about Orwell already, but...
Now I am to read about Nathan Shapell and am ordering Witness to Truth, his memoir about his experiences in Auschwitz and his life following. This may be way to much for me to bear. The factness of the Holocaust is not something we see here now. The blown off legs of American soldiers, if even on the cover of the newspaper do not persuade us to "disengage." To what?! All language is politics. Me thinks Orwell came at a moment of truth that passed within itself and in his very writing.
To warm myself up I am going to read Primo Levi first.
I will read myself to sleep with a glass of milk beside the bed. And I will keep my milk in a Care Bear glass. I hope to invoke childhood reverie before I sleep so I do not dream so drearily.
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