“Shooting an Elephant” (1936), an essay by George Orwell, tells about the time he shot an elephant in Moulmein, Burma in 1926 as a police officer for the British Empire. It gave him insight into the nature of imperialism:
“when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. … He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. “
Trigger warning: white feelings, moral blindness and ungrateful darkies ahead.
The elephant in question was tame but had gone wild with “must” (a surge of testosterone). It broke free of its chains, destroyed a “hut” (house), killed a cow, raided fruit stands, overturned a rubbish van and killed “a black Dravidian coolie”. By the time Orwell caught up with it, it had calmed down:
“I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided.”
Yet he went against his better judgement:
“But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. … I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes – faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. … I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East.”
He shot the elephant.
Some Whites said it was a shame since “an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie.”
Orwell as a police officer in Burma saw “the dirty work of Empire at close quarters”. It “oppressed” him “with an intolerable sense of guilt.” He was “all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British.”
Yet he seems strangely incapable of putting himself in their shoes:
“[T]he sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. … none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.”
So he hated both the Empire and the Burmese:
“I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. … I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.”
– Abagond, 2014.
See also:
Wow- thank you for excavating this essay. I’ve always thought that police and soldiers, themselves exploited, take out their frustrations on “the people”. And that the institutions allow it because it keeps the soldiers and police doing the needed work, containing people and suppressing dissent. I’ve always guessed that those were the internal feelings that lead to beatings and murders, but I’ve never had evidence of it before. I’m glad Orwell wrote this down.
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Indeed, Orwell revealed a lot. He was stuck with a lot of rage at both the oppressor and the oppressed.
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Orwell/Blair was an interesting guy.
In the decade following his stint as a cop he joined the Communist led International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War to fight the fascists. He was invalided out of service after being shot in the throat by a sniper.
Although Orwell joined the Brigades that were largely led by Marxists, he later said that, had he understood things better, that he would rather have joined the Anarchists who also fought against Franco’s fascists.
His dislike of authoritarianism is a consistent thread throughout his life and his work.
As for the elephant thing, IMO Orwell was clearly racist. Don’t get me wrong, as far as the general British racism of the time is concerned, and especially of his social class, he registered so low on the racism-scale as to be almost in recovery. I think there are signs that he did struggle against the prejudices instilled by his background.
That said, he failed. He clearly had a real dislike of the Burmese. Whether that was racial or cultural, who knows, but he emphasised the “yellow” faces as well as behavioural traits so maybe a bit of both.
At least he made some effort to reject privilege and imperialism.
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Oddly enough, reading this brought to mind the mindset of American cops.
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drdap (@drdap)
I should have caught your comment. Puts into words my thoughts.
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@ buddhuu
I don’t know Orwell’s bio well, would you say he died a racist, that it was part of him til the end?
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I think this is how many law enforcement officers feel about poor people of color. They have a lot of resentment and anger towards said people. That is probably why we are hearing about so much brutality among law enforcement officers in the news.
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This essay by Orwell helps me to understand more about colonialism by the British. Good post. I learned something today. Do more of these.
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The elephant was worth more than the poor dead coolie. Very teeling of the racism during that time in that part of the world. But i suppose that is nothing to be shocked about, but it very disgusting and hideous how evil the British imperialist were. SMH.
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^telling^
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Very Interesting!
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Legion said,
To be honest, I can only speculate. I’ve read a fair bit of his output – ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ and ‘Animal Farm’ were school reading for me, and I have reread ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ several times over the years. His writing about the Spanish Civil War has had relevance to the political history that interests me. I’ve never read a full biographical book about Orwell/Blair, so I really only know him from his writing and from his well known exploits.
My gut feeling is that ‘Orwell’ was himself a character – an ego trip persona for Blair. That’s not to dismiss Blair as a person without authenticity and merit, but neither he nor his Orwell alter ego were free of substantial flaws.
I think Orwell genuinely recognised and deplored a lot of the evil in imperialism and imperialist oppression, and I think that recognition when so many around him were blind to it made him rather smug and self-satisfied. However, he was a product of the same society that practised that imperialism and he share many of its prejudices and attitudes, although he clearly struggled against them on some levels.
I think that Orwell came to recognise a lot of the reality of oppression, inequality, privilege etc, but I don’t think that race was a big aspect to him. For Blair it would have been more a socio-political thing. Remember that Communism and Fascism, two monumental, polar-opposite ideologies were warring all over the place and that aspect was what caught his passion and imagination.
He was at least a generation too early for real awareness of racism to register. Thus I don’t think he would have given it any deep consideration in the terms to which we refer these days. By our standards I think he lived and died racist. However, if he had looked more at the issue I believe he would have struggled to overcome it and I suspect that he would have devoted significant literary effort to the problem. But it wasn’t one of the evils that really made it onto his radar.
Yup. racist, but relatively low level, not ideological.
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Thanks buddhuu.
1984 I read for myself by myself. Animal Farm was a school read though. I “enjoyed” them both, though they are political books and not for entertainment, alone.
I tried to read Homage to Catalonia, last year. It felt like a slog, so slow. It remains on my book shelf, half read –and not even “calling” to me. 😦
I wanted as direct a taste as I could get of Spain’s Anarchist movement and effort to solidify itself as the system for Spain. Man, guess I should really finish it, just on principle.
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This partly brings out the point that the world is stuck in systems that breed hatred and dysfunction. Orwell said there that he hated the British Empire and evidently the people over which it was ruling hated it as well. Therefore they hated Orwell because he was its representative and he hated them for that.
So the architecture of imperialistic white racism is corrupt and has diverse negative effects. While whites created it and it has brought them material wealth (as a group; obviously there are poor whites) it has impoverished them in other ways. I thought this helped illiustrate the all-around hideousness of it.
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@ Legion:
My interest in Anarchist politics is what led me to read ‘…Catalonia’: the Spanish conflict and its aftermath is one of the movement’s most high profile moments. The fact that Orwell said that he wished he’d joined the Anarchists made an impression on me.
If you are receptive to suggestions, then I sincerely recommend ‘Mutual Aid’ and ‘The Conquest of Bread’ by Pyotr Kropotkin. Both are available free as HTML, Kindle books or plain text here:
‘Mutual Aid’ – http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4341
‘Conquest of Bread’ – http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23428
The philosophy they espouse is unashamedly utopian, but Kropotkin believed passionately that it was a realistic vision. He was a Russian prince who renounced his title at an early age. I do not know whether Orwell read these books or not. I don’t recall mention of Kropotkin in his writings, and I suspect that if he had read PK he would have joined the Spanish Anarchists from the outset.
For those who are not familiar with the concept beyond the popular misrepresentation of Molotov-cocktail hurling punks, Anarchism or, specifically, Anarcho-Communism works toward a society where all are absolutely free and equal; where money is abandoned as unnecessary and problematic; where people act for the good of individuals and the community by free association and agreement. Anarchism rejects all privilege and accepts authority only where it is freely delegated by the people ad hoc and where it is revocable by those same people. The guiding principle is mutual aid – basically ‘love thy neighbour’ by any other name.
It sounds absurd when summarised by a hack like me, but Kropotkin makes it live in his writing. I think he could have been the missing influence that could have helped Orwell broaden his rejection of oppression and privilege and to consider ALL men and women his equal brothers and sisters.
Reading Kropotkin changed my life. Once one grasps the beautifully simple principles, it becomes irresistibly obvious that there is no other system that is fairer, more loving, more sustainable and more ethical.
@abagond: while I believe that this post is on topic and relevant to discussion of Orwell, I am willing to be guided. Please let me know if I am straying too far.
Thanks.
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Origin said,
I could not agree more.
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I was slightly embarrassed, when I realized how jejune I sounded about 1984; all I meant was that back in the day, it wasn’t a school assignment. At the time, I derived some satisfaction from having 1984 ‘all to myself’ –so to speak. It would have really ruined it to have to read it “for marks”!
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@ buddhuu
Re: Topicality
Abagond can correct if needs be but I believe we are fine as regards discussion of Anarchism or even the Spanish Civil War because the topics were generated out of mention of Orwell’s works. That type of path for topicality is one way topics are generated and permitted on Abagond’s blog. Further, the thread is partly about Imperialism which is a form of domination. Discussion of remedies to forms of brutal domination seems reasonable. Anarchism is one such suggested remedy and so again seems appropriate to discussion here.
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@ Legion:
Cool. It’s just that I’m aware that I ramble a bit and I don’t want to inadvertently derail or add noise to discussions.
You know, although I was aware of ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ when I was in school, I would never have read it the first time had it not been a book we worked on for class. I can’t honestly claim to have read it “for myself” until much later.
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The problems I have with George Orwell…I want to like him, but he buggers it up because as “honest” as his writing is supposed to be, he is stylised to the hilt, and he is stylised simply to disguise what he is.
And here, when he recounts the shooting of the elephant, he is sounds like so many English middle-class racists that dramatise themselves as the victim of darkies. In this case, George Orwell does this even whilst he kills a valuable and sacred working animal in THEIR country. And, it seems, he feels no remorse for its death and appears to not feel obligated to compensate anyone for the unfortunate creature’s loss.
Here, he simply doesn’t BELIEVE the Western Oriental Gentleman — the Wog — is human, for all his lip service, and allusions to the wrongs of Empire.
They are still Wogs. Wogs, be they Indians and Burmans, are faceless black and yellow lumps. They have no individual character or human features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wog
If he was genuine in his anti-imperilism, then this recounting from George Orwell would have been about the conquest of Burma, but instead, we are supposed to feel badly for him whilst his does his conflicted and confused best in this British-Indian country.
I have yet to read anything about Orwell’s views about Burman literature, because although the Brtish spent generously on education in Burma, they did not allow its Buddhist literature to be taught, and was largely forgotten.
In another of his essays about Burma, “How a nation is exploited”, he explains, matter-of-factly, how these faceless darkies are pacified, subdued and robbed.
Of course, he is sympathetic: there’s a bit of sympahty. But justice for “Orientals” is not a passion of his.
No point explaining how the population were caught up and caught out by in a complex and utterly bewilderling economic system that required payment of taxes, or buying supplies BEFORE a crop could be harvested, forcing farmer to turn to Indian moneylenders…all backed by British banks!
Who then swiped the profits. Then, evitably, the land.
But, as Orientals they were too dumb to understand anything.
.http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/how-a-nation-is-exploited-the-british-empire-in-burma/
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@ Legion, buddhu et al
Hichens wrote an excellent book of essays about Orwell, ‘Why Orwell Matters’. The answers to some of the questions you have (i.e. about Orwell’s racism etc) are contained in this work : (http://www.amazon.com/Why-Orwell-Matters-Christopher-Hitchens/dp/0465030505).
Orwell certainly expresses racist sentiments in this essay but in my opinion he did not die a racist and was, in fact, an anti-racist. I’ve read just about every essay, work of fiction and letter that has ever been published of Orwell’s so my opinion is based on a fairly extensive knowledge of his work.
Here’s a quote from an essay of Orwell’s about an attack he witnessed in Colombo (also cited by Hitchens – see p20-21):
“Nearly all aristocracies having real power have depended on a difference of race… It is much easier for the aristocrat to be ruthless if he imagines that the serf is different from himself in blood and bone. Hence the tendency to exaggerate race-differences, the current rubbish about shapes of skulls, colour of eyes, blood counts etc etc.”
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@ Bulanik
That is not accurate in my opinion.
Orwell lived and worked in Burma as a very young man. His opinions changed markedly as a result of his experiences there and he became a fervent anti-colonialist.
I would like to see a post from Abagond about what he actually thinks of Orwell. Clearly, Abagond has also read his works extensively so I would be interested in his perspective.
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@ Abagond
I like your observation in another post about Orwell:
“Orwell saw the world with a clear and truthful eye and wrote accordingly. Largely unloved in his own time, history has valued him for telling the truth.”
(https://abagond.wordpress.com/2006/12/06/orwell/)
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@wordynerdygirl:
Thanks for the tip about the Hitchens essays. I’ll definitely check that collection out.
You’re clearly more of an Orwell authority than I am. In addition to ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘…Catelonia’ I’ve only read ‘Road to Wigan Pier’ and ‘Down and Out…’. There is a hell of a lot more that I’m not familiar with.
My belief that Orwell would have remained racist is admittedly an assumption, but bearing in mind how difficult it is, even now, for white people to break the conditioning and mindset of our upbringing and the system of which we are a product, I find it almost incredible that a man of Orwell’s middle class background and prejudices would have been able to break free of ingrained racism.
I accept that he may have been anti-racist – I certainly think that he would have been if he had devoted substantial time to the topic – but I am not aware of much that he actually had to say on the matter. That Colombo quote you included (which I had not read before, so far as I’m aware) is probably the only direct addressing of racism by Orwell that I’m aware of. Certainly the Burma episode doesn’t paint Blair as a xenophile.
Orwell’s works that I’ve read have been influential for me, but I’ve seen nothing that makes me think that he had some kind of super power than enabled him, in those days of middle class domination and overwhelming pro-empire ambience, to conquer the attitudes he seemed to display as a younger man.
Even those of us whites who are anti-racist remain susceptible to unconscious bias if we’re not vigilant. For Blair, at that time, to have beaten his racism just strikes me as hard to picture. Where is the body of work that suggests it? In my experience (and if I’m any example), recovering racists become more vocal than ex-smokers. Where are Orwell’s post-epiphany volumes of anti-racist diatribe?
If you know more, please share. I’d be delighted to learn that this important writer was an even better man than he seemed.
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@ Wordy,
Fair enough.
I haven’t read George Orwell’s nine books, all his essays, his journalism including, including his “As I please” column, the 379 reviews, more than 1,000 letters, his diaries, his BBC material during the war, the street-fighting tactics lectures (‘bombs easier to throw downstairs than up’ ) intended for his Home Guard platoon, the letters by his first wife, Eileen, previously unpublish, or such — so I take your point.
***
He was very young man at the time he wrote about the elephant shooting, being only 19 when he first went to Burma. When one considers that he died prematurely (46), his influence today says much about his evolution during those years. (I have sometimes wondered how his outlook would’ve modulated and modified if he had lived longer, and how they’d have enriched and deepened those who read him.)
Nevertheless, I don’t know who the writer, the one who says “I” — was.
Is that the real man, Eric Blair — or the invented persona, George Orwell?
Ex-imperialist and policeman who played bad-tempered sahib.
The old-Etonian snob who despised privileged and tried to pass as ordinary.
In which way are the things he tells the reader actually true?
I believed him when he talked about “immense weight of guilt” he wanted to expiate, and have no no doubts about his humanity or courage, I just never fell fully for the seductiveness of his writing.
Because George Orwell was writer and did what writers sometime do.
He recounts a hanging in Burma, but at other times he told others it was “only a story”. When he was down and out dish-washing, couldn’t his beloved Aunt in Paris have helped a little? Or, when he spoke of Oceania’s ruling ideology: “the mutability of the past,” it’s obvious here (and elsewhwere) that he had the most exceptional understanding and mastery of history rewriting / airbrushing / spin / falsification.
Was George Orwell an antisemite? He wrote against antisemitism, but did he overcome his own?
His plain writing is like clear and compelling documentary-making: the style isn’t the subject, but rather, a way of telling.
And, ANY style can seduce the reader, and is probably meant to.
In my opinion, Orwell was conflicted, but humorous.: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” (Notes on Nationalism)
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@ buddhu
I believe that a person can be BOTH racist and anti-racist — wrestling endlessly and unevenly with that conflict all their lives.
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@ buddhuu
I bet that Peter Hitchens’ books is a great read! He was quite the polemicist/provocateur. But even though I’ve seen the book (and not read it), I thought to myself: “Does Orwell need defending?”
I don’t mean “defending” as such, but, in my opinion, George Orwell’s writing stand on its own.
Mr Hitchens, though…
Regarding Columbus and the “discovery” of the New World:
“1492 was a very good year, deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto.”
More:
Those “who view the history of North America as a narrative of genocide and slavery” fail to understand that this is “the way that history is made, and to complain about it is as empty as complaint about climatic, geological or tectonic shift”.
Because: “the annihilation of the Native Americans was an instance that left “humanity on a slightly higher plane than it knew before”, inaugurating an “early boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation”.
http://www.blairkelly.ca/2011/12/30/first-impressions-chris-hedges/
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@ Wordy
Buddhuu says:
Seconded. I’d like know more about him, too.
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Correction — I mean CHRISTOPHER Hitchens.
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@ buddhuu
Re those quotes from Christopher Hitchens — they are taken out of context, and for this reason, they do not accurately express his views.
I’ve searched for his orginal article — it hasn’t yet turned up.
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Hitchens was an odd chap. Very hard to pin down. I’m not even sure he had a coherent philosophy or ideology. He sometimes seemed to do knee-jerk reaction to issues in isolation without thinking how it played into his declared positions on other matters. Not necessarily contradictory, but… random.
As I said, I’ll read his observations on Orwell, but what I really need to do is to read more of Orwell’s own stuff myself rather than just accepting Hitchens’s assessment. I’ve just downloaded the novels I’ve not yet read, and I’ll get the other essays as and when I can find them.
Having a queue of books to read is a good feeling. I get a bit twitchy when I get near the end of a book if I don’t have something else lined up ready to go straight after.
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@ Wordy
In “1984”, “Animal Farm” and “Homage to Catalonia” he does not come across as particularly racist. In fact, those books have helped me to understand the kind of racism you see in news, films and schoolbooks, by laying out the relationship between power and “truth”.
In this essay, though, written earlier than those books, I agree with Bulanik that he comes across as a typical white racist. His constant references to “yellow faces”, his amazing inability to empathize with the oppressed (the Burmese), while making it all about the delicate feelings of an oppressor (himself), etc. He clearly sees the Burmese as darkies.
What I found most sickening is how he blamed the Burmese for HIS killing the elephant and then, as if that was not bad enough, made it into a metaphor for British imperialism. That is just like what a wife beater tells his victim: you made me do it, it’s your fault. It is part of the abusive, morally bankrupt mindset that underlies racism.
I agree with buddhuu: if he had had any epiphany about racism later on, we would know about it. It was not as if he shied away from writing about the hypocrisy of power.
Also: Despite knowing the dirty side of imperialism, blah, blah, he still worked for the India section of the BBC in the 1940s, taking part in what he must have known was imperialist propaganda. By then he understood how power and “truth” worked. He came out against British rule of India, I believe, but just like in this essay, he says he is against it while working for it!
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@ abagond
I completely agree with your comments about this essay. The sentiments he’s portraying here are sickening and a classic case of blaming the victim for his own culpability in a racist system.
But you need to read some of his later essays – I don’t think it’s possible or fair to make a clear judgement about Orwell without reading those. He did write more extensively about racism. He also promoted the work of Anglo Indian, Burmese and black American writers.
While he’s most famous as a fiction writer now, he regarded himself – accurately in my opinion – as an essayist, first and foremost. It’s in his essays that you really have an accurate gauge of his opinions and how they evolved over the years.
I’m at work at the moment (it’s 11:40am here) but I’ll post some extracts from other essays of his later on. I also have transcripts of some of his radio shows. I’ll dig some good content from these too.
@ Bulanik
I think that Orwell, at least toward the end of his life, was both clear sighted and clear hearted. He was no obscurer of the truth – he wrote simply because he wanted to show the world as it really is. Abagond pointed something to this effect out in another post and I wholeheartedly agree.
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@ Wordy
Thanks.
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@ buddhu
Please get your hands on some of Orwell’s essays. They are more interesting, better reading and reveal far more of his world view that his novels.
His novels are wonderful though, of course.
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@ Sharina @ Mary @ Wordy
Part of what made this essay interesting to me is that you got to see inside the mind of a racist cop.
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Thanks for the added context Wordy, it’s meaningful.
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wordynerdygirl said:
I’ll tackle the essays first then. I found a pretty comprehensive download with a heap of his essays/journalism etc. With the novels I got yesterday I’m all set.
This has been a really interesting post and thread.
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