The Literature Network - A WRITER AT LARGE: New confessions of a book reviewer In the 1940s George Orwell described reviewing books as a squalid, corrupt enterprise performed by overworked and badly paid drudges. But is the literary world any different today, asks DJ TAYLOR, who

A WRITER AT LARGE: New confessions of a book reviewer In the 1940s George Orwell described reviewing books as a squalid, corrupt enterprise performed by overworked and badly paid drudges. But is the literary world any different today, asks DJ TAYLOR, who

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From: The Independent on Sunday
Date: 20030420
Author:DJ TAYLOR

Fifty-seven years ago this month, George Orwell contributed one of his most mordant essays to the left-wing weekly paper Tribune. "Confessions of a Book Reviewer" is one of those dreadful reports from the professional coal-face - wildly exaggerated but with just enough truth in it to make the reader feel uncomfortable - whose eventual effect is to define a particular trade in the public imagination forever. Just as it is impossible to emerge from an early H G Wells novel without assuming every small shopkeeper to be a sanctimonious old hypocrite cheerfully sanding the sugar before summoning ...

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A WRITER AT LARGE: New confessions of a book reviewer In the 1940s George Orwell described reviewing books as a squalid, corrupt enterprise performed by overworked and badly paid drudges. But is the literary world any different today, asks DJ TAYLOR, who

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