Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography by Richard Rodriguez

Abstract

reviews between democracy and despotism well enough to want to defend their liberties” (8 January 1940). “Most of them [the intelligentsia] are perfectly ready for dictatorial methods , secret police, systematic falsification of history, etc., so long as they feel it is on ‘our’ side” (18 May 1944). The political sense exemplified in George Orwell’s letters is frightfully prescient in today’s political world. To some, the Orwellian world of government surveillance, politically correct thinking, and ignorance by citizens of the basics of representative democracy seem all too obvious . The danger—as expressed in Nineteen Eighty-Four—is not from our suppressors, but from a people’s willingness to be suppressed. In his relatively brief life (he died of tuberculosis at age forty-seven), Orwell’s genius was in his political observations of the new world of post–World War II society. He wrote knowingly of fascism, communism, and imperialism. He was intellectually clear and wrote in straightforward language of the dangers of realpolitik. Orwell did not live long enough to write his autobiography. A Life in Letters, along with Peter Davison’s editing of twenty volumes of Orwell’s writings and his diaries, aptly illustrates his life and hopes. Davison’s annotations and short biographies of his correspondents complement these fascinating—some momentous and others mundane—letters. The letters trace Orwell’s life from the 1930s (there is the odd letter to his mother in 1911 and portions of a letter to Cyril Connolly in 1920) to late 1949, in a letter written to Sir Richard Rees (Orwell’s literary executor, along with his wife) before he died: “Thanks so much for seeing about the boat and for rearranging my books. . . . I am getting on quite well and feel distinctly better since being here [in hospital].” Marrying his second wife, Sonia Brownell, in October 1949—his first wife died at age thirty-nine following surgery—he had looked forward to being well enough to recuperate in Switzerland but died the morning of January 12, 1950, with “his beloved fishing rods standing in the corner of his hospital room.” In distilling the 1,700 letters written by Orwell, Davison set himself two goals: the letters should illustrate his life and hopes, and “each should be of interest in its own right.” This volume admirably fulfills this twofold mission; it is a tribute to Davison’s decades-long scholarship on Orwell’s life. Daniel P. King Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin Richard Rodriguez. Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography. New York. Viking. 2013. isbn 9780670025305 Good essayists make us reflect on the world that we presume to know. Their ideas, often controversial, remind us that life is full of mystery, wonder, and change. Like the great essayists Octavio Paz and Edward Said, Richard Rodriguez writes from a perspective that is simultaneously grounded in place but with a worldly sense of history. Darling: A Spiritual Autobiography , Rodriguez’s fourth book, examines the connection between the Abrahamic desert religions and post–9/11 religious thought and the related “desertification” of society. The opening chapter, “Ojalá,” teaches us that the Moors and Allah—the Muslim interpretation of the same God that Christians and Jews worship—are not far removed from the Spanish memory and 74 worldliteraturetoday.org Vera Schwarcz Ancestral Intelligence: Renditions and Poems Antrim House In this surprising collection of poems, Vera Schwarcz interprets the life of Chinese historian Chen Yinke (1890–1969) and laments the changes imposed upon traditional Chinese characters throughout history. Both parts of this compilation illustrate how language simultaneously experiences and protests political and personal hardship. In doing so, the author weaves her Romanian identity into a universal one. Donal Ryan The Spinning Heart Steerforth Press Winner of the Irish Book Awards Book of the Year and long-listed for the Man Booker Prize, The Spinning Heart captures the frustration and heartbreak of Ireland’s financial collapse as experienced by the tenants of a rural Irish town. Twenty-one honest and scalding human voices conspire to tell the tale of the myriad struggles engendered by financial desperation. Nota Bene bloodline and, subsequently, Mexico, Mexican America, and the Americas. Rodriguez also reminds us that Muslims , Christians, and Jews share the same physical and cultural...