Orwell's "Inside the Whale"
Posted on December 18th, 2005 in musings and
Reading George Orwell’s essay, “Inside the Whale”, and, as the following excerpt reveals, Orwell’s social and political critical perspective is as relevant as ever:
…we live in a shrinking world. The ‘democratic vistas’ have ended in barbed wire. There is less feeling of creation and growth, less and less emphasis on the cradle, endlessly rocking, more and more emphasis on the teapot, endlessly stewing. To accept civilization as it is practically means accepting decay. It has ceased to be a strenuous attitude and become a passive attitude — even ‘decadent’, if that word means anything. (18)
Ostensibly a review of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, this lengthy essay is a circumspect critique that handles several subjects with ease. This is substantial criticism–topical, political, opinionated, broad. Reading it I couldn’t help but wonder who the great critics of today are, what they are writing, where they are published. Not the narrowly-focused (if not useful and important) critics one reads in a given field, but rather those whose scope spans fields and makes relevant connections to world we live in outside of specialized fields of knowledge. I also couldn’t help remember a time when I was more often disposed to more formal critical writing, and why shouldn’t I be so again now?
Critics of Orwell’s ilk are tough, with rigorous minds. There is an ever-present fairness in this essay, an urgency to call it as he sees it without too much concern for propriety, or fashion, or useless niceties. So much criticism around the arts these days follows the line of “everything is alright.” And that’s just boring, unchallenging, cheerleading. Of course, many works have merits, have interest and a perspective; but criticism must move beyond affirmation into skepticism. There are always questions, weak moments, arbitrary decisions (we’re all human, after all) and it is in the critique of these shortcomings that learning and intellectual expansion happen.
