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tion could be; instinctively, he turned away from the cant and preten–
tiousness of the "literary." He wasn't a Marxist or even a political
revolutionary. He was something better and more dangerous: a revolu–
tionary personality. H e turned his back on his own caste; he tried to
discover what was happening beyond the provincial limits of high-brow
life.
1
If
he was a good man, it was mainly in the sense that he had
measured his desperation and come to accept it as a mode of honor.
And he possessed the impulse most essential to the good writer: he was
ready to take chances.
No one is obliged to admire this kind of writer, and there are
clearly grounds for a variety of criticisms and qualifications. All that is
necessary is that a critic be able to recognize such a writer when he meets
up with him-in short, that Mr. Atkins be able to distinguish between
someone like Orwell and someone like himself.
What finally betrays Mr. Atkins' hand is his treatment of 1984, a
book toward which he adopts a moderately condescending tone. Quite
failing to grasp its subterranean passion and prophetic power, he writes
that 1984 "is one of those books that overpower you as you read but
which do not leave any strong conviction in the mind...." And a little
later, "My advice to old ladies is not to be too frightened by this
book.. .."
Why? Because "under modern conditions it is inconceivable that any
government could control, even with the most advanced technical re–
sources available, a population so completely as is done in 1984." Sup–
pose, however, that 1984 is taken, as Orwell clearly meant it, not as a
portrait of a totalitarian society but as an extreme version of the
idea
of totalitarianism; suppose "any government" could control a popula–
tion only two-thirds as much as Orwell says; suppose, for that matter,
it could do no more than Hitler and Stalin already have. Isn't that
enough to frighten old ladies, to say nothing of young men? And what
would
frighten Mr. Atkins?
Irving Howe
1 A mistake, in the opinion of the English novelist Angus Wilson. Writing
in
The Observer
some time ago, Mr. Wilson discovered that "the truth is that
by leaving Eton not for Oxford or Cambridge but for 'experience in the world,'
Orwell lost more than h e gained. He lost touch with those in all classes whose
lives were in fixed patterns...." Even if
thi~
slightly comic remark were true,
one would suppose that for a book like
The Road to Wigan Pier,
it would be
worth losing whatever Orwell might have found to
~ay
about those whose lives
remain in fixed pa tterns; after all, there really isn't much point in regretting
that he wasn't Jane Austen. Any writer worth reading at all has limitations that
are inseparable from, and usually go to make up, his strengths.
