O/T.....Orwell on P.G.Wodehouse

[Bob_Huntley]

The thread 'Just Good Writing' reminded me how many times P.G.W. has been quoted here on GCA.

There are many who may remember his travails with the British Government post 1945,  but here is an article in his defense, by George Orwell, probably the most prescient political writer of the 20th century.

http://www.drones.com/orwell.html


Bob

[Philip Gawith]

I was not aware of PGW's wartime travails Bob - and very interesting to have a man of such different politics come to his defence.  A pleasure to read - Orwell is such an acute analyst. The last page of the article reminds me of the current mood of vengeance in relation to miscreants in the financial community!

[BCrosby]

Thanks Bob. It was indeed a tragedy that Wodehouse felt compelled to leave England after WWII. I had forgotten many of the details leading up to his departure.

To go even further off topic with a question for the group. A number of American civilians were interned in Germany and Italy during WWII. Does anyone know where I might find out more about them? They were not spies or members of the military. They included Ezra Pound (who, unlike Wodehouse, was actually a fascist sympathizer), but many others who do not appear to have been sympathizers.

Although I'm not ready to talk about it, my question actually relates to golf architecture. I think.

Bob

 

[Bill_McBride]

Thanks Bob. It was indeed a tragedy that Wodehouse felt compelled to leave England after WWII. I had forgotten many of the details leading up to his departure.

To go even further off topic with a question for the group. A number of American civilians were interned in Germany and Italy during WWII. Does anyone know where I might find out more about them? They were not spies or members of the military. They included Ezra Pound (who, unlike Wodehouse, was actually a fascist sympathizer), but many others who do not appear to have been sympathizers.
 

Bob, have you read Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night?  I had a rather random opportunity to do so lately, the first early Vonnegut in years, and it really was of interest.

[BCrosby]

Bill - I have not read it but will try to do so. I actually met Vonnegut once. He came to our college to speak and a group of us took him to dinner before his event. He was delightful and very funny.

Bob

[Brad Klein]

Unlike Philip I would fully endorse vengeance on today's financial miscreants. But the beauty of Orwell's essay is how delicate an analysis he offers, and how sensitive politically he can be even when he has very little personal regard for Wodehouse. In times of crisis and war, the slightest glance or misstatement becomes an accelerant.  And how much more incendiary was everything back in the late 1930/early 1940s.

Orwell's contemporary essays are always evidence of that, as is the fine series of European spy/mystery novels by Alan Furst, from "Night Soldiers" (1988) to "The Foreign Correspondent" (2006).

[BCrosby]

Brad -

Agreed about Orwell. But you aren't suggesting that Furst is in the same league, are you?

[Brad Klein]

Furst is an amazing historical writer with an uncanny ability to evoke mood. And he's working from scratch to create everything fictionally. What he tries to do he does incredibly well -- at least as well as Graham Greene. Orwell is a social critic, a journalist, his era's equivalent of a blogger, and he's unsurpassed in nuanced social observations and analyzing class distinctions. You'll never go into a restaurant again with the same attitude after reading about kitchen life in his "Down and Out in Paris and London."

They each do extremely well what they set out to do. I don't like ranking writers; I much prefer enjoying those with a well-defined genre who do it well, and each one excels. Wodehouse, by contrast, is less ambitious, more formulaic. Funny as hell, but predictable.

[ed_getka]

Interesting essay. I just happen to be reading a Wodehouse biography these days and the interview incident was pointed out in the introduction. It will be interesting to see how she portrays the events later in the book.

[Bill_McBride]

Furst is an amazing historical writer with an uncanny ability to evoke mood. And he's working from scratch to create everything fictionally. What he tries to do he does incredibly well -- at least as well as Graham Greene. Orwell is a social critic, a journalist, his era's equivalent of a blogger, and he's unsurpassed in nuanced social observations and analyzing class distinctions. You'll never go into a restaurant again with the same attitude after reading about kitchen life in his "Down and Out in Paris and London."

They each do extremely well what they set out to do. I don't like ranking writers; I much prefer enjoying those with a well-defined genre who do it well, and each one excels. Wodehouse, by contrast, is less ambitious, more formulaic. Funny as hell, but predictable.

I'm a big Alan Furst fan as well.  The last one was "The Spies of Warsaw," which I found a bit formulaic (how do writers avoid formula after a dozen books in the same vein?), but my favorite was the one before, "Dark Voyage."  It could have been written with Humphrey Bogart in mind as the captain.  If you like seafaring fiction AND World War II fiction, it's an unbeatable combination.  As always, Furst creates interesting characters you care about, in dangerous situations.  I definitely like his books as well or better than Greene's "entertainments."

Wodehouse is a completely different story.  Could anyone who wrote "The Clicking of Cuthbert" really be a Nazi collaborator?

[Bob_Huntley]

Furst is an amazing historical writer with an uncanny ability to evoke mood. And he's working from scratch to create everything fictionally. What he tries to do he does incredibly well -- at least as well as Graham Greene. Orwell is a social critic, a journalist, his era's equivalent of a blogger, and he's unsurpassed in nuanced social observations and analyzing class distinctions. You'll never go into a restaurant again with the same attitude after reading about kitchen life in his "Down and Out in Paris and London."

They each do extremely well what they set out to do. I don't like ranking writers; I much prefer enjoying those with a well-defined genre who do it well, and each one excels. Wodehouse, by contrast, is less ambitious, more formulaic. Funny as hell, but predictable.

Brad,

You are right about "Down and Out in Paris and London" however I think his most poignant work was "Homage to Catalonia" and the denoument of the totalitarism of both Left and Right."


Bob

[Brad Klein]

As an expose of the fragmented, feuding left-wing pro-Republican forces, "Homage to Catalonia" is very strong. But I still can't go to any restaurant anywhere, upscale or downscale without thinking about Orwell's behind-the-scenes account of that Parisian restaurant where he worked in "Down and Out in Paris and London." By comparison, the film "Ratatouille" presents a sanitized image, and didn't that star a rat?

By the way, what does this have to do with golf? Well, good writing is good writing, whether it's about golf or life.

[Rich Goodale]

The most clever idea of Orwell in the piece is that Himmler deliberately released Wodehouse some days prior to Operation Barbarossa--Hitler's spectacular repudation (via invasion) of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact--in order to somehow deflate the news value of the treaty abrogation/invasion.

Not only is this absurd--equating the release from a Silesian prison of a slightly dotty old writer/humourist with the start of probably the largest and most bloody land war in history--it is also historically inaccurate.  Barbarossa was launched on June 22, a day after Wodehouse was released from prison.  However, as Orwell notes, the news in the West of Wodehouse's release was not until June 25, after Hitler's troops were well inside the USSR and moving forward rapidly.  Regardless, does anybody think that in the June 21-25 period any news medium would have given any shrift (short or otherwise) to PG's travails?  Other than Orwell, that is....

PS--what WAS given to the world from Wodehouse's internment was the immortal line:

"If this is Uppper Silesia, I can only wonder what Lower Silesia is like."

[Tim Pitner]

As a fan of both Alan Furst and Orwell, particularly of Homage to Catalonia, I'd say that Furst might well be a better writer than Orwell--he's certainly a better novelist.  (Neither is as good as William Boyd).  Obviously, though, Furst isn't the social and political analyst that Orwell was, nor does Furst attempt to be.  Okay, back to golf course architecture? . . .

[BCrosby]

Not sure Orwell and Furst belong in the same sentence, but maybe that's a topic for another time.

Bob -

I ran across a Wodehouse line last night that brought me up short. He said something to the effect that at the end of your life the time you think of as wasted was the time you spent working for a salary.

Bob