Customer Reviews:
 These reviews certainly don't matter March 2, 2007
10 out of 10 found this review helpful
Ignore what is painfully obvious. This book is not a diatribe about the folly of the Iraq war, it is a re-evaluation of a much maligned, much misunderstood, frequently hated icon, who after his death was subjected to a tug-of-war competition between the Right and the Left as to who should own him. This short book aims to correct the incessant harping of the 'Orwell was anti-women, anti-Semitic, anti-everything' Brigade. Such criticisms deserve an answer, not an excuse, and they are provided amply in this book. If you really do wish to uncover the myth of what some people believe is a well-worn topic, you should definitely give this a read.
 A louse on a louse June 9, 2003
2 out of 38 found this review helpful
One leftie icon idolises another leftie icon. Hitchens, the warmongering writer for rich Americans, has written what can only be described as a hagiography of 'Saint George' Orwell. One witless anti-communist writing about another, Hitchens has nothing new to say; he merely retreads his tired old insults about Orwell's many enemies. Orwell got everything wrong politically; he followed every faddish trend, while always posing as independent, above the foolish crowd - it's no surprise that Hitchens, who has always adopted the same superior pose, praises his predecessor. Orwell was old Etonian to the core, anti-women, anti-black, anti-Semitic, anti-working class, anti-trade union. Hitchens, a vicious spokesman for George Bush, used to have a reputation as a radical, but his brother Peter is a far braver, more independent, thinker.
(What's) the Matter with Hitchens April 28, 2003
7 out of 28 found this review helpful
Christopher Hitchens talks of Orwell in his invited lectures and at the New School in New York where he occasionally teaches, writes of Orwell in his books, and backs Paul Wolfowitz as a matter of Realpolitik on the second gulf war. One waits in vain to read a piece of his that, knowledgable as he is and not one to turn away from a fight, critiques the Pentagon, an institution that houses Wolfowitz (and many others) and which simply cries out to be critiqued -- and precisely on Orwellian grounds. On this matter Hitchens is no longer an expat critic of the American establishment as he was once hailed to be, he is a yes-sayer. In his silence is a complicit yes to any number of things the Pentagon says and does. This makes not only for bad writing (a gadfly who agrees?), it aligns his current thought with the likes of Kissinger, whom Hitchens saw fit to dispatch with in a book. And rightly so. Hitchens has gone to bed with the Pentagon too uncritically, simply because they talk about democracy and wage war against theocracy. I can find no better way than to get my point across regarding Hitchens and the distance that he has placed between himself and this book than to put it thus: Orwell would have disagreed with Hitchens on this one. And that matters.
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