Quote:
Originally Posted by Ak Mike
His comments about Mark Twain were that Twain was a man of powerful and subversive vision, but that through either cowardice or a desire for popularity Twain held back and presented himself as a harmless genial comedian.
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I think he was right in the description, but wrong about the motive, except perhaps, indirectly correct about the popularity. That Twain held back is true enough, but that was probably as much practical financial calculation as it was desire for popularity. I grew up now & then in a part of the country that was very much a remnant of the period that Twain lived in, & believe me, his private views about religion - which is where he held back - would have destroyed him had they become public.
I agree that Orwell was an excellent essayist, but I think as a novelist he was nothing to compare to Tolstoy. My favorite Orwell is Down & Out in Paris & London. In fact, I view it as required reading, & I have given a copy to each of my sons as they hit college age. And yes, I know it is fictionalized, so maybe it would count as a novel. As a novelist, I think that Orwell was basically a political critic, a socialist with the rare ability to draw back from utopianism. But politics and "isms" make for poor novels, although not unimportant ones - as can be seen, I think, in the politico/religious stretches in War & Peace.