A Life in Letters - George Orwell
In his carefully composed letters Orwell comes across as a man who was sane and sensible and reserved. When he does express his state of mind – or the state of his health – it’s presented in a reasonable way. No outbursts – except exasperation regarding some political subject. Politics was Orwell’s first passion (and definitely not mine, so much of his correspondence was of no interest to me; I did a lot of skimming). Orwell lived in near-poverty for most of his adult life; his income came mainly from doing reviews. He finally began to make money with the publication of Animal Farm in 1945 – five years before his death. He wrote four novels before AF, and none of them sold well. He avidly disliked two of those early works (A Clergyman’s Daughter and Keep the Aspidistra Flying) and wanted them suppressed. He stated in one letter that he wasn’t really a novelist. He felt that his talents were more fitted for nonfiction, such as The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia, which are politically oriented (as are his fable, AF, and 1984). Writing came hard for him, but he was a diligent worker. For much of his life he was a sick man (tuberculosis), and he faced his illness with stoicism. In his last letters he expresses a wish for five more years; he felt he had something to say, and the world was finally listening. He was married twice. I was grateful that Peter Davison, an Orwell scholar who put together this compilation, included the letters his first wife, Eileen, wrote; they’re entertaining, lively, funny, and have a spontaneity that Orwell’s lack. She emerges as a flesh and blood personality, and I felt emotionally drawn to her. She too had serous health problems; her last, upbeat letter to Orwell was written as she was about to go into the operating room for removal of an ovarian cyst; she died under the anaesthetic. I don’t believe their marriage was a bed of roses; I also felt (perhaps unfairly) that Orwell was a neglectful husband, too involved with his writing and political activities. They adopted an infant son, Richard, and Orwell had deep concern for the boy’s welfare. In his last, mostly bedridden years he proposed marriage to several women. It was a practical proposition, as befits this practical man (he noted that, as widows, they would receive royalties). But he also wrote one of the women that he needed “someone to be fond of me.” This plea, coming from a man like Orwell, is touching. He married Sonia Brownell – the ceremony took place in his hospital room; a few months later he would die in that same room. His headstone has the words “Here Lies Eric Arthur Blair” and gives the dates that span the forty-seven years he lived and wrote.

The Journals of John Cheever
The nearly 400 dense pages that make up this book represent only one twentieth of the words Cheever wrote in the journals he kept for over forty years. To publish all the three to four million words wouldn’t be feasible, and the decision as to what to include was made by Cheever’s longtime editor, Robert Gottlieb. He has omitted the journals from the forties, which, he writes, “. . . seemed considerably less consistent in their intensity and quality than what was to follow . . .” Indeed, quality was of concern to Cheever. These pages contain carefully crafted prose. Even the last entry, written three days before his death, is a lovely piece of writing. He admits to the “narcissism” (that’s the word he uses) of his journal-keeping: “At the back of my mind there is the possibility of someone’s reading them in my absence and after my death, and exclaiming over my honesty, my purity, my valor, etc. What a good man he is!” This is a self-conscious undertaking, meant to impress. His perceptiveness and powers of observation are often on display. He also includes lengthy descriptions of nature and of people he happens to observe; there are scenes that could come off the pages of a novel or short story. For me this amounted to extraneous clutter, and I found myself skimming. What I wanted were his thoughts and feelings, and there is much of that. He could be unsparing of himself and others (foremost his wife). We learn of his miserable marriage (one which he describes as “obscene and grotesque” but which lasted for over forty years); his alcoholism (which he overcame late in life); his depression; his rampant bisexuality. He had a complex and contradictory nature which he struggled with. Considering that struggle, I should have developed more sympathy for him than I did. Often I didn’t like the man. As for those above mentioned virtues he wanted to inspire in the reader, I thought he often didn’t face the truth. Such as why his wife came to loath him; reading between the lines, I could see how she would get to that point. As for purity, he could be lyrical about love and sex, but he could also be extremely gross. Valor and goodness are things he aspired to, at least in words; his wife and children would be the ones who could say whether he achieved those virtues. At times I wondered why his family allowed the journals to be published (maybe money played a role). He kept them for his eyes only until three years before his death, when he floated the idea of their publication to his son. When they did come out (first as excepts published in The New Yorker) he had been dead for years, but his family members had to live with words that must have been extremely painful. I wonder if he was aware of that. Or if he just didn’t care.