[lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope

Peter Ward nevadabob at hotmail.co.uk
Wed Jan 14 18:52:37 PST 2009


But in politics, everything else we must pass over in silence (or should, IMO). We are dealing with boring practical problems that happen to arouse violent passions.


> From: dhenwood at panix.com
> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
> Date: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 21:34:23 -0500
> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] How Politics Ruined My Life: Was Fuck Hope
>
>
> On Jan 14, 2009, at 9:23 PM, Peter Ward wrote:
>
> > I'd recommend Orwell's "Writers and Leviathan"--as well as many
> > other of his articles --in connection with this thread (http://www.orwell.ru/library/articles/leviathan/english/e_wal
> > ) --
> >
> > "I often have the feeling that even at the best of times literary
> > criticism is fraudulent, since in the absence of any accepted
> > standards
> > whatever — any external reference which can give meaning to the
> > statement that such and such a book is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ — every
> > literary
> > judgement consists in trumping up a set of rules to justify an
> > instinctive preference. One's real reaction to a book, when one has a
> > reaction at all, is usually ‘I like this book’ or ‘I don't like it’,
> > and what follows is a rationalization. But ‘I like this book’ is
> > not, I
> > think, a non-literary reaction; the non-literary reaction is ‘This
> > book
> > is on my side, and therefore I must discover merits in it.’ Of course,
> > when one praises a book for political reason one may be emotionally
> > sincere, in the sense that one does feel strong approval of it, but
> > also it often happens that party solidarity demands a plain lie."
>
> There's something in Orwell that's so resolutely common sense and
> ordinary that it's really annoying.
>
> Doug
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