Orwell: The New Life by D.J. Taylor

Orwell: The New Life Reviews

• 
  Steve Donoghue

  Here DJ Taylor revisits the author and career he first wrote about 20 years ago, and that's always a fascinating thing: it's not just a question of how the same author will sort and analyze all the new documentation and interpretation that's surrounded his subject over two decades but also a look at how that subject has been working on the same biographer in the intervening years. Taylor's insights here are unfailingly fascinating - you'll wish the book were twice as long. My full review is here:
  https://openlettersreview.com/posts/o...
• 
  Jeff Bursey

  A vast improvement on Bernard Crick's bio of some years ago. Taylor is judicious in the use of sources and in his judgements on Orwell's at times inexplicable actions and motivations. The sections where Taylor steps away from the chronology and addresses issues are handy summaries of content.
  
  Orwell remains Orwell, and there's no improving that, a man with ill health, a taste for the hovel and the ridiculously difficult life, wayward in his affections, a semi-rebel but at heart a conservative, aesthetically, afraid of where adventurous prose would lead readers. Orwell's last two books seem so much better than their author, it's almost miraculous that they emerged from that nature. Highly recommended biography.
• 
  Darcy

  D.J. Taylor is no Mr Casaubon. Unlike the pedantic scholar from George Eliot’s nineteenth century novel, Middlemarch, Mr Taylor’s output - fiction and nonfiction: biographies, short stories, novels, journalism, feature articles, essays, introductions, prefaces, interviews, panel and podcast appearances - is phenomenal.
  Mr Taylor writes more elegantly than any of Orwell’s (many) previous biographers and has a deep, extensive knowledge of British literature, especially that written during the 1930s and 40s, which is put to good use in this biography. However, despite the publicity, it is not a “new” look at Orwell’s life and work but a second crack at the author he calls, “my writer”. There is little that has changed in his view of Orwell’s work or life. Basically, it is a revised, much longer biography of Orwell that most readers will enjoy.
  The book is divided into six major chronological sections. Part I (1903-1927) and Part II (1927-1933) are seriously marred by out-of-date research, factual errors and what appears to be a lack of genuine interest in the period prior to Eric Blair assuming his famous pseudonym. Part III (1934-1936) and Part IV (1936-1939) are extremely accomplished and contain some new information and interesting insights into Orwell’s character. Part V (1939-1945) is excellent. Part VI (1945-1950) contains little not repeated ad nauseum for nearly half-a-century. The “mini-chapters” - Orwell in Time, Orwell’s Face, Orwell’s Voice etc. - are mostly jarring intrusions which spoil the chronological flow. Rehashed, mostly intact from the 2003 biography, it is hard to understand why they are included (although the one about Gissing is absolutely wonderful).
  It is apparent from the opening pages that the supremely confident Mr Taylor is writing a conventional biography of Orwell. He acknowledges that it is “perfectly possible, and sometimes desirable, to inspect him through the prism of colonialism, or the Me Too movement or even, given the source of the original family fortune, Black Lives Matter” while suggesting there is “very little novelty in these interrogations: after all, feminist scholars such as Daphne Patai were busy deconstructing Orwell’s patriarchal tendencies nearly forty years ago…”. Mr Taylor recounts sitting next to feminist critic Beatrix Campbell on a literary festival panel “as she lamented The Road to Wigan Pier’s sexual bias” saying “the effect was like watching a small child trying to bring down an elephant with a pea-shooter”.
  The Australian feminist academic, Germaine Greer, wrote perceptively many years ago about this genre, suggesting that once “a biographer has mastered his subject, sucked it dry as an ant does an aphid and stored its own juice in his own book, the rest of us need no longer bother our heads about inconvenient notions the biographer's subject may have offered for our consideration”. Mr Taylor’s conventional view of Orwell consistently endeavours to dispel any “inconvenient notions” that have arisen in the last 20 years since his last outing.
  The notes section is not professionally compiled and will frustrate anyone genuinely interested in sources. This reader found the notes lacking intellectual generosity. There are many errors and typos which the publisher will need to sort out for the paperback or next edition.
• 
  Ryan

  Taylor writes very good Victorian pastiche, middling criticism, and naff biographies.
  
  This is his second attempt at an Orwell biography.
• 
  Bill Baar

  Taylor persuaded me Orwell's not someone I would enjoy meeting in person, but his book did drive me to googling the many writers in Orwell's orbit. Familiar names although their books ones I had never read. All of them concerned with Orwell despite his odd habits.
  
  Taylor's insight for me was Orwell wrote in reaction to British class structures and Imperialism, and not in reaction to Soviet Communism. Stalin's a thread but England and Empire the fabrics wrapping Orwell's mind; the BBC as Big Brother and not the NKVD.
• 
  Robert Webber

  A fascinating study of one of the great writers of the 20th century. Often heralded as a man of the left, the brutal satirisation of socialism in his most famous works of course dispel this notion. One is rather left with the impression of Orwell as an atheist in search of a secular morality. An interesting and absorbing analysis of a great literary figure. Recommended.
• 
  Socraticgadfly

  Probably 3.5 if I'm generous, but I just can't do that.
  
  UPDATE: Dropped to two stars; see below.
  
  First, riffing on another reviewer, this is less a new bio than a revision of the author's previous. I'll take that person's word for it.
  
  Now, my thought.
  
  A prediliction for physiognomy present in older English (sic, not “British”) historians still seems to abound with Taylor. What ARE stereotypically Gallic features? Fortunately, unlike them, the author doesn’t seem to venture into physiognomic essentialism.
  
  But, he does flirt with presentism. He notes that Orwell called Spender a “pansy,” and then says, OK, that’s bookmarked, move on. Ditto on talking about a feminist author in modern times attack Orwell for misogyny and compare it to shooting an elephant with a pea-shooter. Seeing all this predisposed me to be less than enthusiastic.
  
  That said, he insinuates that the “How I Shot an Elephant,” as well as “A Hanging in Burma,” may not be factual. Says the latter has clear ties to a similar Thackaray piece. But, while insinuating, takes no stand.
  
  As for big issues? Taylor doesn't fully tackle the issue, beyond the above, as to how good of a non-communist leftist Orwell was, or was not.
  
  The bio itself is in a vignette style. It’s interesting, but doesn’t always flow well.
  
  Also, misses chances at psychological takes. Was the adoption of Orwell as literary pseudonym also that of a literary persona? Why the one foot back in Edwardian times? What was up with the one foot in the Church of England from the early 1930s to the end of his life? Per one bit of cynicism, did he have jealousy as well that he had not gone from Eton to Oxford himself? Regret?
  
  Add in that I hit my library's timewall, and that I've long thought Brave New World was more prescient than 1984 (and a better read, as is Darkness at Noon) and, the book just petered out on me.
  
  
  Orwell's List a VERY controversial, it seems, and totally new to me, compilation of names of writers and other creatives for the British government's Foreign Office by Orwell (see a quote from the Wiki page below), basically a list of people who in the US in the McCarthyist 1950s would have been called "Comms and Comm symps," is "addressed" in less than two full pages by Taylor.
  
  Nut graf:
  
  

  "(W)hat came to be known as 'Orwell's List' has occasionally been used as a stick with which to beat his supposed [emphasis added by me] intolerance.

  
  
  From Wiki:
  
  

  Typical comments were: Stephen Spender – "Sentimental sympathiser... Tendency towards homosexuality"; Richard Crossman – "Too dishonest to be outright F. T."; Kingsley Martin –"Decayed liberal. Very dishonest";[9] and Paul Robeson – "very anti-white. [Henry] Wallace supporter"

  
  
  From Wiki, comment by Alex Cockburn:
  
  

  Cockburn attacked Orwell's description of Paul Robeson as "anti-white", pointing out Robeson had campaigned to help Welsh coal miners. Cockburn also said the list revealed Orwell as a bigot: "There seems to be general agreement by Orwell's fans, left and right, to skate gently over Orwell's suspicions of Jews, homosexuals and blacks".

  
  
  Taylor doesn't even mention Robeson being on the list, let alone why.
  
  Folks, this confirms my sneaking suspicion that this book was hagiography.
  
  And, I disagree with people at that Wiki link claiming that this was not McCarthyist. He gave it to the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office, at least his "finalized" list. And, had he lived longer, he might have submitted more names from his personal list. (Robeson was on there; so were George Bernard Shaw, Katharine Hepburn, Orson Welles, and John Steinbeck, among others; aside from Orwell being an informant, this leads to questions of his general judgment.) I also disagree that he would have broken with the IRD had he realized, with living longer, what it was up to. Claims that he would have are an argument from silence.)
  
  In that case, these defenders are saying that, either due to late-life health problems, or general causes, Orwell had a high naivete level. You want to stand on that ground? Even a writer for Socialist Review makes that claim. Note: Now that I know why Orwell "wrote up" some of these people, Alan Turing was lucky not to be "outed" until 3 years later, I guess. And, the idea that tuberculosis can make you "ga-ga" in late stages is painting with a humongously broad brush.
• 
  Thomas

  D. J. Taylor wrote a major biography of George Orwell in 2003, but, he says, as soon as it was published, new information began to pour in. So, twenty years later, we have Orwell: The New Life. It may be significant that Taylor does not call it a second edition.
  Taylor says that Orwell stage-managed his life, adjusting his manner to fit his audience and the social role he was playing at the moment. As a scholarship boy at his prep school and later at Eton, he was always aware that his family did not have the money or social status of other students. As a policeman in British India, he was acutely aware of class distinctions.
  Orwell disappointed his family when he abandoned his secure government job to become a writer. His emerging leftist politics encouraged him to explore the underclasses in England and France. He spent time with unemployed English migrants and worked as a dishwasher in Paris, but his Etonian accent often undermined his efforts to fit into the working class. He fought with the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War but made enemies on both sides.
  For most of his career, he was better known as an essayist and reviewer than a novelist. That changed in the last decade of his life when he published Animal Farm. By then, he was a critic of totalitarian regimes right and left and worked to promote his version of democratic socialism. 1984 came out the year before he died.
  Taylor gives us a detailed account of Orwell’s professional and private life, but he does not engage in much literary analysis or assessment.
  
• 
  Diogenes Grief

  I think it’s fairly well known that the lives of most all authors of great literary works are rarely more interesting than the products they produced. Maybe the wonderful folks at LitHub and likeminded sites would disagree, but that’s purely my take on things. This isn’t a Taylor-problem, or an Orwell-problem. It’s completely a me-problem. Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four will be held high within the English literary canon, most likely forever (unless a future Ministry of Truth and their Thought Police snuff such things out), but wading through the tedium of the author’s life will hopefully not. His late-life work is far more important than whatever influences percolated within his grey-matter to forge them. Still, Taylor is a talented writer in his own right and if one wishes to dive into such things for pleasure or research, this is the perfect book begin with.
• 
  J William

  Though he insisted that no biography of his life be written, George Orwell often told his readers who he thought he was. I do not write ‘who he was’, because the myth of Saint George has one primary author, and that is the saint himself. One rarely reads a page where a small detail of his life isn’t to be found, like a sprinkle of breadcrumbs for would-be biographers. It is a trail that seems to lead in circles, for the origins of saints and their myth’s remain elusive. But as he wrote of Gandhi, ‘saints should be judged guilty until they are proved innocent’. It is this guilt or innocence which D.J. Taylor has once again set about proving in a fresh study, Orwell: The New Life..
  
  My full review published in Aporia magazine and crossposted on my Substack here, narrated for a long listen -
  https://justwilliam.substack.com/cp/1...
• 
  Karen Eliot

  This is the third Orwell biography I have read, and I’ve read all his works at least once, so there were no real surprises.
  
  Although at times pedestrian, and I am not a fan of the short thematic chapters (least of all Orwell And The Jew), I liked it a lot.
  
  Taylor does a very competent job but is no Bernard Crick. The final few pages are very poignant but i recall being very upset by the raw facts of Orwell’s last days as related by Crick.
  
  A generous 4.5/5 rounded up, mainly out of admiration for George himself, a wonderful but tragically flawed man who in some ways wasted his life away. Imagine writing the same biography twice though…!
  
• 
  Hayes

  Opted for the 4d experience of Orwell's biography by reading it whilst catching covid and a subsequent chest concern. Really helped to break the 4th wall and provide thought provoking insight on the tribulations of trying to produce a masterpiece whilst dying a slow death.
  
  All in all, thorough and well researched. Taylor outlines the different schools of thought on Orwell's actions, ultimately always trying to defend him whilst acknowledging he is an odd fish - which is interesting off the back of some of the recent feminist riffs on both his work and his biography.
• 
  Sean Auraist

  The Auraist substack is a recommendation service that identifies the best-written books from prize shortlists, end-of-year lists, and major reviews. Orwell: the New Life was one of our picks for the best-written nonfiction books of the summer. Read an extract at 
  https://auraist.substack.com/p/nonfic.... Subscriptions are currently free.
• 
  Robert Stevenson

  A very long and non compelling biography. If you like Ron Chernow or David McCullough as I do and then read this, you will know what I mean. This is a work that tries to tie together other Orwell biographies and interpretations instead of creating a single narrative work. Ultimately, the one thing after another minutiae just bores you. Very disappointing.
• 
  Linda Gaines

  This is a very thorough biography of Orwell based on lots of research. I almost learned more than I wanted to know. He was a great writer but a difficult man. I thought there would be more about Animal Farm and 1984.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  James Thompson

  I found this to be a thorough and well-researched work, perhaps the definitive biography on a fascinating man. It is not a particularly easy read; I often found myself going back over sentences and paragraphs to make sure I understood their meaning.
• 
  Just James

  Too many details about Orwell's life with little insight into his writing habits