Surgery

There was some iriat on the radio last week talking about George Orwell and 1984. It is 60 years since Mr Happy wrote it holed up on the isle of Jura. I nearly crashed the car as this academic started to over analyse every bit of the story. Why does there have to be this kind of didactic surgery? Is it because in academe you have to create your own niche of studying to access funds and then proclaim yourself the most knowledgeable of all? Having been an academic sales rep I can tell you the most serially ambitious people I have ever met are academics. The would kill their grandmas to get a professorship. This is why they can ruin literature. Admittedly sometimes their take on a book or a poem gives greater insight, but most often they try to outdue each other in trashing the creative skills of the author because when it boils down to it, they are not creative people. They earn their corn by dissecting the work of others, and it hurts. Leave Mr Orwell alone, he wrote some fantastic stories. You didn't.