http://www.calendarlive.com/columnists/cl-et-rutten15feb15,0,6698422.column?coll=cl-home-more-channe ls Los Angeles Times February 15, 2003 Orwell, right or wrong? by Tim Rutten
If the past 17 months have taught us anything, it is that some ideas and the people who hold them are worth fighting over.
That's what lends the dispute over George Orwell now playing out on the pages of the New Yorker and New Republic magazines both interest and urgency. Orwell coined the term Cold War and there is a certain tendency to fix his life and work within the great struggle between left-wing totalitarianism and democratic egalitarianism that raged across the 20th century. More recently, new scholarship--and, particularly, Christopher Hitchens' "Why Orwell Matters"--has argued for the author's vital relevance.
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Menand, Hitchens said, "either misread or is misreading Orwell. The motive here is: 'Who wants to write another piece saying Orwell is a great guy?' Orwell's reputation does involve a certain kind of piety. Therefore, there's a certain itch or temptation toward iconoclasm that is just about excusable. To say this guy is overrated is also to implicitly say you have the courage to challenge the consensus."
But, according to Hitchens -- who recently has completed a major introductory essay to a new single-volume edition of "Animal Farm" and "1984" -- what Menand wrote was closer to distortion than misunderstanding.
"Orwell's attitude toward war with Hitler initially was shaped by his anxiety that the Tories would not wage a total war on fascism, but a half-hearted war of empire. He wanted a people's war.
"It only slowly came to him that the Churchill wing was willing to make a real fight of it. I think that's a perfectly honorable evolution. Menand represents him as a bit of an appeaser, which is disgraceful."
Hitchens also takes strong exception to Menand's dismissal of Orwell's opposition to imperialism, fascism and totalitarianism: "Actually, very few were against all of it at the same time. It was quite rare then -- and still is, as a matter of fact.
"To sum it up, Menand had a contrarian itch, the integrity of which is compromised by his failure to read Orwell with attention and by misrepresenting him on this crucial matter of the war."