George Orwell Always in the News: Number 2

Writers protest PEN honour for ‘Charlie Hebdo’

‘Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, and at least three other writers have withdrawn from next month’s PEN American Center gala, citing objections to the literary and human rights organisation’s honouring of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’ (Guardian 27^th April 2015). Read the article here:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/27/peter-carey-among-writers-to-protest-pen-honour-for-charlie-hebdo

Read the Guardian article before you read on. The problem of ‘problem literature’ and of the attitudes of PEN itself are not new. In fact, if the report stirs any thoughts in you it is probably because of one essay, first published nearly seventy years ago, ‘The Prevention of Literature’ by George Orwell. You can read it in its entirety online:

https://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-prevention-of-literature/

Orwell begins by discussing problems with PEN in his age.

The names of the enemies of freedom of thought may have changed from Orwell’s time to ours, but this statement still seems true: ‘the immediate enemies of truthfulness, and hence of freedom of thought, are the press lords, the film magnates, and the bureaucrats, but that on a long view the weakening of the desire for liberty among the intellectuals themselves is the most serious symptom of all’.

Orwell was thinking of the situation in Britain particularly, but as events since his death have shown Orwell had thought enough for the whole world.

By LJH