FeaturesGeorge Orwell, whose books have sold a phenomenal forty million copies in more than sixty languages, was the most influential prose stylist of the twentieth century. Kingsley Amis observed that “no modern writer has his air of passionately believing what he has to say and of being passionately determined to say it as forcefully and simply as possible.” Norman Mailer maintained: “I don’t think there’s a man writing English today who can’t learn how to write a little better by reading his essays. Even his maxims and instructions on how to write well are superb.” Like Hobbes and Swift, Orwell saw writing not only as a powerful tool for conveying ideas, but also as a demanding and enthralling art with a moral imperative to search for truth. In an autobiographical note of April 1940, Orwell said “the modern writer who has influenced me most is Somerset Maugham, whom I admire immensely fo ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 22 October 2003, on page 27 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/Orwell-on-writing-1668
rate this article for your user profile
E-mail to friend
|
Christopher, for better & for worse On the critic, polemicist & raconteur Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011).
Webcasts
Anthony Daniels on the Euro Crisis
Andrew C. McCarthy: The Muslim Threat
Roger Kimball: The Grim Future of Statism Weblog 
|
add a comment
you must have an account to post a comment. {register now}