The Limitations of George Orwell

Abstract

George Orwell is well on the way to being enshrined as the patron saint of left-wing journalism. Some of the most respected English and American critics have taken up his cause. The process was begun by V. S. Pritchett, who in an obituary notice in the New Statesman and Nation praised Orwell as "a kind of saint" and as the "wintry conscience" of a whole generation. In the United States, the chief advocate has been Lionel Trilling; in an introduction to an American reprint of Homage to Catalonia, be described this book as one of the most important documents of our time and a demonstration of one of the right ways to confront life, and in fact his introduction (reprinted in The Opposing Self) might be described as a panegyric based on the text "He was a virtuous man. " With these two leading it, the work of beatification has gone on, until today there is hardly an article on the contemporary literary scene in which Orwell's name is not mentioned, and mentioned with veneration.