Eric Laursen Duty to Stand Aside

Annotation

The Duty to Stand Aside tells the story of one of the most intriguing yet little-known literary-political feudsand friendshipsin 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 Sexduring 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 atrocitiesin Britain's case, saturation bombing of civilian population centershad ';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 Statea 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 Officea 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takes a fresh look at the Orwell-Comfort quarrel and the lessons it holds for our very different worldin which war has been replaced by undeclared ';conflicts,' civilian bombing is even more enthusiastically practiced, and moral choices between two sides are rarely straightforward.