The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feuds--and friendships--in 20th-century English literature.
It examines the arguments that divided George Orwell, future author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Alex Comfort, poet, biologist, anarchist-pacifist, and future author of the international bestseller The Joy of Sex--during WWII.
Orwell maintained that standing aside, or opposing Britain's war against fascism, was objectively pro-fascist.
Comfort argued that intellectuals who did not stand aside and denounce their own government's atrocities--in Britain's case, saturation bombing of civilian population centers--had sacrificed their responsible attitude to humanity.
Later, Comfort and Orwell developed a friendship based on appreciation of each other's work and a common concern about the growing power and penetration of the State--a concern that deeply influenced the writing of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Shortly before his death in 1950, however, Orwell would accuse Comfort of being anti-British and temperamentally pro-totalitarian in a memo he prepared secretly for the Foreign Office--a fact that Comfort, who died in 2000, never knew.
Laursen's book takes a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different world--in which war has been replaced by undeclared conflicts, civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward.
About the Author: Eric Laursen is an independent journalist, activist, and commentator.
He is the author of The People's Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan (AK Press, 2012), a Book List Editor's Choice selection; and co-author of Understanding the Crash (Soft Skull Press, Spring 2010), which tells the story of the 2008 economic meltdown in text-and-graphics format.
His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, including The Nation.
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Ak Press The duty to stand aside: nineteen eighty-four and the wartime quarrel of george orwell and alex comfort, paperback/eric laursen
