The profession of literary criticism "
supposes, not only to incense dung, but also to constantly invent reactions to books that do not provoke the shadow of one
."
Needless to say, this book, consisting of four articles,
by George Orwell is terrific.
Between 1936 and 1946, the author
who is not yet the most famous of
1984
, is in a grumpy mood.
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He recalls cynically and not without jubilation his experiences as a reader, bookseller and columnist.
On the bookstore, he is hilariously bitter: “
Much of the people who pushed the door of the store belonged to a breed
that would have been a pain anywhere, but to whom the bookstore opened up unsuspected possibilities
.”
On the work of journalist-critic, his pen becomes cruel.
He describes a man, “a man aged thirty-five, but who looks fifty.
He is bald, has varicose veins and wears glasses.
Orwell's image of this archetypal character is terrible.
"He's throwing his soul down the drain, bit by bit."
Alas, the starving starving continues, always for the worse.
Orwell finishes his man by destroying his work: "In more than nine out of ten cases, the only objective criticism would be to say, 'This book sucks'."
The pages turn and Orwell, with his devastating humor, shares his thoughts on what Chesterton called "
good bad books
", that is to say, "works devoid of any literary pretension, but which remain readable ".
We dare not imagine what he would think of our contemporary literature.
A deliciously odious book.
Are we what we read? By George Orwell, translated from English by Charles Recoursé. 1001 nights, 56 p., €3.
