Images via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In his 2002 mem­oir, Trav­els, Michael Crich­ton took his read­ers back sev­er­al decades, to the ear­ly 1960s when, as a Har­vard stu­dent, he tried an inter­est­ing lit­tle exper­i­ment in his Eng­lish class. He recalled:

I had gone to col­lege plan­ning to become a writer, but ear­ly on a sci­en­tif­ic ten­den­cy appeared. In the Eng­lish depart­ment at Har­vard, my writ­ing style was severe­ly crit­i­cized and I was receiv­ing grades of C or C+ on my papers. At eigh­teen, I was vain about my writ­ing and felt it was Har­vard, and not I, that was in error, so I decid­ed to make an exper­i­ment. The next assign­ment was a paper on Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els, and I remem­bered an essay by George Orwell that might fit. With some hes­i­ta­tion, I retyped Orwell’s essay and sub­mit­ted it as my own. I hes­i­tat­ed because if I were caught for pla­gia­rism I would be expelled; but I was pret­ty sure that my instruc­tor was not only wrong about writ­ing styles, but poor­ly read as well. In any case, George Orwell got a B- at Har­vard, which con­vinced me that the Eng­lish depart­ment was too dif­fi­cult for me.

I decid­ed to study anthro­pol­o­gy instead. But I doubt­ed my desire to con­tin­ue as a grad­u­ate stu­dent in anthro­pol­o­gy, so I began tak­ing premed cours­es, just in case.

Most like­ly Crich­ton sub­mit­ted Orwell’s essay 1946 essay, “Pol­i­tics vs. Lit­er­a­ture: An Exam­i­na­tion of Gul­liv­er’s Trav­els.”  He even­tu­al­ly went to Har­vard Med­ical School but kept writ­ing on the side. Per­haps get­ting a grade just a shade below Orwell’s B- gave Crich­ton some bizarre con­fir­ma­tion that he could one day make it as a writer.

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via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

T.S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Edi­tor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trot­skyite” Nov­el Ani­mal Farm (1944)

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s Har­row­ing Race to Fin­ish 1984 Before His Death

A few weeks ago, we fea­tured George Orwell’s 1944 let­ter reveal­ing the ideas that would lead him to write his still wide­ly read, and even more wide­ly assigned, nov­el­/an­ti-author­i­tar­i­an state­ment 1984. The book would come out five years lat­er, in 1949, sug­gest­ing that Orwell worked at a pret­ty good clip to turn out a book of such high stature. Alas, he nev­er lived to see it attain its cur­rent place in the cul­ture, and bare­ly even to see its pub­li­ca­tion. It turns out Orwell had to work faster than you may expect; beset by poor health in var­i­ous man­i­fes­ta­tions, he had to fin­ish off the nov­el­’s man­u­script, which he had then ten­ta­tive­ly titled The Last Man in Europe, before his con­di­tions fin­ished him off. “I am not pleased with the book but I am not absolute­ly dis­sat­is­fied,” he wrote his agent of the rough draft. “I think it is a good idea but the exe­cu­tion would have been bet­ter if I had not writ­ten it under the influ­ence of TB.”

That typ­i­cal­ly gray but hardy Blairi­an obser­va­tion (as in Eric Arthur Blair, Orwell’s giv­en name, tak­ing into account that “Orwellian” has, owing to 1984, a mean­ing of its own) comes from Robert McCrum, writ­ing in The Guardian of the author’s strug­gle to com­plete the book by the end of 1948. “It was a des­per­ate race against time. Orwell’s health was dete­ri­o­rat­ing, the man­u­script need­ed retyp­ing, and the Decem­ber dead­line was loom­ing.” Feel­ing beyond help, he “fol­lowed his ex-pub­lic school­boy’s instincts: he would go it alone. [ … ] Sus­tained by end­less roll-ups, pots of cof­fee, strong tea and the warmth of his paraf­fin heater, with gales buf­fet­ing [his bor­rowed house on a remote Scot­tish island] night and day, he strug­gled on. By 30 Novem­ber 1948 it was vir­tu­al­ly done.”  On June 8th, the book appeared in Eng­land’s book­stores, met by acclaim from Win­ston Churchill him­self on down. Orwell died on Jan­u­ary 21, 1950, 64 years ago this past Mon­day.

Above, we’ve includ­ed images of 1984’s man­u­script from GeorgeOrwellNovels.com (click on each for a larg­er ver­sion), and you can learn more about it at The Fic­tion Desk. Do con­sid­er giv­ing a read — or, bet­ter yet, a re-read — to Orwell’s 1946 essay “Why I Write,” from which McCrum quotes to illu­mi­nate the writer’s dri­ve to com­plete this har­row­ing final work: “Writ­ing a book is a hor­ri­ble, exhaust­ing strug­gle, like a long bout of some painful ill­ness. One would nev­er under­take such a thing if one were not dri­ven by some demon whom one can nei­ther resist or under­stand.”

Read more about this sto­ry at The Guardian.

via Red­dit

Relat­ed Con­tent:

George Orwell Explains in a Reveal­ing 1944 Let­ter Why He’d Write 1984

George Orwell’s 1984: Free eBook, Audio Book & Study Resources

The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (Cir­ca 1921)

George Orwell’s Five Great­est Essays (as Select­ed by Pulitzer-Prize Win­ning Colum­nist Michael Hiltzik)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.

Sure­ly most ardent read­ers of Jack Ker­ouac’s nov­el On the Road have tried to map Sal Par­adise and Dean Mori­ar­ty’s Amer­i­can jour­ney. Above, par­tial­ly alle­vi­at­ing your own need to take the pains of sketch­ing out that great Beat jour­ney your­self, we have a map drawn by the author him­self. Pulled from Ker­ouac’s diary, it traces the route of a hitch­hik­ing trip of July through Octo­ber 1948, which no doubt fueled the still-potent lit­er­ary impact of his best-known book, which would see pub­li­ca­tion almost a decade lat­er in 1957. Each stop has a label, from the icon­ic Amer­i­can metrop­o­lis­es of New York City, Chica­go, San Fran­cis­co, Los Ange­les, and Wash­ing­ton, D.C. to the less-known but no less evoca­tive small­er towns like Des Moines, North Plat­te, Laramie, and Sel­ma.

For a rep­re­sen­ta­tion more strict­ly reflect­ing the fic­tion, see Michael J. Hess’ map of Par­adise and Mori­ar­ty’s route across the coun­try. It offers pas­sages straight from Ker­ouac’s text about all the places they stopped briefly, stayed a while, or only men­tioned, like Salt Lake City, “a city of sprin­klers” at dawn; Flagstaff, whose “every bump, rise, and stretch mys­ti­fied my long­ing”; Oma­ha, home to “the first cow­boy I saw”; and the Indi­anapo­lis Par­adise enters on a bus which has just “roared through Indi­ana corn­fields.” Writer Den­nis Mansker, on his own site, has cre­at­ed four sep­a­rate inter­ac­tive maps, each cov­er­ing one of the nov­el­’s parts. He also includes a run­down of the road sto­ry’s four major vehi­cles, includ­ing the 1949 Hud­son seen just above. “This is the car in which they blast off to New Orleans and the West Coast, Jan­u­ary 1949,” Mansker notes. “Like all of Dean’s cars, this one real­ly took a beat­ing.” But Dean’s cars just had to take it, since, as the band Guid­ed by Voic­es once sang, “Ker­ouac Nev­er Drove, So He Nev­er Drove Alone.”

You can find lec­tures (1 + 2) on Ker­ouac’s writ­ing in Yale’s course, The Amer­i­can Nov­el Since 1945, which appears in our col­lec­tion of 825 Free Cours­es Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jack Ker­ouac Lists 9 Essen­tials for Writ­ing Spon­ta­neous Prose

Pull My Daisy: 1959 Beat­nik Film Stars Jack Ker­ouac and Allen Gins­berg

Jack Ker­ouac Reads from On the Road (1959)

Jack Kerouac’s Naval Reserve Enlist­ment Mugshot, 1943

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, Asia, film, lit­er­a­ture, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on his brand new Face­book page.