The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort by Laursen, Eric

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political...
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$41.43 AUD
SKU: 9781849353182
Product Type: Books
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Author: Eric Laursen
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Subtotal: $41.43
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The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort by Laursen, Eric

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

$41.43

The Duty to Stand Aside: Nineteen Eighty-Four and the Wartime Quarrel of George Orwell and Alex Comfort

$41.43
Author: Eric Laursen
Format: Paperback
Language: English

The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feuds--and friendships--in 20th-century English literature. It examines the arguments that divided George Orwell, future author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex--during WWII. Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain's war against fascism, was "objectively pro-fascist." Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government's atrocities--in Britain's case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers--had "sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity."

Later, Comfort and Orwell developed a friendship based on appreciation of each other's work and a common concern about the growing power and penetration of the State--a concern that deeply influenced the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Shortly before his death in 1950, however, Orwell would accuse Comfort of being "anti-British" and "temperamentally pro-totalitarian" in a memo he prepared secretly for the Foreign Office--a fact that Comfort, who died in 2000, never knew.

Laursen's book takes a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different world--in which war has been replaced by undeclared "conflicts," civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward.



Author: Eric Laursen
Publisher: AK Press
Published: 06/12/2018
Pages: 180
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 7.90h x 4.90w x 0.50d
ISBN: 9781849353182


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 04/30/2018

About the Author
Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, activist, and commentator. He is the author of The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan (AK Press, 2012), a BookList Editor's Choice selection; and co-author of Understanding the Crash (Soft Skull Press, Spring 2010), which tells the story of the 2008 economic meltdown in text-and-graphics format. His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Nation, The Village Voice, In These Times, Z Magazine, The Indypendent, HuffingtonPost.com, and The Arkansas Review. He is currently writing a biography of Alex Comfort. A graduate of Columbia University, he lives in Buckland, Massachusetts.

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