George Orwell was a literary mediocrity and his views on the importance of plain writing are plain wrong, argues writer Will Self.
Says an unfunny mediocrity best forgotten about one of our literary greats. I know who I would rather read.
George Orwell was a literary mediocrity and his views on the importance of plain writing are plain wrong, argues writer Will Self.
Says an unfunny mediocrity best forgotten about one of our literary greats. I know who I would rather read.
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My thoughts exactly when I saw that.
Will Self……I have always detested the smug shit.
The bloke’s an arse. Orwell had ten times the talent Self could ever hope to have. How dare he deem a literary great as mediocre when he himself doesn’t even scale the dizzy heights of mediocrity.
“The bloke’s an arse.”
Good plain factual writing, LR.
As someone who writes for a living, I’m with Orwell.
Language is a communication tool. The clearer it is, the better. If you have too much noise in your signal, you’re just making it harder for people to understand whatever the hell it is you want to say to them, which defeats the whole bloody point of writing in the first place.
There is a term for what people like Will Self write that’s used by writers who actually make money from the books they sell: “lit-wank”. Writing written by writers for the sole purpose of impressing other writers with the size of their penis—sorry, vocabulary.
If you’re going out of your way to make your message hard to understand, you’re doing it wrong. Or you’re an arse. Neither should be an aspirational goal.
I’m with Orwell, too. His guidance is about clear communication, which is the point of writing.
One thing is certain. In 50 years time people will still be reading George Orwell.
I can’t even name a single book of Will Self’s even now. He is an odious, self promoting prick.