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/lit/ - Literature

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2858976 No.2858976 [Reply] [Original]

Why does /lit/ consider Orwell's works as plebian?

>> No.2858978

I think lit consensus is that he was a poor novelist and a good essayist.

>> No.2858981

It doesn't, it observes that lots of teenagers adore 1984. No blemish on Orwell for that.

>> No.2859009

1984 is a common recommendation to people just getting started in reading as a hobby, and so it's disparaged by people who are in Stage 2 of reading hobbyism, which is shit like Vonnegut, Hemingway, modernist/postmodernist literature, Camus, and forcing yourself through Hamlet.

>> No.2859016

>>2859009
>forcing yourself through Hamlet
I am praying on my bare knees that you're not serious about this, for your sake.

>> No.2859020

>>2859009
care to elaborate on stage 3 or 4?

>> No.2859026

1984 is badly-written form whatever perspective you come from.

How the fuck did it even get published? Why didn't see just sell the paper-thin premise to a better write?

>> No.2859036

>>2859026

>badly-written form
>better write

Seriously, how fucking dare you criticise anyone else's writing?

>> No.2859033

>>2859009

>implying most British schoolkids don't read Shakespeare long before Orwell.

>> No.2859034

>>2859026
Because of copyrights?

We've had this discussion before, it doesn't lead anywhere. Let's not do this.

>> No.2859037

>>2859026
Is 1984 nearly as badly written as your post?

>> No.2859038

>>2859020
Go through your Liberal Arts faculty and find the Classics or History professor who doesn't study modern history, or do critical literary analysis. You'll find he's read more literature than the literature professors, speaks two dead languages, more than one living language, and is a consummate full-time scholar even if he doesn't write a lot of papers. That's Stage 4. Also known as "every single intellectual prior to the institutionalization of bourgeois academia".

Stage 3 was him in his 20s.

>> No.2859046

because orwell was a socialist who supported tyranny and yet wrote books about how tyranny is bad

>> No.2859053

>>2859036
>>2859037

>badly-written

You do know that there's a difference between patently bad prose and a couple of misspelled/unfinished words?

Or maybe you don't, and are in the camp that genuinely believes 1984 is well-written.

>> No.2859055

>>2859046
>Gloriously missing the point
Seriously, kudos. I did not think it was possible to fail with such splendour.

>> No.2859064

>>2859038
YOU'RE OBVIOUSLY STAGE 3 THEN LOL.

>> No.2859069
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2859069

>>2859064
No.

>> No.2859067

>>2858976
Orwell's works can not be so widely characterized. I think that what you are sensing is an antipathy to two of his works in particular: Animal Farm, and Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Orwell's other works ( Down and Out in Paris and London, Burmese Days, Coming Up for Air etc.) are of varying quality, but a lot of them have considerable literary merit and in no way deserve disparagement.
As for the animosity against "Nineteen-Eighty-Four" and "Animal Farm" the dislike stems from their simplicity. People who have not read any other of Orwell's works will get an inaccurate conception of his skills as a writer from these works alone. Both are very widely read and known, but are terribly simplistic and are typically read somewhere in elementary school. Furthermore these texts employ hackneyed language, and while there is a legitimate plethora of thematic elements to choose from if one digs deep enough, the texts are taught at such an early age that nothing save for the most simplistic mono-dimensional didactic excuse for a theme is chosen, which tends to degrade a text as a universal as Dr. Johnson points out.
Orwell was essentially a decent if not brilliant writer who wrote some decent if somewhat unoriginal works, and whose oeuvre has been murdered to preserve his worst works.

>> No.2859076
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2859076

>>2859064
>>2859038
>>2859009

>tfw Stage 2.5

>> No.2859084

>>2859076
HOW MUCH EXP TIL LVL UP DUDE?

>> No.2859113

>>2859067

I've read 1984, Animal Farm and Down and Out in Paris and London. And neither really did anything for me, except for 1984 when I was a kid and my father read it out loud to me before bed.

What would you recommend me to read next of his work, if any? Burmese Days was on the list, if only for it being about Burma.

>> No.2859116

He was a class imposter. He did downwards what Waugh did upwards. Certainly I'm not saying that an audience some day back then found him important. But to us he is not relevant anymore. His style is subservient decorum to a message that sounds as out of date as a peak cap turned backwards.

>> No.2859121

>>2859116
& not as talented prose-wise as Waugh, I think.

that's not really an insult, Waugh was really fucking good at writing prose.

>> No.2859129

>>2859116
>Implying all original communists weren't
>Implying it matters when you're writing about human problems

>> No.2859134

>>2859113
I would recommend Homage to Catalonia. Important work for understanding the Spanish Civil War. If you're looking for fiction "The Clergyman's Daughter" would be his most original work.

>> No.2859143

>>2859121
Agree with you on that.

>> No.2859400

>>2859134

Ok, cheers.

>> No.2859411

because /lit/ are pedantic pissants.

>> No.2859564

do you guys like Keep the Aspidistra Flying? I'm aware that he only wrote it for money and hated it but I actually thought it was pretty sweet.

But I am stupid and cannot tell you why

>> No.2859570

>>2859564
Maybe this guy can explain it for you: http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Unabashedly-Bookish-The-BN/More-than-1984-Orwell-s-Lesser-Kno
wn-Novels/ba-p/553516?nobounce

>> No.2859647

His novels are usually simply (and beautifully) written and constructed but are also incredibly moving and affective because of this. I can't understand how you could have a problem with the way he writes while dismissing the things he achieves.

>> No.2859658

Because he wrote fiction like he wrote essays; he focuses more on the message and that messages clarity than he does, simply put, the 'art' of fiction. He's not the photographer that focuses on composition and lighting to create an aesthetic photo, he's the one who gets as much content as possible to put in the newspaper. If you look at photos (or read novels, in this case) solely for its content/message, then he's great, but if you're in it also for the 'art' of the medium, then he's quite lacking.

>> No.2859696

>>2859658
That's an interesting way of putting it, although I definitely don't regard that particular 'style' (writing fiction as if you were writing an essay) as any way inferior to concentrating on the 'art' of fiction, as you put it. In fact I consider it a strength just as important as focussing on the more traditional 'artistic' aspects of literature. Two completely different modes, in my eyes. One is not more significant than the other.