George Orwell outside the whale

'What the writer teaches us about politics and the imagination in a time of crisis.'

Ian McEwan at The New Statesman.

"The encounter between the two men (the American was almost 45, the Englishman 33) had been well smoothed in advance by Orwell’s positive review of Miller’s novel, Tropic of Cancer, which was followed by a collegiate exchange of letters. The meeting presents us with a tableau vivant and source for the heart of Orwell’s celebrated essay 'Inside the Whale', published in book form just over three years later in 1940 by Gollancz."

See Orwell, Animal Farm, in Great Books of the Western World (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 60.