What Did T.S. Eliot Have Against Animal Farm?

A lot, apparently. The poet rejected George Orwell's classic short novel when Eliot was Faber and Faber's editorial director in 1944.

Eliot's "damning verdict" on Animal Farm comes with the sort of maddening editorial soft-speak that will make any would-be writer of today take heart.

In a letter ... explaining why he would not be publishing the work, Eliot told Orwell that he was not persuaded by the "Trotskyite" politics which underpin the narrative. To publish such an anti-Russian novel would jar in the contemporary political climate, explained the poet.

"We have no conviction ... that this is the right point of view from which to criticise the political situation at the present time. It is certainly the duty of any publishing firm which pretends to other interests and motives other than mere commercial prosperity to publish books which go against the current of the moment," wrote Eliot, before going on to say that he was not convinced that "this is the thing that needs saying at the moment." ...

... But Eliot saw much to praise in the work. "We agree that it is a distinguished piece of writing; that the fable is very skillfully handled, and that the narrative keeps one's interest on its own plane - and that is something very few authors have achieved since Gulliver," he wrote ...

Via Laila Lalami.

Comments

[freeverse21]

Is it wrong I find this so hilarious?