Catégories
presse

Nicolas Walter : Orwell and the Anarchists

Article de Nicolas Walter paru dans Freedom, Vol. 42, No. 2, 30th January 1981, p. 9-12


GEORGE ORWELL died in 1950. He had become famous with the publication of Animal Farm in 1945, and much more famous with the publication Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949. But he was too ill to enjoy his fame, and he died of tuberculosis at the age of 46. Since then, he has grown steadily more and more famous, and after becoming a classic in his own life he has now become a name known by virtually everyone who reads at all. Almost all his books have been continually reprinted, and most of his shorter writings have also been conveniently reprinted in the four-volume Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters. Of all modern writers, in fact, he is one of the easiest to get hold of; he is also one of the easiest to get to grips with, for all his work has a style and structure which are so spare and simple and a personality and purpose which are so peculiar and powerful that introduction and explanation are virtually unnecessary. In a way, then, there is no need to read about Orwell at all, only to read Orwell; but this hasn’t stopped many people writing about him.

Catégories
revues

Arno Schmitt: « Gay Rights versus Human Rights: A Response to Joseph Massad »

Article d’Arno Schmitt paru dans Public Culture, Vol. 15, No 3, Fall 2003, p. 587-591.

Joseph Massad’s article “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World” (Public Culture 14 [spring 2002]: 361–85) is a strange concoction. Although ostensibly against the Gay International (GI) and its view that always and everywhere there are gays waiting to be freed by U.S. organizations, Massad attacks scholars who oppose this assumption. To justify his attacks he distorts our writings.