Critique de Choice

A valuable but extremely uneven collection of 22 essays, based on Hofstra University's 1984 Orwell conference. It follows West Chester University's similar conference proceedings, Critical Essays on George Orwell, ed. Bernard Oldsey (1986). Particularly good are essays relating Orwell to G. K. Chesterton by Louis C. Burckhardt, to Rex Warner by Maria Teresa Chialant, to Arthur Koestler by Howard Fink, and to Jack London (too briefly) by Victor Tambling. Others worth noting are by Jeffrey Meyers (predictably excellent) on Nineteen Eighty-four as a 1930s novel, Kirpal Singh on "Asian ambivalences," A. M. Eckstein on Orwell and capitalism, Rosaly Roffman on Orwell and poetry, Jasbir Jain on the intelligentsia, James Connors on Orwell and the doctrine of immortality, and Richard Smyer (provocatively but too briefly) on post-Orwellian political fiction. Also included are comparisons with Thomas Pynchon, Jaroslav Hasek, and P.-J. Proudhon, predictable looks at dystopias/utopias, language, English history, the media, and pop culture, and only one essay (on Down and Out) on a book other than 1984. Notes are erratic and sometimes careless; no bibliography; inadequate index. But 18 pages are devoted to Hofstra's program, including a repeat of the book's preface. Recommended for large collections. -P. Schlueter, Warren County Community College