A Tale of Two Writers

An interesting review in today's IHT of a new book entitled The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in Love and War by David Lebedoff. The author's main intent, as the title suggests, is to unearth the similarities between these two ostensibly very different writers.

He lists their physical courage, their fearlessness in opposing what Orwell called the "smelly little orthodoxies" of the day, their "hatred of moral relativism".
He might also have added that Orwell and Waugh were two of the great English stylists of the 20th century. In this connection, and to take just one example at a purely mechanical level, Waugh's genius is apparent in his unerring ability to use exactly the right word but which we would probably never have thought of using ourselves.

Orwell was less gifted a writer than Waugh but his style (which never once becomes one-dimensional or contrived in the manner of Somerset Maugham, for example) is admirably suited to his purpose, namely the development and exposition of ideas. He draws you along with him and makes you feel more intelligent. Very few writers have this gift. In more recent times, two names spring to mind: the psychiatrist and writer Anthony Storr and, here in France, the philosopher Luc Ferry.