Talk:Such, Such Were the Joys

I'm not sure where some of these quotes come from. If you look at http://www.george-orwell.org/Such,_Such_Were_The_Joys/0.html, "Always at the centre of my heart... Pontius Pilate", or "Football, it seemed to me..." don't appear anywhere in that essay.

Can anyone confirm if the link above gives the full text as it appeared in the Partisan Review in 1952, or if it is a precis/abstract. The web link version quoted contains only section 1 +a bit of the "long" 1968 version Motmit (talk) 08:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

This http://orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys is closer to the version printed in the CEJL (until, that is, the update in 2000 with proper names as stated in the article, the CEJL version was definitive) - however, allow for some spelling & grammatical errors as the site is Russian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Piaecantiones (talk • contribs) 21:01, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Re. quotes

Regardless of the above considerations, I reckon the quotes included in the article are way too long. I'll leave it to someone else to do something about it 'cos I tend to be heavy-handed and would probably remove the whole lot so that other editors could replace it more selectively... --Technopat (talk) 10:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Retrograde edits to the summary

The article has been developed through the collective editing process. However an editor is ignoring this effort and simply re-inserting the flawed text he or she wrote some five years ago. This text is unsatisfactory as it consists of personal opinions and interpretations, unencyclopaedic language and lacks any supporting references. The editor has instead removed the valid citations that were in the the text he/she has replaced. This is not the proper way to proceed. Motmit (talk) 18:11, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

It is not true that I have simply re-inserted what I wrote five years ago: a comparison of the texts will show that I tried to accommodate later modifications and improve readability. Citations for the summary are mostly not necessary, since it quotes the essay directly and discusses it in a non-controversial way. My main concern was to improve the readability of the article. As it stood when I recently returned to it, it seemed to me so dense that it would quickly put off a casual reader interested in finding out what the essay is about.

In any case, I only removed two references: the first to an interpretation by Crick about the choice of title, which seems speculative and of peripheral interest to me. The second was to a paper by Pearce that simply lists the accusations that Orwell makes about St Cyprian's. This is unnecessary, since it's a literal reading of the essay. Eb.hoop (talk) 21:59, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for replying. It is important to have references particularly for items not in the text - so we should for example state the basis for claiming the title comes from Blake's poem. I am afraid a great deal written about this essay is speculative as Orwell was dead when it was published and he himself left very little analysis. We can quote the speculation of recognised sources and that leaves the reader able to judge them and quote alternative sources.

It is not appropriate to include own speculation in terms such as "it is obviously meant to be grimly ironic". Similarly "the discovery of what appears to have been a case of mutual masturbation among a group of students at the school" is speculating and in this case questionable as the children were pre-pubescent (and students is not a term used for prep school boys). Expressions such as "fiercely attacks" and "lashes out at the hypocrisy" are OK for a school essay but not appropriate for an encyclopedia. While Orwell mentions snobbery he does not mention cruelty so this again is speculative interpretation - and again "grime" perhaps, but not "decay". That is why we have to be careful in how we interpret it and something like Pearce's analysis is a useful way of summarising the allegations and provides a valid independent source.

Crick's comment may be of peripheral interest to you but that indicates the slant of your interpretation. There are as many interpretations as readers perhaps and yours is not the definitive one. The text has been developed from your original to remove some of the particular problems outlined above so please do not reintroduce them. As for the poem - it is really unnecessary to waste space including it, as it is presented in full in the linked article. Regards Motmit (talk) 22:49, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

I appreciate your interest and commend you scholarly contributions to this article, but I disagree with most of your criticism to my edits. That the title is grimly ironic is hardly speculation, since Orwell goes on at great length about how miserable he was at St Cyprian's and how he came out of it expecting that his life would end in ruin. About the sex incident, the essay itself says "At that age I was not interested, so I do not actually know what went on, but I imagine it was group masturbation." If student is an inappropriate term for a prep school boy for reasons I'm not aware of, feel free to correct it.

Why is "decay" an inappropriate term to describe, for example, a new boy's teeth turning green? Why is "cruelty" inappropriate as a summary of Orwell's view that the rule of school life was that "virtue consisted in winning: it consisted in being bigger, stronger, handsomer, richer, more popular, more elegant, more unscrupulous than other people — in dominating them, bullying them, making them suffer pain, making them look foolish, getting the better of them in every way," or that Johnny Hale was "was forever twisting somebody's arm, wringing somebody's ear, flogging somebody with a riding-crop"?

I feel confident that if you read, for example, a literary article on the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you will find far more colorful and controversial language than "fiercely attacks," or "lashes out." If a Wikipedia article cannot say anything of any interest without introducing an apparatus of competing academic citations, then the articles, it seems to me, simply become unreadable.

As for quoting the lines from Blake, I personally feel that they provide a nice way of delving into the content of the essay and improve its flow. You are more than free to disagree about this. But then neither of us actually owns this article. Cheers, Eb.hoop (talk) 23:20, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Orwell's veracity

Since Motmit and I have had some disagreements, discussed above, about the content of this article, I feel that I should discuss what I suspect is the underlying issue. There seems to be a long-standing, concerted effort to redress Orwell's "libel" against the Wilkes and St Cyprian's School. There's even a website largely dedicated to this: http://www.st-cyprians-school.org.uk.

It does seem well established that, out of the group of Orwell's contemporaries who left some record of their impressions on the matter, none had such a negative view of the Wilkes and their school as Orwell, and many actually had fond memories of them. I have no objection to documenting these challenges to Orwell's veracity, as the article currently does.

But I insist that the article should begin by clearly summarizing what the essay actually says. SSWTJ is a very powerful piece, widely anthologized, one of the most important works of literature to come out of traditional English boarding school life. Autobiographies can be notable without being entirely truthful. Orwell himself starts another essay by saying that

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. However, even the most flagrantly dishonest book (Frank Harris's autobiographical writings are an example) can without intending it give a true picture of its author.

— from "Benefit of Clergy: Some Notes on Salvador Dali"

For the purposes of this article, what the essay says is the main concern, more important than what St Cyprian's was actually like. But I also think that the case made by the Wilkes' defenders isn't entirely convincing.

In the essay, Orwell is at pains to emphasize that he is recalling events then thirty or more years old, that his memory might distort some parts of his experience, that as a boy from a comparatively poor family, taken in at half-fees, he was in a very different position from most of the other pupils, and that at that age he didn't really confide in anyone else. Some of the people who have questioned the veracity of SSWTJ, like Jacintha Buddicom, are neither disinterested nor entirely reliable: see, e.g., [1].

But I think that the main point is simply that Orwell obviously detested the Wilkes and St Cyprian's. This is already a significant fact, since the adult Orwell is recognized as having been a generally sane and fair-minded person. Also, Orwell knew well when he wrote SSWTJ that the Wilkes and many of his contemporaries were living. In his correspondence, he actually says that he wrote it as a "pendant" to Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise, which discusses the school at great length. Orwell was eager to print the essay, but also realized that no publisher was likely to accept it while the Wilkes were alive, for fear of a libel suit.

Furthermore, and using Orwell's own standards, it seems significant that the essay paints an unsympathetic picture of Orwell himself. He not only expounds on his own feelings of inferiority, he adds that his picture of himself as an inferior person is "not entirely fanciful." He admits to having been lazy, and indicates that his academic failure at Eton was entirely a consequence of that. He tells stories about wetting his bed, about hating God, and about hitting another boy when he wasn't looking.

Also, the essay's success must be taken as an indication that many readers have found what Orwell says plausible and interesting. That Orwell, from malice, should have written down deliberate falsehoods about the Wilkes and their school, in a piece that he knew was unlikely to be published in his lifetime, only to have that piece later become one of his most influential writings, is hard for me to accept as believable. - Eb.hoop (talk) 06:45, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

What an extraordinarily high handed attitude - "I insist"!.

The descriptions in the article and the opinions stated above appear to come directly from the writings of Michael Shelden, an American academic who wrote a biography of Orwell about 20 years ago. Shelden introduced some useful additions to the compendium of Orwell biography including Orwells list, an rather spiteful and vindictive set of opinions on people he didn't like, compiled around the same time as SSWTJ. Other than that Shelden's work does not carry much authority nowadays having been succeeded by more up to date and objective biographies. Bowker writes of him in "The Cambridge Companion" "He lacks Crick's aversion to interpretation and speculation and feels no compulsion to doubt the autobiographical Orwell".

Shelden opens his introduction with the words "In his long essay about his schooldays"SSWTJ" he wrote "Until I was about thirty I always planned my life on the assumpton...that any major undertaking was bound to fail". This indicates the basic crucial thesis on which Shelden's biography is based and so a particular view of "SSWTJ" is essential to support it. The view that Orwell's later work has its seeds in SSWTJ is not shared by most other biographers and Erika Gottlieb for example, again in the Cambridge Guide, debunks that persepctive.

In referring to Blake's poem, Shelden writes "The painful irony of this title is obvious" - a remarkable similarity to the words this editor insist on inserting unattributed into the article. This editor has dismissed cited references of Crick (with whom Shelden disagreed with much) and Pearce, whose objective analysis published after Shelden's biography undermines the basis of Shelden's opinions. This editor, like Crick funnily enough, dismisses by personal opinion and innuendo rather citation the facts that have come to light since Shelden's work was published. For my money the accounts of people who shared Orwell's experiences carry rather more weight than the unsubstantiated opinions of an obscure opinionated American writing years after the event in another cultural context. There are many points of view about Orwell and SSWTJ expressed in other excellent biographies and scholarly analyses and so the readers deserves a more balanced persepctive. These edits and comments do seem to be an attempt to push through Wikipedia the perspective of one school of thought and to shore up an out of date and questionable biographical interpretation. Motmit (talk) 11:01, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Well, my intention is only to articulate what I think is a reasonable encyclopedic approach to SSWTJ. I apologize if I've come across as high handed.

To reiterate: the essay, in and of itself, is a very significant piece of literature. The focus of this article shouldn't be whether it accurately reflects what St Cyprian's was like. The essay has a very plain meaning, which does not require sophisticated literary analysis to decipher. So I see no need to cite secondary sources in the "Summary and analysis" section. I'm mostly happy with how things stand right now.

As for the debate about what St Cyprian's was like and about what Orwell experienced as a child, they are properly the focus for St Cyprian's School and George Orwell, respectively.

With all due respect and consideration, I must also say that it seems to me that Motmit has his or her own bias about St Cyprian's. Since this is the talk section, and not the actual article, I'll also say that it seems to me that the discrepancies between Orwell's account of the school and those of his contemporaries can be largely accounted for by the fact that Orwell's family background was considerably humbler. It seems likely to me that, because of this, the Wilkes treated him in particular in such a way that he came away with painful feelings of inferiority. Otherwise, how is one to explain that this essay was written at all?

And I can't comment on the work of Michael Shelden, because I've never read it. Eb.hoop (talk) 20:08, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Well Wikipedia, for a reasonable encyclopedic approach, does require citations for what is stated and this something I believe in adhering to. As your views match Shelden so closely, I hope you will not mind if I use him to support your material. I may also add other references that support or challenge the view you share with him.

I am afraid it is rather naiive to claim the the essay is that simple. As someone - I forget who - said, gallons of ink have been spilt on it and the issues have never been resolved. Some believe it to be autobiographical, but most dispute this. Various attempts have been made by experts to explain it without success. It is therefore a highly contentious work and could therefore give rise to a very long discussion. If you know Orwell's work, you will know that he mixes autobiographical settings, gross caricatures of people, anecdotes (some of which are drawn from his own experience but most not) and a weighty dashing of polemic.

If you read the articles on Orwell's other essays, many of which I kicked off, you will see I have applied the same approach of providing a background with well researched references so that readers can make reasoned judgements. For one essay I had a battle with an editor who simply objected to the presence of any form of summary! The facts I have given within this article are limited to those that are relevant to Orwell's school days. If they show a disjoint between the external reality and Orwell's inner life then that is significant. Perhaps any bias arises because I too spent formative years in an English boarding prep school where I had to have a morning cold bath in a rancid smelling plunge and endured stinking lavatories, had to eat unspeakable porridge and even worse stews, passed the after breakfast queues of boys "reporting themselves to the headmaster" and experienced homesickness. It wasn't really that awful and so Orwell's bleatings do not cut much ice with me.

Since you ask the question - you are entitled to your opinions but they seem firmly stuck in the box. You might like to consider for example whether Orwell's background was that humble - he lived comfortably in Henley -, whether he was very different from Connolly or the many other boys who were on reduced fees and knew nothing of it, and whether it is perhaps Orwell who displays snobbery in his contempt for the nouveaux riches who were bankrolling his education. You may ask yourself whether Orwell was perhaps a rather unpleasant and ill-behaved child who made life difficult for himself and his teachers. You could read a lot more around the subject and I particulary commend Alaric Jacob's essay in "Inside the Myth", Jacob's situation being almost identical to Orwell. In fact you should obviously read a lot more about the subject. Most interestingly, you might like to explore the proposition put forward by an eminent child psychiatrist that Orwell suffered from Asperger's Syndrome and explore whether SSWTJ was not just an account of the exceptional experience of an Aspergers at school but also Orwell's desperate last minute attempt to explain the the turmoil of his inner life by using the school as a metaphor. That's just for starters! Motmit (talk) 22:58, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Again, I'm afraid that you're confusing the reading of what the essay says with the interpretation of what it reflects about Orwell, the Wilkes, and the other people and places it mentions. You also insist on questioning whether the essay should be labeled "autobiographical," which I believe is a misplaced concern. The autobiographies of, say, Lorenzo Da Ponte, Salvador Dalí, Frank Harris, or indeed any number of other people, are probably full of self-serving inaccuracies and outright lies, but no one questions whether they can be called "autobiographies" because of that. What SSWTJ says is very clear, as is usually the case with Orwell (who famously advised that prose should be "like a pane of glass"). For example, it doesn't take Michael Shelden --or me for that matter-- to realize that the title is meant ironically.

About what life was actually like for Orwell at St Cyprian's, I'm somewhat concerned that you might be biased towards an extreme view, which amounts to defending the Wilkes and of the institution of prep school from all substantive criticism. Nowadays, any historical person who showed some eccentricity or had trouble interacting socially is "diagnosed" by someone as having had Asperger syndrome. But the fundamental feature of Asperger (and of autism in general) is the lack of an intuitive understanding and empathy for other people's state of mind. The idea that a such a successful writer as Orwell suffered from Asperger's seems to me totally unfounded. (An equally unsupportable "diagnosis" has been made, for example, for Wittgenstein.)

That Orwell was a difficult child, and sometimes ill-behaved, is something that he admits to readily in the essay. About Cyril Connolly, we know from Enemies of Promise that his mother's family, the Vernons, were one of the most distinguished Anglo-Irish families and that at St Cyprian's he was a special favourite of Mrs. Wilkes.

At the end of the day, what I'd most like to get across to you is simply that this article should be accessible and interesting to a casual reader who wants to find out what SSWTJ says, without first having to wade through an endless controversy about its background, and also that this is not the proper forum for mounting an extended defense of the Wilkes and their school, no matter how sincerely convinced you might be of their cause. Eb.hoop (talk) 23:54, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

(outdent) Forgive my butting in on this public private discussion. I have only just come across it and therefore risk going over old ground and/or getting hold of the wrong end of the stick altogether, etc. and seemingly taking sides, which is not my intention. However, while Motmit's comment regarding the "eminent child psychiatrist" is convincingly rebutted by Eb.hoop (don't, whatever you do, get me started on the topic of eminent psychiatrists analysing dead people from their works - or live ones from their words...), and regarding the "turmoil of his inner life", SSWTJ is, INMHO, totally in keeping with GO's continuous soul searching and - unlike most/many writers - his ability to look at himself critically (warts 'n' all), and what's more, at the society in which he lived and wished so much to transform. This ability, together with that other, almost unique, of being able to publicly apologise for his mistakes makes him such an "honest" writer. That said, even if it were not wholly autobiographical, as an essay à la Dickens, an author he admired greatly, it makes excellent reading, despite the "bleatings ". --Technopat (talk) 00:42, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Tech - have another beer - that is precisely the point. The judgement of an unidentified reader that "It seems likely to me that, because of this, the Wilkes treated him in particular in such a way that he came away with painful feelings of inferiority" has no more validity than the assessment of an "eminent child psychiatrist" that he was born like that (which is why the latter is not introduced to the article). What kicked this off is that an editor removed cited text and then refused to provide citations for personal opinions - an issue on which you and I agree. Apart from that, I don't have any particular issues with what is in the summary and we are well rid of all the quotes. The later additions are much better expressed and well put together. I do however think that Pearce provides a neat summary of Orwell's main charges which are scattered around the essay. I also think that much of the essay's emphasis is on Orwell interpreting his childhood and Crick's echoing green allusion is a way of bringing this in. Orwell usually writes a story and then develops his ideas. The tendency of readers here is to concentrate on the story and not address the challenge which is that Orwell's views of childhood expressed in the last chapters (and not all about his school experience) do not seem to stack up with anyone else's Writing in the first person is a powerful way of describing the inner world, but no one suggests that Dante was writing an autobiography. Whatever the merits or not of this essay the problem is that some people conclude from it that everything about Orwell is down to his "awful prep school" and nonsense such as that Mrs Wilkes is Big Brother. Personally I am not in favour of sending young children to boarding school and I don't know why EH is so worked up about "a couple of silly, shallow, ineffectual people". I was asked "how is one to explain that this essay was written at all" and simply offered a couple of suggestions. There is much more in this essay about Orwell and his approach to writing that many people simply could not begin to understand. Motmit (talk) 11:18, 29 March 2010 (UTC)

Greetings Motmit, given the circs., I really need to sit down and assess the article as it stands - can't do that right now, so will put off any further comment till I have actually chewed it over. Catch up with you later. --Technopat (talk) 11:28, 29 March 2010 (UTC)