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Somehow I found myself at this trove, and reading some of his essays.
http://orwell.ru/library/books/htm_file/024
"Wells, Hitler and the World State", on Wells being trapped in his own past, unable to see the marriage of 'science' and barbarism as revealed in Hitler's Germany
"Rudyard Kipling", on 'good bad poetry', that says the obvious in a memorable way; Kipling being Conservative in the old sense, looking up to authority, while Orwell says all current Conservatives were really Liberals, Fascists, or Fascist sympathizers; Kipling being racist and imperialist and all but with an idea of responsibility and an attachment to defined action unlike a permanent opposition.
"Raffles and Miss Blandish", on the genteel crime fiction of Raffles, gentleman thief, who had no morals but did have standards, vs. the sadistic brutality of _No Orchids for Miss Blandish_ in the American style.
"Boys' Weeklies": magazines as truer and more specific guides to popular taste than oligopolistic broadcast media or expensive novels; older weeklies full of detailed school fantasies, crap writing, and ensembles of equal boys, vs. news ones with better writing, adventure stories (Wild West! Frozen North! Mars!) and hero or bully worship. Also women's weeklies, more realistic seeming stories -- urban jobs, sex, also short stories instead of long serials -- but with their own fantasy of a higher income. Magazines as Conservative propaganda, inculcating a particular worldview; why no left-wing weeklies, like Spanish ones where "police chasing an anarchist" would be from the POV of an anarchist?
http://orwell.ru/library/books/htm_file/024
"Wells, Hitler and the World State", on Wells being trapped in his own past, unable to see the marriage of 'science' and barbarism as revealed in Hitler's Germany
"Rudyard Kipling", on 'good bad poetry', that says the obvious in a memorable way; Kipling being Conservative in the old sense, looking up to authority, while Orwell says all current Conservatives were really Liberals, Fascists, or Fascist sympathizers; Kipling being racist and imperialist and all but with an idea of responsibility and an attachment to defined action unlike a permanent opposition.
"Raffles and Miss Blandish", on the genteel crime fiction of Raffles, gentleman thief, who had no morals but did have standards, vs. the sadistic brutality of _No Orchids for Miss Blandish_ in the American style.
"Boys' Weeklies": magazines as truer and more specific guides to popular taste than oligopolistic broadcast media or expensive novels; older weeklies full of detailed school fantasies, crap writing, and ensembles of equal boys, vs. news ones with better writing, adventure stories (Wild West! Frozen North! Mars!) and hero or bully worship. Also women's weeklies, more realistic seeming stories -- urban jobs, sex, also short stories instead of long serials -- but with their own fantasy of a higher income. Magazines as Conservative propaganda, inculcating a particular worldview; why no left-wing weeklies, like Spanish ones where "police chasing an anarchist" would be from the POV of an anarchist?