Re: More on the Orwell conference

["Paul Flewers" <hatchet.job@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou P cited: < But at the conference, participants frequently turned their
guns on each other. Not surprisingly, the military action in Iraq often
shadowed the discussions. At one heated moment, Christopher Hitchens roundly
accused the left of ''carrying water for dictatorship ever since 1989.''
Gitlin shot back that Hitchens sounded ''like a character in an Orwell novel
who paints the world in two tones.''

It's very interesting that in his shift from left liberal to neo-con,
Hitchens keeps one constant -- poor old George Orwell. Twenty years ago,
Hitchens defended Orwell against Podhoretz, who reckoned that Orwell would
have become a neo-con had he lived longer; now Hitchens uses Orwell to
lubricate his slide into the neo-con stable.

List members may be interesting that I hope to contribute to the Orwell
centenary year by assembling a book of essays on Orwell. 'Just what the
world needs', I hear you all say, 'another book on Orwell.' But this one
will try not try to champion him -- nobody can do that without omitting or
distorting large amounts of his work, or by using (to be polite) a great
deal of imagination -- but intends to comprehend him through an
investigation of his stance as a radical socialist whose political
weaknesses has allowed his works to be commandeered by his political
enemies.

Paul F