Posts Tagged ‘Orwell’

6 Sep

Lying about books

Posted by argumentativeoldgit in Culture, literature. Tagged: , , , , .

Maybe I’ve just been mixing in the wrong circles. For I don’t think I have encountered any social circle in which literary erudition is particularly valued. Not that it is looked down upon, as such – that sort of thing, in my experience, only happens in certain areas of the internet where people are keen to establish their anti-snobbery credentials – but it is not much valued either. And that frankly suits me fine, because then, no-one sees the point of lying about books they (he? she? he or she? one?) haven’t read. Not only is no-one impressed by such bragging, but, even if the brag happens to be true, advertising one’s accomplishments is seen, quite correctly, to be in bad taste. Of course, if someone can speak in an intelligent and interesting manner about their reading, that is different; but merely to mention one has read something, whether one has or not, is but pointless braggadocio.

So I am a bit surprised that, according to this report in the Telegraph, over 60% of Britons admit to reading works they haven’t. What is the point? I wonder. But leaving the lying aside, I find myself intrigued by the five titles that have been chosen to represent the classics – Great Expectations, Crime and Punishment, War and Peace, Nineteen Eighty Four and The Lord of the Rings. Had this list been American rather than British, one might have expected Moby-Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird to have found a place there (or even, heaven help us, something by Ayn Rand), but overall, the titles in this very short list are all among the usual suspects. And they are all novels, of course, since poetry, short stories, drama, essays, etc. tend not to loom very prominently in the general perception of what constitutes literature.

Why Crime and Punishment, I wonder, and not, say The Idiot, or Demons, or The Brothers Karamazov? Why Pride and Prejudice (which admittedly isn’t in this particular list, but could so easily have been) rather than, say, Emma, or Mansfield Park, or Persuasion? I suppose that in each of these cases, the favoured title is the most accessible of the writer’s work (by which I mean the easiest to read and to take in), and is therefore most likely to have been read. That’s fair enough, I suppose. But even in this very shortlist of only five, the presence of Nineteen Eighty Four intrigues me. That it is a fine work, and very widely read, and hugely influential in shaping the modern imagination, there can be no doubt; and perhaps these qualities alone justify its inclusion. But Orwell himself, I imagine, might have felt a trifle embarrassed to have his work ranked alongside the novels of Dickens, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.

And there’s one more title I haven’t mentioned: The Lord of the Rings – the book that tops just about every single public poll ever held on favourite books. I had better not comment on this title, since it is obviously very widely read and very deeply loved, and since, further, my personal tastes are such that the attractions of the fantasy genre elude me completely. But I will admit that this is one book I lie about having read. Not to brag about it, you understand, but because, in this instance, lying saves a lot of time and hassle. It saves my having to hear, repeatedly, that I absolutely must read this, that I owe it to myself to read it, that it is among the greatest of masterpieces, and so on. And it saves my nodding away politely, saying that yes, I really must get round to it some day, and dreading that someone will press a copy of it into my hands and ask me later what I made of it. Better just to say that yes, I have read it, but that it isn’t really my kind of thing; and then we can all move on painlessly to some other topic.

Actually, I have read the first of the three volumes, and didn’t feel in the least inclined to read the others. No, that’s a lie as well. I started the first of the volumes, trudged through about half of it, and decided that life, even at the age of nineteen or so, simply wasn’t long enough.

Or maybe that’s a lie as well: I honestly can’t remember. When one lies so frequently about something, it becomes a habit one can’t shake off, and one can’t remember what really is true and what isn’t. Heaven only knows what the truth of this matter is.

18 Jul

Literary standards and “prolefeed”

Posted by argumentativeoldgit in literature. Tagged: , , .

One can’t, of course, read all the books that get published, and neither, of course, would one want to. But I generally like to keep up with what’s going on in the books world, and to that end, I often browse through the various titles on the shelf in bookshops. There will be those who will say that this is hardly sufficient, that one cannot hope to get the essence of a book merely from a casual glance. This is certainly true for certain kinds of books: obviously, if we are talking about a book of substance, or even a book that might be of substance, one has to read the whole book carefully before presuming to pass judgement. But crap one can tell at first glance. Quite often, a few paragraphs, or even a few sentences, are more than enough.

Why is so much utter crap inflicted on the public, I wonder? I look at the best writers of popular fiction from the past – from Wilkie Collins to Arthur Conan Doyle, from Jerome K Jerome to PG Wodehouse – and find in their works a concern for craftsmanship, an excellent ear for a well-turned sentence, a care for pacing and for construction – indeed, a respect for the reader. But most books I browse through nowadays seem to display the most undisguised contempt for the reader. The overriding ethos behind the writing seems to be “It’s only the popular market – who cares?” And the sad thing is that readers don’t care. Or, rather, vast numbers appear not to. No matter how much crap is thrown their way, they seem to lap it all up. And then they label as snobs and elitists anyone who does care for literary standards.

Literary standards never have been the preserve merely of “literary writers” – of the George Eliots and the James Joyces. I am currently reading one of those marvellous Flashman novels by George Macdonald Fraser, and at every page, am marvelling at the extraordinarily high quality of Fraser’s writing. (It is tempting to go into details here, but let’s not get sidetracked!) Someone such as Macdonald Fraser would have felt insulted, I think, and rightly so, by the suggestion that literary standards don’t matter just because one is writing for a popular market: he had sufficient respect for his art – yes, art – and for his readers to set himself the most exacting of literary standards. The same can be said, I think, for all good writers of popular literature. And yet, it is those of us who insist on high standards for popular literature, who insist that the intelligence of the readership ought to be respected, who are labelled snobs and elitists.

Someone was telling me recently how gratifying it is that Orwell’s dire predictions in Nineteen Eighty-Four haven’t come true. On the whole, I agree, but with one major proviso: it seems to me that there is one prediction that actually has come true, but which no-one appears to notice – and that is Orwell’s prediction of “prolefeed”. Nineteen Eighty Four is, after all, not merely a satire of totalitarianism, but is also a projection of various aspects of Orwell’s own society that concerned him; and one aspect that particularly concerned Orwell was the debasement of popular culture. So, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, he depicts masses of utter mind-rotting garbage churned out for consumption by an undiscerning and undemanding public. And this he called, with withering derision, “prolefeed”. 

In Orwell’s novel, “prolefeed” was produced by an all-powerful state, whereas the “prolefeed” of our own society is the product of private enterprise. But other than that, I can’t say I see any great difference. In this respect, Orwell’s nightmare vision actually has come true, and the sad thing is that no-one seems to notice. Or, perhaps, those who do notice tend to keep quiet because they would prefer not to be called names.