This book analyzes George Orwell's politics and their reception across both sides of the Atlantic. It considers Orwell's place in the politics of his native Britain and his reception in the USA, where he has had some of his most fervent emulators, exegetists, and detractors. Written by an ex "teenage Maoist" from Liverpool, UK, who now lives and writes in New York, the book points out how often the different strands of opinion derive from "ancestral" ideological struggles within the Communist/Trotskyist movement in the 30's, and how these often overlook or indeed consciously ignore the indigenous British politics and sociology that did so much to influence Orwell's political and literary development. It examines in the modern era what Orwell did in his-the seductions of simplistic and absolutist ideologies for some intellectuals, especially in their reactions to Orwell himself.

Autorentext

Ian Williams is Assistant Professor at Bard College Center for Global & International Affairs, USA. He is author of six other books on politics and history and speaks on international affairs and American foreign policy at venues and on media across the world.

Inhalt
1. Introduction: Orwell: Good or Ungood?.-2. In Defense of Comrade Psmith: the Orwellian treatment of Orwell.- 3. The Orwellian Method.- 4. Orwell the Socialist.- 5. Tangential Criticisms.- 6. Orwell's Own Airstrip One in 2014.- 7. The Persistence of Pessimism, Oceania 20 years after Nineteen Eighty-Four.- 8. Afterlife of An Atheist.- 9. No bother about Big Brother.- 10. Alexander Cockburn and "Snitching".- 11. The List.- 12. Disabusing Idiocy? Orwell & the Left.- 13. Orwell and the Democratic Left.- 14. Striking Back at the Empire.- 15. Revolution Is No Tea Party but It's Easier in a Salon: Reading the Leaves Afterwards.- 16. Orwell and the Left in the United States the Under-reported side of Oceania!.- 17. Letters to Oceania?.- 18. Orwell's Lives.- 19. Why Hitchens Matters.- 20. Christopher Hitchens and Orwell.- 21. Christopher Hitchens and Orwell.- 22. Antithesis Incarnate: Christopher Hitchens, A Retrospective Glance.- 23. Hitchens and the Iraq War.- 24. Truth in Journalism.