on Orwell writing 1984

Just came across this interesting short biographical piece on Orwell in the Guardian.

The circumstances surrounding the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four make a haunting narrative that helps to explain the bleakness of Orwell's dystopia. Here was an English writer, desperately sick, grappling alone with the demons of his imagination in a bleak Scottish outpost in the desolate aftermath of the second world war. The idea for Nineteen Eighty-Four, alternatively, "The Last Man in Europe", had been incubating in Orwell's mind since the Spanish civil war. His novel, which owes something to Yevgeny Zamyatin's dystopian fiction We, probably began to acquire a definitive shape during 1943-44, around the time he and his wife, Eileen adopted their only son, Richard. Orwell himself claimed that he was partly inspired by the meeting of the Allied leaders at the Tehran Conference of 1944. Isaac Deutscher, an Observer colleague, reported that Orwell was "convinced that Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt consciously plotted to divide the world" at Tehran.

(emphasis mine) h/t Arts and Letters Daily

more Tolkien news

Christopher Tolkien is publishing another of his father's poems.

The 500-stanza poem is closely modelled on the Elder Edda, a collection of Norse myths preserved in a 13th-century manuscript, a pedigree Christopher Tolkien described as "unknown territory" for most people.

"I dare say that a good many will be instantly put off by the very idea of 'long narrative poems in verse' and pursue it no further," he said. It was equally possible that their form will lend them an "unexpected impact," he continued.

"My hope is that some of those who appreciate and admire the works of my father will find it illuminating in respect of Old Norse poetry in general, in his own treatment of the fierce, passionate and mysterious legend, and in this further and little known aspect of him as both philologist and poet. Above all I hope they will take pleasure in this poetry."

Tolkien's Sigrun Gudrun (the guardian)

--
btw, the hunt for gollum is really well done.

hundred most influential books since WWII

Here -- from the Times Literary Supplement (1995). Another sign that I haven't read nearly enough (and probably haven't earned the right to pontificate on much of anything though that doesn't seem likely to stop me). The books from the list that I've read (at least in part):

14. George Orwell: Animal Farm
15. George Orwell: Nineteen Eighty-four
17. Karl Popper: The Open Society and Its Enemies
19. Jean-Paul Sartre: Existentialism and Humanism
47. Ludwig Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations
64. Thomas Kuhn: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
77. Hans Küng: On Being a Christian
79. John Rawls: A Theory of Justice
84. Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Gulag Archipelago
93. Stephen Hawking: A Brief History of Time
98. Richard Rorty: Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
--
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
Ludwig Wittgenstein: Tractatus Logico-philosophicus

Maybe the books which have proved to be important has changed since 1995. Anyone have a good updated list?

old paperbacks (and Montaigne)

"I'll gladly come back from the other world to give the lie to anyone who will shape me other than I was, even though to honor me." -Michel De Montaigne

The Vintage 1956 back cover of the Lowenthal's (auto)biography of Montaigne:



I've taken to reading old paperbacks. I'm sure they aren't the best translations but it's just nice to read an old book and they're usually cheap. I also realize ebooks are all the rage and I'm sure they save trees or something but they just don't allow for the same kind of relationship.

"Old books? The devil take them!" Goby said.
"Fresh every day must be my books and bread."
Nature herself approves the Goby rule
And gives us every moment a fresh fool.

Harley Shum

"The Stranger"

I was pouring out on him everything that was in my heart, cries of anger and cries of joy. He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man.

The Stranger p. 120

I read The Stranger by Camus while we were in Mexico. I didn't like the writing style as much as The Rebel or The Plague. Chris seems to think my perspective amounts to sacrilege. Everything I've read by Camus so far is stunning. I wish I started reading him sooner.

Borges on writing

Quotes from Borges' when he gave the Norton Lectures (from This Craft of Verse).

"[W]hat I have read is far more important than what I have written. For one reads what one likes-- yet one writes not what one would like to write but what one is able to write." (p. 98)

(on Huck Finn) "[T]here should be something pleasing to the imagination in the very framework of the book [...] We feel the idea of the black man, the boy, of the raft, of the Mississippi, of the long nights--that these ideas are somehow agreeable to the imagination, are accepted by the imagination." (p. 102)

"One knows so little about oneself that, when I read Don Quixote, I thought I read it because of the pleasure I found in the archaic style and in the adventures of the knight and the squire. Now I think that my pleasure lay elsewhere--that it came from the character of the knight. I am not now sure that I believe in the adventures, or in the conversations between the knight and the squire; but I know that I believe in the knight's character, and I suppose that the adventures were invented by Cervantes in order to show us the character of the hero. [... Similarly,] I am sure that I believe in Sherlock Holmes and in the strange friendship between him and Dr. Watson. [...] I suppose the future will bring all things in the long run, and so we may imagine a moment when Don Quixote and Sancho, Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson will still exist, though all their adventures may have been blotted out. Yet men, in other languages may still go on inventing stories to fit those characters--stories that should be as mirrors to the characters." (p. 103-104)

"The Gnostics said the only way to be rid of a sin is to commit it, because afterwards you repent it." (advocating trial & error in writing p.109)

"Free verse is far more difficult than the regular and classic forms [...] the ear is led to expect something, and then it does not get what it expects. Something else is given to it; and that something else should be, in a sense, a failure and also a satisfaction." (p. 109-110)

"Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this: I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do--when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

When I write, I do not think of the reader (because the reader is an imaginary character), and I do not think of myself (perhaps I am an imaginary character also), but I think of what I am trying to convey and I do my best not to spoil it." (p. 116-117)

"When I am writing something, I try not to understand it. I do not think intelligence has much to do with the work of a writer." (p. 118)

I didn't find Borges' insights to be especially profound but I was grateful for the advice on writing. I started journaling again in 2008 and it seems my pen mostly wants to write philosophishy stuff but I'm trying to retrain it. I think I squashed my philosophy bug so that may help. Borges made it obvious that I'm still making most of the mistakes of a young man and that there's really only one cure to bad writing... more writing (trial and error). Borges also thinks French writers are too self conscious.¹ But I love those Frenchies (well, especially Hadot, Camus, Montaigne). I may still take Borges' advice on that point.

--
[1] "I think that one of the sins of modern literature is that it is too self-conscious. For example, I think of French literature as being one of the great literatures in the world (I don't suppose anybody could doubt this). Yet I have been made to feel that French authors are generally too self-conscious. A French writer begins by defining himself before he quite knows what he is going to write. He says: What should (for example) a Catholic born in such-and-such province, and being a bit of a socialist, write? Or: How should we write after the Second World War? I suppose there are many people all over the world who labor under those illusory problems." (p. 118-119)