The duty to stand aside : Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort / by Eric Laursen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Laursen, Eric, author.

Contributor:

Class of 1932 Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Orwell, George, 1903-1950.

Orwell, George.

Comfort, Alex, 1920-2000.

Comfort, Alex.

World War, 1939-1945--Literature and the war.

World War, 1939-1945.

World War, 1939-1945--Social aspects.

Social aspects.

War and society.

Physical Description:

175 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Chico, CA : AK Press, [2018]

Summary:

The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feuds -- and friendships -- in 20th-century English literature. It examines the arguments that divided George Orwell, future author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex -- during WWII. Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain's war against fascism, was "objectively pro-fascist." Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government's atrocities -- in Britain's case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers -- had "sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity." Later, Comfort and Orwell developed a friendship based on appreciation of each other's work and a common concern about the growing power and penetration of the State -- a concern that deeply influenced the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Shortly before his death in 1950, however, Orwell would accuse Comfort of being "anti-British" and "temperamentally pro-totalitarian" in a memo he prepared secretly for the Foreign Office -- a fact that Comfort, who died in 2000, never knew. Laursen's book takes a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different world -- in which war has been replaced by undeclared "conflicts," civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward.

Contents:

The moral lens

A clash of temperaments

A public "set-to"

A disagreement in verse

Common ground

The sociopathic state

The "snitch list"

"The act of standing aside"

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-165) index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the Class of 1932 Fund.

ISBN:

1849353182

9781849353182

OCLC:

1007758174