30th April 2020 by
George Orwell and Fatherhood: Part One
The most important influence on George Orwell was probably his father. This essay, then, explores the crucial theme of fatherhood in a number of contrasting ways. It first examines the responses of both Orwell and his contemporaries to his father. It then looks at the many fascinating representations of fathers in his novels. Orwell’s own strikingly progressive attitudes as a dad are highlighted as are, finally, the responses of his son, Richard Blair, to having the celebrated author of
Nineteen Eighty-Four as a father.
Richard Walmesley Blair – Long Due a Re-Assessment
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Two summers ago, I found myself on a whale-watching journey in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where I was teaching at the Fine Arts Work Center. We swayed from one side of the ship to the other to observe various species fins, minkes, and humpbacks performing synchronized acrobatics in waters where fishing nets threaten. Tranquil, playful, spouting fountains of ocean spray and then plunging under, they seemed not at all the wicked beasts that history had taught us to fear. I recalled that we were in the same seas in which
Moby-Dick’s
Pequod had sailed, and I thought this might have been however unconsciously why I had signed up for the adventure. It was as if the whales were calling me back to a promise I had made to myself long ago.
P.M. on The Paris Review
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Photo: Erica MacLean.
Whenever I would tell someone I was cooking from Herman Melville’s
Moby-Dick for my next column, they would gleefully shriek, “Whale steaks!” And I would dither a bit and explain that no, those are illegal in America, and that I was instead planning to make two forms of chowder, clam and cod, that weren’t going to be very different from each other. In our Chowhound-fueled, extreme-eating kind of world, I felt a little silly. Chowder is an easy dish, and while there’s raging conflict over the primacy of New York style (tomato-based) versus New England style (white), and the finer variations of each, the topic seems to inspire passion in inverse proportion to its importance. (Potatoes or no potatoes? Avast.) In fact, as Perry Miller reports in
Has any other novelist lived a life so steeped in political intrigue?
Evening Standard/Getty Images
March 10, 2021
The last novelist who acted like he might save the world may have been Graham Greene. He belonged to a generation of writers who might not always share the same political opinions but who supported many of the same causes: defending jailed dissidents, protesting illegal wars, and challenging the unfairness (or even stupidity) of censoring great books. He wrote a novel,
The Comedians, and developed its film adaptation with the intention of helping to “isolate” Haiti’s Papa Doc Duvalier, who contemplated having Greene assassinated in retaliation. At one point, Greene was so celebrated that the South African State Department asked him to negotiate the release of a kidnapped ambassador in El Salvador. (Greene eventually came to an agreement with the rebels, but the ambassador was killed anyway for reasons that were never fully understood.) By the end of his life,