Sébastien Verdier (Illustrator)
210708: once again i do not know if i should rate this five as it is read in French. but artwork is clean, clear, representational, and i have no trouble following narrative, though this might be some familiarity with his biography. it has been years (decades...) since read first animal farm and 1984, the latter first when i was about fifteen in an old hardback downstairs. this alertness me to the political in all language, and affects my skeptical appraisal of received knowledge wherever it is from...
not really know from where i know most of his life, for i do not recall well enough to rate any of his other texts, though i must have read of him, short pieces by him. seem to recall some of his critical work on politics and the English language etc, then some anglo-centric pieces on the details of the home country threatened by creeping americanism, but i do not imagine him a little Englander or brexiter or similar prejudicial sort. this work is from the French point of view, so that is interesting, and he is characterised at one point as an 'anarchiste torie'. not a mindless joiner, he already saw the threats of hitler and Staline before the Spanish civil war...
notes in the section 'after Orwell' are excellent reminder we are not free of those who would manipulate our understanding of the world, not here, not in the usa, not in France or England...
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