Taking Pleasure in Scraps of Useless Information:
The Immortal Orwell on Why Writing Really Matters

'What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, "I am going to produce a work of art." I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing. But I could not do the work of writing a book, or even a long magazine article, if it were not also an aesthetic experience. Anyone who cares to examine my work will see that even when it is downright propaganda it contains much that a full-time politician would consider irrelevant. I am not able, and do not want, completely to abandon the world view that I acquired in childhood. So long as I remain alive and well I shall continue to feel strongly about prose style, to love the surface of the earth, and to take a pleasure in solid objects and scraps of useless information. It is no use trying to suppress that side of myself. The job is to reconcile my ingrained likes and dislikes with the essentially public, non-individual activities that this age forces on all of us...I will only say that of late years I have tried to write less picturesquely and more exactly. In any case I find that by the time you have perfected any style of writing, you have always outgrown it.'
--George Orwell, from his 1947 essay Why I Write. I encourage you to click on it to read and savor the entire piece. To review earlier mentions of this uniquely courageous voice, and to follow links to his equally compelling, and far more famous, essay Politics and the English Language, go here and here.

Happiness, Part VI

'Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.'
--George Orwell. You can review earlier items on the immortal Orwell here, and earlier installments of the happiness series here.

Orwell Was Right About This Too

'The fight against bad English is not frivolous...the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to have foolish thoughts.'

--the late and visionary journalist and author George Orwell. Earlier, I mentioned the great one here, and linked to his celebrated essay Politics and the English Language. The latter is just as worthwhile to read today as it was on the day it was first published.

Why Orwell's Warnings
Haven't Lost Any Punch

'A man may take a drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and innacurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier to us to have foolish thoughts.'
--George Orwell, writing 60 years ago in his justly celebrated essay Politics and the English Language.

'Don Rumsfeld is the finest Secretary of Defense the nation has ever had.'
--Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking yesterday at Rumsfeld's going-away ceremony.

Lousy Books to Avoid & Embrace

In the past, we've talked about great overlooked novels and also traded lists of books we're embarrased about not having read. Now, the Times of London invites readers to think about ten books they'd just as soon avoid reading. Amazon.com says readers have tagged these two works as "lousy books," and a book publishing veteran maintains in this article that lousy books are the result of soulless conglomerates having slowly taken over book publishing. There's even an official home on the web for Bad Books Month. But we also enjoyed how writer Joe Queenan had some fun here with the whole notion of bad books. And way back in 1946, the incomparable George Orwell set the bar high with this soaring ode to "good bad books," in which he observed: "Perhaps the supreme example of the 'good bad' book is Uncle Tom's Cabin. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." So we ask you, which books would make your lousy list?

Here's A Pregnant Thought
As We Begin a New Month

'True contentment is a thing as active as agriculture. It is the power of getting out of any situation all that there is in it. It is arduous and it is rare.'
--the immortal British man of letters, moral philosopher and proud Catholic, G.K. Chesterton. An impressive portion of his vast papers are archived at John Carroll University, and local Chesterton societies exist in dozens, if not hundreds, of locations around the world. Despite his low name recognition in many quarters, some have called him the greatest writer of the 20th century (we think that mantle actually belongs to his contemporary, George Orwell). In any case, thanks to a longtime friend, WWW reader and soon-to-be grandma for sharing this quote. Today also happens to be the 70th anniversary of the commencement of World War II. He had died three years earlier.

Work Shall
Set You Free

'Work is the true elixir of life. The busiest man is the happiest man. Excellence in any art or profession is attained only by hard and persistent work.'
--George Orwell. You can review our many earlier mentions of the oracular one here.

We Regret To Inform You That Your Attorney General is a Horse's Ass

Regular readers of Working With Words (can there be any other kind?) no doubt have gathered by now that I think U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft is one of the biggest fools alive. His appointment to such a sensitive post is all the proof I need--and there's plenty more besides--of the growing suspicion that the Bush II presidency represents the most radical right-wing administration in American history. But like every blustering ignoramus, the Missouri Mule's arrogant overreaching carries within it the seeds of his own eventual demise (politically speaking). Yesterday he pointedly took on the librarians for their continuing principaled resistance to the Patriot Act's provisions which call upon them to help spy on library patrons on behalf of law enforcement. Who will he take on next: retired septuagenarians school crossing guards? I loved the tart response from the head of the American Library Association's D.C. office (who is, after all, a lobbyist, a breed ordinarily devoted to maximum diplomacy): "If he's coming after us so specifically, we must be having an impact." As you read the coverage of Ashcroft closely in these days of growing media suspicion of the Bush agenda, one senses not merely a rising outrage over the AG's un-American tactics, but almost a "have you no sense of decency, sir?" kind of edge, which of course echoes the famous line used to open the flood gates of criticism to stifle the witchunts of old Joe McCarthy. The Times' provocative choice of words in the headline (Ashcroft Mocks Librarians...) seems designed to spur revulsion, which in this case seems appropriate. Here's rooting for continued junk-yard dog coverage of this entire reckless crew. And a special round of cheers for the librarians. I note via their association's website that in opposing the original act, they chose an apt quote from another sainted figure, Abe Lincoln, who wrote a friend in the closing days of the Civil War: "freedom is not some arbitrary right that is bestowed upon us because of the virtuous nature of our national character. It is a right that we must protect and defend in a time of both promise and peril if we are to remain in the future what we are in the present--a free and honorable people." Like Twain and Orwell, Lincoln's rich and timeless insights continue to infuse our contemporary debates with graceful common sense and sanity.

The Independent Republic of Cleveland Heights. Still, for all the righteous indignation stirred by the Patriot Act, lefty opponents sometimes seem hell-bent on proving that they can be just as silly as their opponents are sinister. Consider, for example, this public meeting scheduled for tonight at 7 in the Cleveland Heights library (according to the Cleveland Indy Media Center's calendar): it's called for the purpose of making "plans for getting a bill passed to ban the Patriot Act from Cleveland Heights." It appears to be organized by the ACLU, since Kim at kalabasi@acluohio.org, is mentioned as the contact. Now, I never attended law school, but I think I'm on pretty firm ground in pointing out that under our system, suburban municipalities don't have the legal authority to override laws passed by the U.S. Congress. And even if latter-day hippies don't know that, shouldn't ACLU lawyers? Of course, all bets are off in Cleveland Heights, home of the "nuclear-free zone," a similarly unenforceable bit of silly suburban sloganeering...

The Beauty of Web Publishing: Quick Rethinking. As I reread that bit of dyspepsia in the item immediately above, I had second thoughts, for a couple of reasons. So let me be clearer. For one thing, I must hasten to add that I love Cleveland Heights and all it stands for. In fact, it goes far further: without Cleveland Heights as a general beacon of urbane intelligence, as well as its various specific institutions (the Cedar Lee, Coventry, etc.) I simply wouldn't live in this area. We'd pack it up and move back to either Chicago or Washington, D.C., where Jule and I lived as young marrieds. Secondly (and in related fashion): while lefty latter-day hippies generally exasperate me, I'd be less than honest if I suggested that I didn't at least honor their intentions.

Anyway, all of that is merely by way of saying that I felt challenged by my own bit of knee-jerk dismissal of the aforementioned anti-Patriot Act meeting to dig a bit deeper into the topic. And here's what I found. This interesting piece in the Seattle Times (which picked it up from the Washington Post) notes that back in April, a small Northern California town became the first municipality in the country to pass an ordinance urging local police to ignore the feds' requests under the Patriot Act. It rightly placed the town's action within a larger context: "Across the country, citizens have been forming Bill of Rights defense committees to fight what they consider the most egregious curbs on liberties contained in the Patriot Act." Furthermore, it notes, Congress' only declared Independent, the infamous Vermont civil libertarian Bernie Sanders, had introduced a bill to restore privacy protections for library patrons. It's enthusiastically backed not just by librarians, but by such groups as the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. That all seems pretty germane to the point, doesn't it? So as the old Latin mass would have it: mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa...

Writing On the Run

"Get your facts first, and then you can
distort them as much as you please."
--Mark Twain

In a manner rivaled only by Orwell, Twain always has an uncanny ability to couch enduring truths in a pithy way that speaks across the decades, even centuries. And that great line of his popped into my head this morning as I took in some of the continuing back and forth on George's BFD, about the increasingly pungent issue of public funding for the arts. Tomorrow's public meeting at Trinity Cathedral ought to be interesting. The good news: it will be marked by a very un-Cleveland authentic public participation. I'll be watching closely to see if anyone in that vast gray machinery of the PD even finds out about it, much less covers it (to say nothing of doing so intelligently).

Virtual Come-On. Breast and penile implant come-ons, of course, litter the web and email inboxes. Our boy Jack even mentioned it this week, albeit in his signature restrained, Zen-bemused manner. But I think we hit a new low this morning, with a banner ad calling on browsers to "Improve Your Erection Quality" gracing some of the premier real estate on the web: the top of Slate's home page. It's all in service of a product called Levitra. And a while it's since rotated out, it'll no doubt rotate right back in. Because of the giant gravitational pull of the Microsoft MSN network, this is some of the highest-eyeballed territory on the web: Slate gets 4.1 million unique visitors, according to a Nielsen NetRatings June report. But I ask you: are erections best judged qualitatively or quantitatively? Get your answers in to WWW Central. We await your vote, breathlessly...

Founding Big Brother. In his ballsiest, most over-the-top move yet (which is saying a lot), Attorney General Ashcroft ventured to lower Manhattan yesterday on the latest stop of his whistle-stop tour in defense of the indefensible, the anti-democratic Patriot Act. And his choice of spots seemed either comically tin-eared or brilliantly provocative: he went to one of the great, though too-little-known, enduring symbols of American democracy and civil liberties, Federal Hall. Yes, he went to the very site from which George Washington was first sworn in as founding president, from which the first Congress wrote the Bill of Rights, where--in the case that laid the very foundations of America's freedom of the press admired around the world--dissident journalist John Peter Zenger was tried and jailed (and later acquitted) of libel for the affrontery of aggressively covering the founding fathers in his indy newspaper. As a founding battle cry for writerly independence, that long-ago case serves as even a brighter torch than Tom Paine's famous newsletters. Only, in a wonderfully Orwellian twist all his own, the AG is refusing to talk to the print media as a blanket rule--only TV cameras permitted. That's a particularly appalling new variant on the now-standard old political trick of bypassing more knowledgeable national media in favor of speaking exclusively to starry-eyed, access-famished local yokels. But there is justice: thus far, at least, all it seems to have gotten John A. and his boss are abusive coverage. And if anyone in the media, professional or amateur, feels on the verge of succumbing to the usual reductive right-wing hectoring equating defense of civil liberties (even in the face of terrorism) with lack of patriotism, quick, read this. It's a ringing endorsement, by an old lion of journalism, of the enduring idea that "in a democratic society the journalist is, in fact, exercising the highest form of citizenship by monitoring events in the community...(and) disclosing information the public needs but others wish secret for self-interested purposes." Someone, please send a copy to Ashcroft...