Facing Unpleasant Facts: Narrative EssaysEssays by the author of 1984 on topics from “remembrances of working in a bookshop [to] recollections of fighting in the Spanish Civil War” (Publishers Weekly). George Orwell was first and foremost an essayist, producing throughout his life an extraordinary array of short nonfiction that reflected—and illuminated—the fraught times in which he lived. “As soon as he began to write something,” comments George Packer in his foreword, “it was as natural for Orwell to propose, generalize, qualify, argue, judge—in short, to think—as it was for Yeats to versify or Dickens to invent.” Facing Unpleasant Facts charts Orwell’s development as a master of the narrative-essay form and unites such classics as “Shooting an Elephant” with lesser-known journalism and passages from his wartime diary. Whether detailing the horrors of Orwell’s boyhood in an English boarding school or bringing to life the sights, sounds, and smells of the Spanish Civil War, these essays weave together the personal and the political in an unmistakable style that is at once plainspoken and brilliantly complex. “Best known for his late-career classics Animal Farm and 1984, George Orwell—who used his given name, Eric Blair, in the earliest pieces of this collection aimed at the aficionado as well as the general reader—was above all a polemicist of the first rank. Organized chronologically, from 1931 through the late 1940s, these in-your-face writings showcase the power of this literary form.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review |
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Results 1-5 of 17
Page xxi
... rifles and Burmese rice paddies. “Accounts of actual happenings cast a particular kind of narrative spell,” the critic Gordon Harvey says about this essay; “they give a particular pleasure that fiction doesn't give and that won't ...
... rifles and Burmese rice paddies. “Accounts of actual happenings cast a particular kind of narrative spell,” the critic Gordon Harvey says about this essay; “they give a particular pleasure that fiction doesn't give and that won't ...
Page 23
... rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a ...
... rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a ...
Page 24
... rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards ...
... rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, magistrates and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone ten yards ...
Page 30
... rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild ...
... rifle, an old .44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings. It was not, of course, a wild ...
Page 32
... rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelled the elephant. The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and ...
... rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelled the elephant. The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and ...
Contents
1 | |
11 | |
23 | |
29 | |
38 | |
Marrakech | 44 |
My Country Right or Left | 52 |
War time Diary | 59 |
Revenge Is Sour | 184 |
The Case for the Open Fire | 189 |
The Sporting Spirit | 193 |
In Defence of English Cooking | 198 |
A Nice Cup of Tea | 201 |
The Moon Under Water | 205 |
In Front of Your Nose | 209 |
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad | 214 |
England Your England | 109 |
Dear Doktor Goebbels Your British Friends are Feeding Fine | 139 |
Looking Back on the Spanish War | 143 |
As I Please 1 | 167 |
As I Please 2 | 172 |
As I Please 3 | 175 |
As I Please 16 | 180 |
A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray | 219 |
Why I Write | 224 |
How the Poor Die | 232 |
Such Such Were the Joys | 245 |
Notes | 296 |
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actually American army believe bombs bread Britain British Burmese Days cell child Cyprian’s Cyril Connolly Daily Worker doubt early elephant England English essays eyes face fact Fascist feeling fight fire Flip France Fredric Warburg French German hand happened Hitler Homage to Catalonia Home Guard intelligentsia Italian Jews killed kind knew labour later less live London look man’s memory merely Moon Under Water morning Nazis never newspaper night one’s Orwell Orwell’s papers party patriotism perhaps Pétain political prison probably raids remember rifle round Russian Sambo seemed shoot Shooting an Elephant shot side simply soldiers sort Spain Spanish Spanish civil war spike stories talk thing thought tion took Tramp Major turned Vicar of Bray whole words writing