May 20 2004
Quote of the Day: Orwell on Conrad
I have been rather busy of late, what with soccer, lawn mowing duites, and my mother visiting I haven’t had much time to read or post. Content has been a bit down, but crunchy goodness is in the works my friends. Tonight I will leave you with this quote from George Orwell on Joseph Conrad:
At Present Conrad is out of favor, ostensibly because of his florid style and redundant adjectives (for my part I like florid style: if your motto is “Cut out the adjectives”, why not go a bit further and revert to a system of grunts and squeals, like the animals?), but actually, I suspect because he was a gentleman, a type hated by modern intelligentsia. He is certain to come back in favor. One of the surest signs of his genius is that women dislike his books.
– Found in Fighting Words: Writers Lambast Other Writers)
May 21, 2004 @ 16:28:02
Kevin,
That quote is magnificent! (the gentleman part, not the hated by women part, of course). And very true. I suspect an additional real reason Cnorad is ahted is that he shows that vice does not lie in the “cosmetic morality of western civilisation” (as the Nobel prize committee said about JM Coetzee), but rather in pre-civilized barbarism and anti-bourgeois anomie.