George Orwell | Guy Portman's Blog

7 Politically Inclined Authors

May 08 2015

This is a post that I wrote a while back about famous authors who held strong political opinions.

The following 7 authors were all politically inclined:

Hunter S. Thompson

(July 18th 1937 – February 20th 2005)

The father of Gonzo journalism was an iconic figure in the counter-culture. Despite his love of firearms and ardent support of the Second Amendment, Thompson’s politics were firmly entrenched in the far-left. A sworn enemy of Richard Nixon, he was vociferous in his support of George McGovern in the 1972 presidential election. He covered the election in dispatches for Rolling Stone, which laid the foundation for his book Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.

Click here to read my review of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

John Steinbeck

(February 27th 1902 – December 20th 1968)

John Steinbeck was a prolific novelist and short-story writer, and one of the most acclaimed literary figures America has ever produced. The author was very critical of capitalism and a supporter of unionisation, recurring themes in many of his books. His most famous work, The Grapes of Wrath, was viewed as so controversial at the time of its publication due to its criticism of the nation’s economic plight that it was burned on 2 separate occasions in the author’s hometown of Salinas.

Click here to read my review of In Dubious Battle.

Zora Neale Hurston

(January 7th 1891 – January 28th 1960)

Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist and author, who wrote 4 novels and more than 50 short stories, plays and essays. Her most famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, was published in 1937. The highly opinionated Hurston could probably best be described as a conservative libertarian. Unlike many of her Soviet sympathising colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, Hurston, a staunch patriot, was vehemently anti-Communist. She often referred to them as ‘commies’ and ‘reds’ in her writing.

Maxim Gorky

(March 28th 1868 – June 18th 1936)

Maxim Gorky is one of Russia’s most popular authors. His opposition to the Tsarist regime led to him being arrested on numerous occasions. Gorky, who associated with many revolutionaries, became a friend of Lenin. Later he provided financial support to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Widely accepted as being the first famous Russian writer to emerge from the proletariat, Gorky is remembered as being a lifelong supporter of the Bolshevik cause and the founder of the Socialist realism literary method.

Click here to read my review of My Childhood.

Leo Tolstoy

(September 9th 1828 – November 20th 1910)

Russian novelist Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy is widely regarded as being one of the greatest writers of all time. His most famous works are War and Peace and Anna Karenina. Tolstoy was a Christian Anarchist, who believed that non-resistance was the only way to achieve a Utopian society. His beliefs influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi. Tolstoy’s argument that peaceful anarchy could only be brought about by non-violent revolution is explained in his essay On Anarchy (1900).

Kurt Vonnegut

(November 11th 1922 – April 11th 2007)

Vonnegut was an American author, whose writing incorporated science fiction, black humour and satire. He was a pacifist intellectual and supporter of the American Civil Liberties Union. When he died in 2007 The New York Times described him as ‘the counterculture’s novelist’. His seminal work, Slaughterhouse-Five, is a satire about a survivor of the notorious firebombing of Dresden in World War II. Its anti-war rhetoric has resulted in it being banned by numerous US schools and libraries.

Click here to read my review of Slaughterhouse-Five.

George Orwell

(June 25th 1903 – January 21st 1950)

Author and journalist George Orwell was interested in social injustice, opposed to totalitarianism and committed to democratic socialism. So strongly was Orwell opposed to Fascism that he even volunteered to fight in The Spanish Civil War. His experiences there gave rise to his book, Homage to Catalonia (1938). Orwell’s most famous works, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both warned of the dangers of totalitarianism. They were perceived as being a thinly disguised attack on Stalin and banned in the Soviet Union.

Click on the links to read my reviews of Down and Out in Paris and London and The Road to Wigan Pier.

Controversial Authors (Part 4)

Aug 23 2013

I initially said that Part 3 of the Controversial Authors Series would likely be the final instalment, but I have since changed my mind. It seems fairly likely that there will also be a Part 5, possibly next week.

John Steinbeck

(February 27th 1902 – December 20th 1968)

Notable works: Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden

Born in Salinas, California, John Steinbeck went on to become a prolific novelist and short-story writer, and one of the most acclaimed literary figures America has ever produced. Steinbeck’s accolades include The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1940) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1962).

Steinbeck was and still is, though to a lesser extent, regarded as a very controversial author. Arguably his greatest work, The Grapes of Wrath, has been banned by many school-boards down the years. The book was even burned on two separate occasions in the author’s home town of Salinas. According to The American Library Association, Steinbeck was one of the ten most frequently banned authors from 1990 to 2004.

The author’s left-wing leanings are a reoccurring theme in much of his writing. Steinbeck was very critical of capitalism and a supporter of unionisation, as witnessed in In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath. Unionisation was highly controversial at the time of their publication, as it was viewed by many Americans as being inherently communist, a label incidentally often levelled at Steinbeck himself.

Steinbeck’s most famous book, The Grapes of Wrath, is about a poor family of Oklahoma sharecroppers, the Joads, driven from their land during the 1930s’ Dust Bowl and The Great Depression. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck advocates for the under-privileged, concentrating on social injustice, poverty and criticism of the nation’s economic plight, something that was fiercely debated at the time of its publication and beyond.

Click on the links to read my reviews of In Dubious Battle, The Wayward Bus and Sweet Thursday.

George Orwell

(June 25th 1903 – January 21st 1950)

Notable works: Animal Farm, Nineteen Eighty-Four

Born Eric Arthur Blair in British occupied India, author and journalist George Orwell was interested in social injustice, opposed to totalitarianism and committed to democratic socialism; ideals that resulted in the author often courting controversy, something which appears to have appealed to the opinionated writer. So strongly was Orwell opposed to Fascism that he even volunteered to fight in The Spanish Civil War against the Fascists. His experiences there gave rise to his book, Homage to Catalonia (1938).

Orwell’s most famous work, Nineteen Eighty-Four, a book that warned of totalitarian censorship, has been viewed as controversial since its publication due to its themes of nationalism, censorship and sexual repression. The book was banned in Russia shortly after the translated version came out there, as it was deemed to be a thinly disguised attack on Stalin’s Soviet Union. Ironically however in 1981, parents in Jackson County, Florida, challenged that the book was ‘pro-communist’ and contained ‘explicit sexual content.’

Animal Farm, a blend of animal fable and political satire was finished in 1944, but so controversial was the subject matter that it was not published until more than a year later, so concerned were the British government that the content would offend the country’s communist allies. The book is widely viewed as being an attack on Stalin and his totalitarian rule. Not surprisingly Animal Farm was banned in Soviet countries due to its perceived political content. The book was often used for propaganda purposes by anti-communist factions in the U.S., something that concerned the author greatly.

It was not only his two most famous works that were viewed as being controversial. Orwell’s portrayal of the life of English industrial workers, particularly coal-miners, in his book, The Road to Wigan Pier, was regarded as such at the time of its publication in the U.K.

Click on the links to read my reviews of The Road to Wigan Pier and Down and Out in Paris and London.

Click here to read Part 3.

Blog Post 37

Nov 09 2012

What an eventful week its been. No sooner was Bonfire Night over than The American Elections were underway and the excitement didn’t end there, for on Thursday it was announced that a former oil executive by the name of Justin Welby would be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. However for me the most interesting thing that happened this week was that I read Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. Please find my review of it below.

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell

George Orwell’s first published novel, Down and Out in Paris and London, is an account of the author’s time spent living in abject poverty, first in Paris and later in London. Having spent his savings and with tutoring work having come to an end, Orwell is nearing destitution. Teaming up with a resourceful and resolutely proud Russian ex army officer, by the name of Boris; the famished duo struggle ceaselessly to find work, finally gaining employment in the kitchens of the upmarket Hotel Lotti on the Rue de Rivoli. Plunged into its foul, fetid and hectic kitchens, Orwell outlines in intricate detail the workings of the hotel, the hierarchy of its staff; chefs, waiters and the lowest of all, the dish washers or plongeurs as they are known in French, the position in which he himself is employed.

The second part of the novel sees the author returned to his native land, existing in squalid conditions, reduced to the status of a tramp. An existence spent travelling from one bug infested doss house to another, whilst surviving on the diet of London’s poor at that time, the ubiquitous tea and two-slices. Orwell’s compassion, understanding and empathy towards his fellow man is in evidence throughout, both in his observations and the relationships that he forms with a number of poverty stricken characters, including Paddy, a continually complaining yet generous Irish itinerant, and Bozo, a street artist, who despite calamitous circumstances has retained a positivity in his outlook on life. This compassion for the plight of the poor is enduring and there is never even the slightest hint of derision or disdain for the unfortunate people that he comes across.

The captivating prose and vivid descriptions allows the reader an appreciation of the nature of urban poverty during the early twentieth century, as the evolving young author successfully demonstrates the skills that would later be refined, most notably in his best known works, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.