Posted on 08/31/2014 4:33:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Prize-winning novelist Will Self has launched a stinging attack on George Orwell
The novelist Will Self has denounced George Orwell as the "Supreme Mediocrity" of postwar literary Britain, in a piece written for the BBC Radio 4 programme A Point of View which aired on August 29. The thrust of Self's argument is that Orwell's famous 1946 essay, 'Politics and the English Language', in which he argues for simplicity and clarity in written English, is fundamentally flawed. In the essay, Orwell encourages the use of short words and everyday English, and the avoidance of cliché.
But, according to Self, who is himself famous for his baroque use of language, there is a key problem with this analysis. "Orwell and his supporters may say they're objecting to jargon and pretension," writes Self, "but underlying this are good old-fashioned prejudices against difference itself".
Self, whose new novel, Shark, has just been published, continues: "If you want to expose the Orwellian language police for the old-fashioned authoritarian elitists they really are,
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Fine.
If you want to write a literary work through a "living, changing language," do so.
But you don't have to entirely disregard Standard English to do it.
Gimmickry.
I bet Orwell will be remembered long after Mr. Self has disappeared down the wormhole.
Glad to find another Jack Vance fan! Of course he will never be discussed at the BBC.
If your pleasure is to enjoy a clever turn of phrase, that’s fine. For myself, I prefer writers who do not call attention to themselves.
Elmore Leonard's view on the subject:
"If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. . . I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. . ."
This is the case with this article in particular. If we are to understand anything at all from the concluding paragraph it is that the author does not consider Orwell a literary mediocrity, unless the word "mediocrity" is divorced of all precision. I do not find it particularly exciting to contemplate a variety of potential meaning that fails to communicate a single actual one. One might as well utter a primal scream, whose variety of meaning is infinite but whose actual semantic content is nil.
The amazing thing about Vance was his ability to somehow weave that amazing prose together in such a concise way. Yes, it comes across as this ornate thing but you look back at what you just read and it’s amazing it all fits on the page. The master, RIP.
FReegards, the concept is nuncupatory
Here’s a Vance write up from the NY times magazine.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19Vance-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Freegards
Some people will do anything for 15 seconds of fame for their self, Will Self in this case. I think my ancestor will outlast this self aggrandizing Self.
I guess Will Self doesn’t know why contemporaneous authors in the same language have vastly different levels of readership.
Hemingway and Faulkner, for example, are both extremely deep and interesting writers. I like both, and have read the majority of both authors’ oeuvres. The reason Hemingway is read so much more than Faulkner is simple accessibility. As the beauty of florid language fades in the light of today’s utilitarian English, people just won’t pick up a hard-to-read book. Orwell knew this, and perhaps his own socialist leanings sensed this movement towards simple, utilitarian English.
Underlying Orwell's essay is an old-fashioned prejudice against "baroque use of language" being used to obscure political lies, not the mere use of complex language for literary purposes.
'Course, Orwell will be remembered long after Will Self is gone and forgotten—which, in my case, will probably be in less than 24 hours. Never heard of him, don't care.
Will who?
Yes.
Who is this “prizewinning” Will Selfie(?) and what has he contributed to political satire. And why again do I give a ratf@$# what he thinks.
Probably of the same caliber as will.i.am.
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