Orwell on Book Reviewers

One of my indulgences over Christmas was a little collection of George Orwell essays, one of those "Great Ideas" books from Penguin. I'd only read 1984 and Animal Farm before this, and I'd like to read his journalism and nonfiction - particularly now that his work isn't being crammed down my throat by high school English teachers.

I enjoyed (kinda) his essay "Confessions of a Book Reviewer," in which he describes such professionals as sad, frumpy little men surrounded by dusty papers and half-empty cups of tea.

"[T]he prolonged, indiscriminate reviewing of books is a quite exceptionally thankless, irritating and exhausting job. It not only involves praising trash ... but constantly inventing reactions towards books about which one has no spontaneous feelings whatever. The reviewer, jaded though he may be, is professionally interested in books, and out of the thousands that appear annually, there are probably fifty or a hundred that he would enjoy writing about. If he is a top-notcher in his profession he may get hold of ten or twenty of them: more probably he gets hold of two or three. The rest of his work however conscientious he may be in praising or damning, is in essence humbug. He is pouring his immortal spirit down the drain, half a pint at a time."

Man, Orwell must have been a hoot at parties.