George Orwell said pamphleteering had a revival beginning about 1935. Orwell rejoiced at the trend. But he said almost all the pamphlets he’d collected were trash.
The reason why the badness of contemporary pamphlets is somewhat surprising is that the pamphlet ought to be the literary form of an age like our own.
I think that sentence is still true today.
Orwell, who was writing during World War II, described three main features of his age. It was, he said, a time:
• when political passions were high and people were polarized.
• when it was hard for ordinary people to be heard through traditional channels.
• when organized lying had become an industry.
For plugging the holes in history, the pamphlet is the ideal form.
I think that sentence is still true today.
Pamphlets are inexpensive and flexible. People can produce them without having to find a big publisher. People can try to persuade their neighbors on a topic they feel passionate about.
Orwell talked of plugging the holes in history. I’d say pamphlets have a documentary role. The pamphlet can be to literature what documentary photography is to the visual arts.
Historians often wonder what people of an earlier age were thinking about a topic that is now simply baffling. They should look for pamphlets.
• Source: George Orwell, “Pamphlet Literature”; New Statesman and Nation, Jan. 9, 1943. The essay can be found here:
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