Comment by klenwell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by klenwell | Hacker News Reader

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I guess you could call Orwell's essay an exoneration but it is, to my reading, no defense. It strikes me as sharply political and moral. And, I agree, scintillating literary criticism.

Your excerpts go to the heart of the argument. If Orwell thinks it's nonsense to call Wodehouse a fascist, it's not because Wodehouse was necessarily above fascism. It's because he was too silly and stupid ("the events of 1941 do not convict Wodehouse of anything worse than stupidity") to even perceive it, a literal schoolboy:

As I have tried to show, his moral outlook has remained that of a public-school boy, and according to the public-school code, treachery in time of war is the most unforgivable of all the sins.

I don't know that this was fair to Wodehouse. The New Yorker article seems to take a more charitable view:

His resilient happiness, to me, remains heroic, and more essentially who he was.

My dad and I were struggling to explain the phrase "damn with faint praise" to a young relative a while back. This essay wouldn't have helped our cause because, well, it's loaded. But it is a master class in the concept.

It's more like praising with faint damn, I think. Orwell was a man of the pretty-far left. The public-school class system must have been anathema to him (at the same time as he was a product of Eton—where, by the way, fellow future anti-utopian novelist Aldous Huxley was his French teacher) and yet he presents Wodehouse not as any kind of villain but just hapless and obsolete. So obsolete that you'd never guess that Wodehouse would outlive Orwell himself by 25 years.

This article might have been as much of a defence as it was politically possible for Orwell to produce in 1945. Even his famous independence from sectarianism must have had its limits. I also think one can put one's finger on why Orwell was so sympathetic to Wodehouse and so willing to judge him softly: they were both profoundly and essentially English. People have often pointed this out about Orwell, saying for example that his deep Englishness was the wellspring of his immunity to ideology. I think that same quality is probably what resonated with Orwell about Wodehouse - he was sympathetic in the literal sense (having similar feelings). There are moments in this article where it's as if he's reading Wodehouse from within.

Was the Brave New World that anti-utopian? For all we know, the island may have been super chill.

There's a great old web comic about the differences between Orwell's and Huxley's anti-utopias and how Huxley predicted the future much better. I bet your question is related to that development.

Yes. I'd be grateful if you ever remember an URL.

Specifically, Mond tells us (ch 16):

"One would think he was going to have his throat cut," said the Controller, as the door closed. "Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he'd understand that his punishment is really a reward. He's being sent to an island. That's to say, he's being sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren't satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who's any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson."

Looks like https://highexistence.com/amusing-ourselves-to-death-huxley-...

via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5433283

Thanks! It's reassuring to consider that "Amusing Ourselves to Death" was written in the 1980s.

The comic doesn't address the ways to leave the system, however. Brave New World, as mentioned above, has its islands, and (not having read anything of 1984 beyond the Goldstein chapters: is there anything I don't already have from pop culture in the rest of the book, or are those chapters just the "fast-forward"?) it seems that Oceanic refuseniks who didn't wish to toe the party line could be ignored by joining the proletariat (which might imply material and intellectual poverty, but freedom's just another word...)

> So obsolete that you'd never guess that Wodehouse would outlive Orwell himself by 25 years.

That is one of those "Cleopatra lived closer to the building of Pizza Hut than the pyramids" facts.

I just looked it up. Wodehouse even outlived the Beatles!

William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw), an American citizen was hanged by Britain for his "treason". Ezra Pound, poet and fascist sympathizer was interned briefly by the Americans. Wodehouse was probably had good reason to be anxious while his wartime behaviour was looked into by the authorities. I would speculate that he probably had enough connections with his school tie and the old boy network to "get things smoothed out".

It has been noted that he may have been naive, but he never returned to England after the war. As it may be, he truly seems to have simply been clueless. Unlike Pound, who was an open proponent of fascism and supporter of Nazi Germany. I wonder if they would have tolerated Pound if he hadn't been so enthusiastic for them, or if he would've been lumped with the so called degenerates.

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