The duty to stand aside : Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

The Resource The duty to stand aside : Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort
Label
The duty to stand aside : Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort
Title remainder
Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort
Statement of responsibility
by Eric Laursen
Creator
Author
Subject
Language
eng
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a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different world -- in which war has been replaced by undeclared "conflicts," civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward
Cataloging source
YDX
Illustrations
illustrations
Index
index present
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography

Context

Context of The duty to stand aside : Nineteen Eighty-Four and the wartime quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

Work of

Structured data from the Bibframe namespace is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License by Bowdoin College Library. Additional terms may apply to data associated with third party namespaces.