This fourth volume concludes the excellent essay collection from a man who died much too young and with whom I do by far not always agree, but who provided me a very satisfying and instructive reading experience.
I chose the headline from one of the essays in this volume because it gives Orwell in a nutshell, including my own ambiguities about him. He argues against the Soviet apologists, in the early post war time, who say that one must break eggs to make an omelette. (Is that a Lenin quote, btw?) His question: so where is the omelette? strikes me as witty and appropriate, but at second glance as callous and cruel. After all he seems to imply that yes, you may kill a few million people for a 'good' purpose, but the purpose must be met.
In such moments Orwell is deserted by his own devotion to clarity and he gets caught in his own puns. That does happen to him. As much as he lambasts against bad language, he will write e.g. 'I could multiply these examples endlessly' (talking about bad stories from the Soviet Union), when he actually means, he could add to these examples for some time.
Reading the man for 4 volumes gives me the conviction, that this suspicious interpretation of mine is unfair. No, he would not have intended to mean that.
The title 'In Front of Your Nose' refers to our ability to harbor contradictory notions without suffering too much from it: the English intelligencia in the 30s was able to oppose Hitler as well as disarmament and conscription. Another example: the gospel of Matthew tells us that Jesus descended from Abraham and David through his father Josef, and then proceeds to tell us that Josef was in fact not the father. (I am sure theologists are perfectly able to talk this contradiction away.)
Vol. 4 has plenty of worth while literary criticism as well, like the previous 3. The essay on good bad books predicts that Uncle Tom will outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf. (Frankly speaking for me that has already happened.) Jack London could tell his stories well, but they are not well written.
Let us close our Orwellian peregrination with a timeless reminder: political language is designed to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. Right, my AFs in the much afflicted US?