http://crochet247.com/.well-known/index.php Of the odd things which George Orwell says about Mark Twain, to me the most remarkable is this:
Rodez Mark Twain aimed at being something more than a chronicler of the Mississippi and the Gold Rush. In his own day he was famous all over the world as a humorist and comic lecturer. In New York, London, Berlin, Vienna, Melbourne and Calcutta vast audiences rocked with laughter over jokes which have now, almost without exception, ceased to be funny.
What is striking is that appears, to the average American, so untrue: Twain’s humor seems to have aged quite well. Not only are his books still read, but the main reason, I would guess, people read them is precisely for their humor. And I just saw the power of Twain’s humor a century later; it was impressive.
All I can say to defend Orwell is to suggest that perhaps Twain’s humor has aged better in America than anywhere else; that we find him funny because his humor is our own. But I suspect that Orwell, perennially upset by what he saw as the fundamental characteristic of our age, namely the technological superiority power had gained over truth in his lifetime, didn’t quite realize that most people were not upset about it – that life simply went on as before. People still found Twain funny, despite the fact that Twain had nothing whatever to say about Orwell’s concerns. And in general, America, which Orwell never visited (and “never cared to”) seems to have been a bit outside his concerns and understanding; which is one of the main reasons why the historical 1984 did not really resemble his fictional portrayal of it.
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