{"id":17962,"date":"2010-01-26T08:29:02","date_gmt":"2010-01-26T13:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/?p=17962"},"modified":"2015-01-17T21:30:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-18T02:30:22","slug":"orwell-vs-koestler-segal-vs-roth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2010\/01\/26\/orwell-vs-koestler-segal-vs-roth\/","title":{"rendered":"Orwell vs. Koestler, Segal vs. Roth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Dirda <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/01\/20\/AR2010012004570.html\">reviewed<\/a> the biography <i> Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic<\/i> last week, but I&#8217;m only just getting around to it. <\/p>\n<p>I used to think I&#8217;d like to meet George Orwell, but after reading the following paragraph &#8230; not so much.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d have liked either of these guys.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Scammell relates this telling exchange between the author of <i>Darkness at Noon<\/i> and the author of <i>Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/i>: George Orwell said, &#8220;When I lie in my bath in the morning, which is the best moment of the day, I think of tortures for my enemies.&#8221; Koestler replied, &#8220;That&#8217;s funny, because when I&#8217;m lying in my bath I think of tortures for myself.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Both of them apparently had seductive personalities, but when you got within their orbits&#8212;watch out!<\/p>\n<p>And speaking of quips exchanged between authors, here&#8217;s another one recently related in the pages of the <i>Washington Post<\/i>, this one from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/01\/19\/AR2010011904354.html\">Erich Segal&#8217;s obituary<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>While jogging in New York&#8217;s Central Park, Mr. Segal once recalled, he saw novelist Philip Roth and said, &#8220;I admire your work.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And I admire your running,&#8221; Roth replied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>What do you think? An actual incident or only an apocryphal one?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Michael Dirda reviewed the biography Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth-Century Skeptic last week, but I&#8217;m only just getting around to it. I used to think I&#8217;d like to meet George Orwell, but after reading the following paragraph &#8230; not so much. Actually, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;d have liked either of these [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[490,529],"class_list":["post-17962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-michael-dirda","tag-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17962"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17963,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17962\/revisions\/17963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}