insight of george orwell

a few months ago (prior to my ireland book binge) i decided i needed to read a collection of some famous person's letters or essays. in this vein i bought a collection of essays by george orwell. i had until just recently avoided the book. i just didn't feel up to such serious content. i was mistaken. i've only read three of the essays, and they are far from serious. well... orwell writes seriously about everything, but it's hard to be serious when the topic of discussion is semi-pornographic comic postcards.

the first essay was about his personal boarding school experience. it is interesting in how he dwells on the inner workings of a child's mind, something he is obviously interested in and writes about a lot. the second (much longer) essay was about the writings of charles dickens. i hate everything written by dickens so i mostly read this one in search of something to redeem the author, but i learned nothing that would compel me to read another dickens work.

the third essay is about the semi-pornographic comic postcards i mentioned above. this is where the amusement began. towards the end of the piece he writes about why the working-class appear to be young and beautiful, then suddenly become old and ugly. he writes,"the working classes reach middle age earlier because they accept it earlier. for to look young after, say, thirty is largely a matter of wanting to do so." this appears fairly sound. after a certain age you do have to put forth effort in order to keep the appearance of youth. he goes on, "the impulse to cling to youth at all costs, to attempt to preserve your sexual attraction, to see even in middle age a future for yourself and not merely for your children, is a thing of recent growth and has only precariously established itself." i'd like to point out the "costs" that orwell believes that people are paying for their youthful appearances: "try to stay young at forty by means of physical jerks, cosmetics and avoidance of childbearing." but above all the best part is his conclusion. "[the impulse] will probably disappear again when our standard of living drops and our birthrate rises." too sad to say that never happened. the standard of living never dropped and the birthrate certainly never went up. why would you go from having 13 kids to only having 3, then become willingly have 13 again?!!?

there will be more from this wise man as i continue to read this book. but i think i'll always remember it by his insights on aging and beauty.