I’ve just finished a great historic novel by Paul Theroux called “Burma Sahib,” in which he imagines George Orwell’s formative early career as a policeman in what’s now called Myanmar, between 1922 and 1927. Orwell died of tuberculosis a year older than I am today, in 1950, yet his writing is often cited with the same authority as that of William Shakespeare. Mine, meanwhile? Not so much.
The novel imagines the impact that working as a policeman in a British colony had on the young writer. It’s compelling and I’d recommend it.
I read Orwell’s books “Down and Out in Paris and London” and “1984” when I was only 11 or 12. I was very struck indeed by the clarity of both novels and still find myself returning to 1984 in my mind, often. Theroux imagines Orwell, whose real name was Eric Blair, as a young man well out of his depth. He finds being in the police not a career to which he is suited. He is bullied by inept superiors. He is repelled by the racist snobbery of colonial life.
I can relate. Most of my life I’ve felt like that, often. I love any novel featuring a lonely man in an exotic clime and was prepared to love this book from the start. But as the New York Times notes, “the implicit theory behind the novel is that Blair’s experiences in Burma made him the writer and thinker who became George Orwell.” That point is underlined in the novel’s epigraph, a quote from Orwell’s novel, “Burmese Days”: “There is a short period in everyone’s life when his character is fixed forever.”
It made me reflect on my own formative experiences and what made me the person and perhaps even writer I am today. There was a false start working in banking. There was some time assisting a photographer. But when it comes to figuring out when my character was “fixed forever,” inevitably I go back earlier to my time growing up in Southeast London and the good friends I made there, and whom I’ve been lucky to keep ever since. Subsequently as I’ve lived all over America, I still return often to the values I imbibed as a teen:
—There is no situation, no matter how serious or horrendous, which does not become easier with humor.
—Authority is very often flawed, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t dangerous. You must figure out how to keep it fed and happy.
—Music helps.
—So do nice clothes.
—So does a bit of romance.
—Cats, too.
—Don’t be a bore.
There is more to life, of course, and in later years I did learn a few other things. But in Orwell’s case, at least as he’s imagined by Theroux, his horrendous professional and life experiences also shaped personal coping strategies, just as all ours did. As we confront a dystopic government in the United States I hope, since we’re focusing on a writer whose last name is synonymous with oppressive dictatorships, that your formative experiences are helping you cope with (gestures vaguely around the place) all this.
If not, then I’m sorry to hear it. But best of luck.
Matt Davis is a strategic communications consultant in Manhattan.
