Why Write - What George Orwell Missed

Every year after preparing my tax return I re-read George Orwell’s famous essay of 1946: “Why I Write.” It helps me to think again about why on earth I write.  Why am I still committed to a profession whose income condemns me to indigence, resentment and jealousy?

Resentment and jealousy were bad enough when directed at human writers whose stuff had more success than mine. They have risen exponentially at my increasing displacement by the efforts of AI (Artificial Indifferent) phantasms. I write song lyrics which are never  sung, novels which are never read or purchased, nor even borrowed from libraries, unless I do this furtively myself, and screenplays which are  never screened (although a few got optioned). I have been through successive versions of software intended to assist the  production of each, especially for screenplays. The first versions did vital mechanistic tasks, above all putting into the correct layout and Courier typeface. (Why are these standard, I am often asked? To give the poor drudge of a reader for an agent or studio an instant sense of the length of a screenplay submission before rejecting it.) Then screenplay software started to note intelligent points of detail (you killed this character in scene 8 and we have never met this one before). Then they started rewriting dialogue and killing off characters of their  own volition and giving “notes”. I decided to abandon them before they decided to kill off the redundant creator (me).

As to songs, Orwell himself in “1984” (created in 1948) predicted the artificial composition of light sentimental ditties  to please the proles and  make them work harder.

But I digress.

When I re-read Orwell’s “Why I Write”  I am always jarred first by its unwitting snobbery.

He contrasted writers, scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers and successful businessmen, “in short… the whole top crust of humanity” with “the great mass of human beings.” Of the latter, he suggested that “After the age of about thirty, they abandon individual ambition – in many cases, indeed, they almost abandon the sense of being individuals at all – and live chiefly for others, or are simply smothered under drudgery.” Not so, George or Eric, the ability to dream after thirty is not concentrated on any set of occupations. A little later he wrote dismissively of “even a pamphleteer or a writer of textbooks”. There is nothing “even” about being a pamphleteer (as witness Swift) and successful textbooks require far more care and precision than many a “great” novel.

But I digress again. On his four motives for writing he hit the coconut each time for me  - but he did not complete the list.

 One: sheer egoism. “Desire to seem clever, to be talked about, to be remembered after death.” Well of course.

 Two: aesthetic enthusiasm. “Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement.” Absolutely so, although the best exponent of the latter feeling is not another Great Mind but Mr Pooter, the fictional hero of the comic masterpiece “The Diary Of  A Nobody”. After each of  his “very best jests” he records the same reaction “My goodness, how we roared!” Any roaring after my very best jests is usually singular not plural but it is enough to confirm Orwell’s second motive for me.

 Three: historical impulse. “Desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them up for the use of posterity.” Well, yes, although in my case this impulse has been channelled almost totally into uncovering the statistics of obscure cricket-players – the only sphere in which it has earned me any money.

 Four: political purpose. “Desire to push the world in a certain direction.” Yes, that too. I have devoted much of my writing to what I thought were good causes, latterly saving pangolins from the extinction and replacing them on the endangered list with Dotard Trump. Yes, Dotard. I think I was the first to use that variant, more accurate spelling, although I yield to any prior claim with good evidence. I simply want to get it established. If you follow me here, please follow me in its usage.

 But in all honesty, for me all of Orwell’s motives come far behind Five: no other talent. I could never have done any of the things I have wanted to do in different phases of my life, astronaut, professional cricketer, surgeon, typographer, cultivator of limes or quinces, pianist in a whorehouse. If asked, I could not run a whelk stall, although I have never understood why that expression gained currency in England as a nadir of achievement. To purchase and prepare these succulent molluscs is a demanding and highly competitive occupation.

I had a few other  remunerated phases in life. The pensions they yielded, added to the provision of the British state (as yet spared the dire destructive diligence of  any DOGE) allow me my life of indigent obscurity. Anything more, including cat food for the one who shares that life daily, compels  me to write from necessity. No job too small, as the best local plumbers assure me on their business cards.

But when these modest  assignments  are complete, there is one  other overwhelming reason why I write.

Rage. Expressing this in writing is politer, especially to my neighbours, than shouting out of the window like the Peter Finch character in “Network” and less scary to local children than long monologues in the local streets.

In part this is an extension of Orwell’s fourth motive: moving the world in a certain  direction, but Rage is personal not  political. Its objects have  equal mass and therefore an equal gravitational pull although some, especially Dotard Trump, have a much shorter  orbit around my emotional sun. But I can be just as aroused by the  commonplace illiteracy of turning “under way” into a single word (as in “our economic revival is well underway.” When I see that, I know that the economy is more likely to be well under water.)

Anyway, Rage is the prime reason Why I Write.

Much of the writing here was composed last year and published as free attacking material against Dotard Trump. Some of this I know to have been used at least locally but  none of it gained enough currency or traction to prevent his return to power. I then  let it become dormant from depression.

I revive it now and with it the past material (including poems and songs) against Dotard Trump. Most of  it is current still and some is even more  deserved. I hope that it will be used in the state visit our country will shortly have to endure from him and will help to counter the official servility which is a traditional British industry.

This visit is the climax of a degrading and futile policy of appeasement of Dotard Trump which has reduced me to breaking point with a party I have served in one way or another since the General Election of 1959 (1955 if you count defacing an election poster of Anthony  Eden). More of this below, with an appeal to American readers to assist protest against this policy and help turn the state visit into the turkey Dotard Trump deserves.

It will also be a home for other materials in prose and verse, some resurrected from oblivion others newly created, and not always enraged. Because in spite of the indigent obscurity and jealous rancour (see above) which is their usual reward, I cannot stop myself.