Homage to Catalonia

[© Tweed the Younger]

Al had to have read this, at least.  good stuff, even independent of my necessary romanticization of anything having to do with Catalonia ca 1936.  the last sentence is freakin scary foreshadowing, huh?  I plowed through the 14 chapters in 4 days at my desk job, courtesy of george-orwell.org.  I'm tentatively planning on reading The Road to Wigan Pier next week, which I've been meaning to since Al first mentioned it in 2003 or 2004 and the post-padding prick that I was, I either insinuated or explicitly stated that I had read it, which in any event was entirely untrue and remains so, but probably won't be come early July.

[useful idiot]

Great book. Read Burmese Days and especially Coming Up for Air

[dialectical fetishist]

Yeah I like it too.

[Vasall des Midas]

What's the last sentence? It's been a while since I read it.

Oh, and yes, read Coming up for Air.

[© Tweed the Younger]

What's the last sentence? It's been a while since I read it.

Oh, and yes, read Coming up for Air.

The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery
hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I
had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the
deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving
streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the
cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the
barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket
matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar
Square, the red buses, the blue policemen--all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of
England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked
out of it by the roar of bombs.

[© Tweed the Younger]

I only sporadically and inattentively read the last few chapters of Wigan Pier, but I think I got the gist of what Orwell was saying. some of his predictions were nice and prophetic, but one thing stands out. he had little faith in imperial bourgeois democracy in the war vs fascism and felt only (parliamentary?) socialism in W Europe could stave off the fascists. (Wigan Pier was written before he fought in Spain, at which point he was exposed first-hand to how dramatically Stalin bent over backwards to cater to the capitalist democracies in France and England, so maybe his outlook on this topic changed at this point). 


also I am not well-versed in Orwell's thoughts on post-war Britain; and whether he viewed the solidification of the welfare state after the war as a form of the parliamentary socialism he felt necessary in ~1936 to defeat the fascists, and whether this would have then rendered his prognostication correct, if at least by a stretch.

[Vasall des Midas]

Orwell continued to hold that view well into WWII. Read up on the history of the Home Guard sometime, in which Orwell was an officer.

[dialectical fetishist]

What's the last sentence? It's been a while since I read it.

Oh, and yes, read Coming up for Air.

The industrial towns were far away, a smudge of smoke and misery
hidden by the curve of the earth's surface. Down here it was still the England I
had known in my childhood: the railway-cuttings smothered in wild flowers, the
deep meadows where the great shining horses browse and meditate, the slow-moving
streams bordered by willows, the green bosoms of the elms, the larkspurs in the
cottage gardens; and then the huge peaceful wilderness of outer London, the
barges on the miry river, the familiar streets, the posters telling of cricket
matches and Royal weddings, the men in bowler hats, the pigeons in Trafalgar
Square, the red buses, the blue policemen--all sleeping the deep, deep sleep of
England, from which I sometimes fear that we shall never wake till we are jerked
out of it by the roar of bombs.

Ah yes, prophetic and memorable. Thanks.