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Harmon - I see on rereading that essay on Twain that Orwell is actually tougher on Twain than I had remembered. He says that Twain worshipped success, that he switched sides in the Civil War when he saw the North was going to win, that he could not resist what you call the "practical financial calculation" - that he had none of the courage of the real artist. An interesting essay.
As to Orwell as a novelist, your comments are just - and yet. . . . I disagree that politics has to make for poor novels. I don't think Catch 22 is a poor novel, for all that it is driven by a political perspective. I don't think 1984 is a poor novel despite being as you correctly (though implicitly) point out, essentially a dark political tract. It's just a different kind of novel.
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