| THE ROAD TO WIGAN PIER George Orwell Victor Gollancz (Fwd.) New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1958 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| LibCong 58-10888 | 264pp. | HC/BWI | $? | |
| Page 77: | "When a man's stamps are exhausted, before being turned over the P.A.C. (Public Assistance Committee), he receives twenty-six weeks' " transitional benefit " from the U.A.B. (Unemployment Assistance Board)..." |
| This is the first definition of "P.A.C.", although Orwell uses it several times earlier in the book. |
| Page 79: | "Even in a town the size of Liverpool or Manchester you are struck by the fewness of the beggars." |
| "Fewness" ??? |
| Page 159: | "G. J. Renier, in his book on Oscar Wilde, points out that the strange, obscene bursts of popular fury which followed the Wilde trial was essentially social in character." |
| Number error: S/B "bursts...were". |
| Page 238: | "It is on record that screws have been in use since remote antiquity and yet it was not till the middle of the nineteenth century that anyone thought of making screws with points on them; for several thousand years they remained flat-ended and holes had to be drilled for them before they could be inserted. In our own epoch such a thing would be unthinkable." |
| This alone gives the lie to Orwell's argument. Well, I suppose he wasn't a technical man, so this can be excused. But first, no screw drills its own hole; he's talking about self-tapping screws. Normally (if nuts are not to be used), screw-holes are drilled and then tapped, putting in place threads to match the screws they will receive. Self-tapping screws cut out this second step — but only work in sheet metal. Anything thicker must be tapped. Also, self-tapping screws are no good where parts must be repeatedly joined and separated (as with a cover plate that protects electrical controls); they rapidly work loose in their holes. |
| Page 245: | "...and even, if one looks below the surface, in su-superior conservative highbrows like Eliot and his countless followers." |
| Probably S/B "so-superior". |
| Pages 81-82: | "But there is no doubt about the deadening, debilitating effect of unemployment upon everybody, married or single, and upon men more than upon women. The best intellects will not stand up against it. Once or twice it has happened to me to meet men of genuine literary ability; there are others whom I haven't met but whose work I occasionally see in the magazines. Now and again, at long intervals, these men will produce an article of a short story which is quite obviously better than most of the stuff that gets whooped up by the blurb reviewers. Why, then, do they make so little use of their talents? They have all the leisure in the world; why don't they sit down and write books? Because to write books you need not only comfort and solitude—and solitude is never easy to attain in a working-class home—you also need peace of mind. You can't settle to anything, you can't command the spirit of hope in which anything has got to be created, with that dull evil cloud of unemployment hanging over you. |
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