George Orwell: A Life: Thoughts on Michael Shelden’s biography “Orwell”

Eric Arthur Blair — more famously known as George Orwell (named so because “George” is a nice, familiar British name and he once lived near the Orwell River) — it must be said, was never a pussy. He lived what might be called a vertiginous existence. Dead by 46, he’d lived down and out among the working poor in London and Paris and among the miners in the north of London; had survived Tuberculosis since boyhood; had ridden a motorcycle on and off all his life; had been a policeman in Burma (at the time one of the most murderous areas in the British colonial empire) and had served valiantly in the Spanish Civil War, being shot in the throat. (Despite this he tried to serve in World War II but was rejected.) The man, let’s face it, had guts.

Orwell has always been a mystifying, misunderstood man. Reading about him in Michael Shelden’s biography “Orwell: The Authorized Biography” (1992) I realized how many similarities I share with the man. (No, I do not compare my writing talent with the genius that was Orwell. Not even close.) For one: He struggled to get his work published. His first published book (“Down and Out in Paris and London”) was released in 1933, when Orwell was 30. (As was my first published piece of fiction.) He was, surprisingly, not a formally educated writer. He attended St. Cyprian’s and then Eton College…