Would George Orwell, critic and essayist extraordinaire, be a blogger if he were alive today?
Jean Seaton, a professor at the University of Westminster in London and administer of the Orwell Writing Prize, think so. Seaton came up with the idea to create a blog of Orwell’s diaries. Each blog entry is published on the day Orwell wrote it … decades later. So, for instance, today’s Marrakech post, was written on September 14, 1938.
It feels a little weird to read Orwell on anything but paper, but I do like the idea of reading his diaries in serial. It feels slightly more authentic (or something like that) to read the “new” entries one at a time, rather several at a time, as I’d be inclined to do if I picked up a hard copy of Orwell’s diaries.
1 Comment
September 14, 2008 at 12:02 pm
I’m enjoying the Orwell Diaries as well, in the blog form. Authentic is the right word, as you’re following along with the author as he put them down. It’s also interesting reading in the primary form, as opposed to after it has been edited.