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Synopsis
For literature buffs and history enthusiasts, this is the first biography to compare George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, two of the greatest 20th century English writers.
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Review
A brief comparative study of the lives, works and attitudes of two great 20th-century authors.Hardly an original work, Lebedoff (The Uncivil War: How a New Elite is Destroying Our Democracy, 2004, etc.) offers a series of linked analyses and speculations based on information readily available in standard biographies and related works about the worlds in which both men lived and did battle. This book's premise and purpose, however, are distinctive, in that Lebedoff surveys his subjects' histories as illustrative of their essential similarity, even oneness (hence his title), despite obvious differences in personality, social standing and worldviews. Waugh was a ferociously devout Catholic, Orwell an equally impassioned anti-communist and socialist "concerned entirely with this world [while Waugh was preoccupied] with the next." Lebedoff thus compares and contrasts Waugh's celebrity-obsessed school experiences, abortive teaching career and disastrous first marriage with the stoicism exhibited by Eric Blair (before he adopted the famous nom de plume), who renounced any possibility of rising socially, joining the British civil service as a policeman stationed in Burma. Subsequently, there are juxtaposed considerations of each man's literary trials and triumphs; Waugh's misadventures in Croatia as a scandalously unconventional officer and gentleman; the increasingly tubercular Orwell's days as a Home Guard during the London Blitz; both men as husbands and fathers. Pages are filled by such risible expedients as a potted biography of the Mitford sisters, a needless summary of the overfamiliar plot of Brideshead Revisited and a labored analysis of this "masterpiece" and Orwell's 1984 as each author's grave Final Statement. Fortunately, both Orwell and Waugh are such engagingly stubborn and heroic figures that there's no resisting such deservedly well-known anecdotes as Captain Waugh's maliciously merry rumor-mongering insistence that Yugoslavia's Marshall Tito was a woman.We've heard it all before, but it's well worth hearing again. (Kirkus Reviews)
About the Author
David Lebedoff is the award-winning author of five books, including Cleaning Up, about the Exxon Valdez case, and The Uncivil War: How a New Elite Is Destroying Our Democracy. Lebedoff is a graduate of the University of Minnesota and the Harvard Law School. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children.
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The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War
Seller: Book Grocer, Tullamarine, VIC, Australia
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. [Author], [Publisher]. NB: This is a secondhand book in very good condition. See our FAQs for more information. Please note that the jacket image is indicative only. A description of our secondhand books is not always available. Please contact us if you have a question about this title. Author: David Lebedoff Format: Paperback Number of Pages: 288 For literature buffs and history enthusiasts, this is the first biography to compare George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh - two of the greatest 20th century English writers. Both authors need little introduction. Orwell and Waugh were born in 1903, and there the resemblance seems (at first) to end. The savagely sarcastic Waugh was rich and famous in his twenties, and a champion social climber who married into the aristocracy and became a country squire, a strict conservative, and a devout Catholic. His life was a succession of parties with the most glamorous people of his generation. And in between his wild revels he managed to write peerless comic novels, and a great elegy to lost splendour, Brideshead Revisited. Orwell was a tall, gaunt man who dedicated his life to fighting the English class system. He fought fascism in Spain, and under conditions of severe adversity he wrote essays as great as any in the language. He died young, at 46, and left behind two of the most widely read books in all of literature, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four. Yet, all appearances to the contrary, the party-loving snob and the dour socialist were in many ways the same man. They were among the few of their peers who saw what the future - our time - would bring. And they hated it. Their lives were dedicated to warning us what was coming - a world of material wealth but few values, a pointless existence without tradition or community or common purposes; lives measured in dollars, not sense. The Same Man tells their parallel stories with warmth, humour, and a fresh eye towards the past and present. Paperback. Seller Inventory # 9781921372247-SECONDHAND