Reading Response 8

I really enjoyed the Orwell piece. I had read it previously in a book of his essays and liked it but reading it now after many of the pieces that we have already read and in light of the writing and research that I’ve done for this course, I feel that I gained even more from it. Everything, in some way, does becomes political and all writers ARE “vain, selfish and lazy”. There was a strong, dry English wit throughout the essay, which made me miss London as well, so perhaps I was a bit biased. He also doesn’t romanticize the creative process, which is something that I never have any inclination to do, as I seem to find it wrenching and enormously difficult. I appreciated his candor there.

I was also really taken by the Didion piece. “Slouching toward Bethelehem” gave me a really strong sense of the times with their drugged-outness and wantonness. I also felt her political connections strongly linked her piece to the Orwell piece. The sheer fact of her connecting this lifestyle to politics, which I agree with is positively Orwellian and something that I would argue is not a stretch. Didion also has a dry and often ironic tone which you can find in some of her other work such as “The Year of Magical Thinking” and I would say that she doesn’t have a single word out of place or that is unnecessary. She finally does a great job of linking it with past and present movements and I think it would interesting if she revisited this today and wrote about how today reflects the turmoil of that time.