Every Intellectual's Big Brother

Chapter Seven: The Man within the Writings

i. “a presence in our lives” Q: What does Orwell still have to say to intellectuals today? Richard Kostelanetz: Simply to always see clearly and always tell the truth concisely. Richard Rorty: He reminds us how easy it is for intellectuals to become, with the best motives in the world, apologists for tyrannies. Anthony Stewart: We can still learn a lot from Orwell about decency, which is a term that he used a lot. Decency has become sort of a cliché. Yet especially in a time where people who look like me, who historically have not had access to positions of power and positions of privilege, now do, there is no better framework for various groups of people to get along than just the simple commitment to treat one another decently. Bernard Crick: He would say to intellectuals today, use your intelligence to reach ordinary people. Most of his books are demanding, but none of them needs any special vocabulary or special education. Erika Gottlieb: Orwell’s message to intellectuals today is to be found in his definition of the intellectual’s duty to face reality, in spite of, or independently of, party affiliations, to recognize that the “smelly little orthodoxies” and the various “isms” are not to define or legitimize any dishonest position abandoning the social function of the intellectual to enlighten public opinion. chapter seven The Man within the Writings 146 orwell’s literary siblings today Anthony Stewart: Orwell is still an important person to read. Reading Orwell will give you a sense of the twentieth century. His essays give you a very clear sense of how life is a struggle and that—even though it’s a struggle—the struggle is not to be feared. To me, Orwell was unusual in his relationship to the people he was sort of assumed to be peers with, he was never cozy with them and that lack of coziness was a really important part of his identity. So, to me, he’s important because he gives you a clear sense that fitting in and belonging needn’t be the most important thing in our lives. Q: Does Orwell’s example of intellectual integrity have something worthwhile to say about the way in which we are conducting our political and intellectual discourse? Richard Kostelanetz: Yes, certainly, in an age of intellectual/literary opportunism in which too many are guilty of exploiting one or another gravy train. Bernard Crick: To judge by the number of times he is quoted, sometimes ignorantly , sometimes accurately, he is used as a counter-symbol to a general feeling today of a lack of integrity among political leaders and ingrown, publicly incomprehensible discourse among academic intellectuals. Richard Rorty: No. We all do our best to avoid what later readers will see as selfdeception , and sometimes we succeed. But Orwell’s success doesn’t give us much help in figuring out how to avoid the temptations to self-deception that permeate the political and intellectual issues of our own day. Christopher Hitchens: The striking feature of today’s political landscape is the way it’s often dominated by semi-private languages. The language used by political consultants, political manipulators, and pollsters is the language that isn’t expected to be needed by the voters it chooses to influence. And the language that’s used by dictatorships exactly conforms to the sort of thing Orwell warned us against: leaders of the glorious struggle that is to come; the great future that awaits; the hard times that have to be endured meanwhile. And of course, when this [politicized language] supports leader worship or an extreme religion, it becomes a language entirely unto itself. Children are taught not to read or to write, or to consider or to compare, but simply to memorize one sacred language—and the whole text of the Holy Book becomes all they know. It possesses them. They don’t possess it. Even the milder type [of propaganda] forms people who surrender their freedom of thought, their independence of mind. the man within the writings 147 Todd Gitlin: At his best, Orwell is rather unusual for an English writer—he is interested in understanding his own intellectual process. He’s not defensive. It’s not important for him to establish that he is always right about something. In fact, he changes his mind on various fronts and he’s interested in why that might be...