What’s Your Birthmark?

A brief note from Ilona, Gail's webmaster: Gail and I had issues with Wix. Until today, we were unable to access the website.

The fictional John Flory in George Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days, has a face that isn’t forgotten. “The first thing that one noticed in Flory was a hideous birthmark stretching in a ragged crescent down his left cheek, from the eye to the corner of the mouth.”  Yet at death, the birthmark vanishes when Flory shoots himself through the heart. What it all means is left to the reader, who cannot miss that Flory is estranged, desperately lonely, and deeply humiliated by novel’s end. The setting is Katha, though called Kyauktada in the novel.  Katha was Eric Blair’s last posting in Burma, and a short one due to dengue fever and complications from it. At the end of June in 1927, Blair returned at age 24 to England on medical leave, and he did not return to Burma. Yet he did not forget this country, and his first attempt to write a novel resulted in Burmese Days. It was published in the U.S.A. in 1934 and in Great Britain in 1935. It is significant that in late 1949, before Orwell’s death on January 21st in 1950, he had been working on another novel about Burma.

On a personal note, a long & wide birthmark on my inner left arm, above and below the elbow, has faded. Yet when I played competitive tennis in sunny So Cal, the birthmark was dark brown; and I would be asked about it. Another birthmark on my right inner ankle, the size of a quarter, dark and raised, interested dermatologists through the years. That one is also gone. In childhood and adolescence I disliked being a red head, covered with freckles. But I recall asking myself this question: What if that dark, three-inch long & more than one inch wide birthmark were on my face?  Would I, like John Flory, have kept my face turned to one side, never looking straight ahead at anyone?

In thinking just now about Orwell’s John Flory, and the multitudes of real people everywhere who suffer from desperate loneliness, I hear in my mind the song “Eleanor Rigby.” 

It was written and sung by the Beatles, and who can forget the refrain… “All the lonely people?” And Eleanor “who keeps her face in a jar by the door.”  I have long argued that the boys from Liverpool had read W. H. Auden’s poem “Miss Edith Gee,” and it stuck in their heads and morphed into this poignant and memorable song.  When I taught high school English for over a decade, I used the poem &song with students.  Look both up and you’ll see what I mean.

It is difficult for me to let go of Orwell, especially in these Orwellian times. And next week I want to write about Burma Sahib and why Paul Theroux’s depiction of Eric Blair in Burma disturbs me, as does Orwell, the 2000 biography by Jeffery Meyers.

The Question of Turning Real Lives into Fiction

On Thursday at book club, I heard a question I’ve been asked before: Should fiction be written about real persons? This question, however, was asked without the vehemence I heard years ago in a course I taught on Julian Barnes. This British writer had borrowed the life of the Russian composer Shostakovich for his novel, The Noise of Time. Barnes had consulted an Oxford U. biographer of this famous composer and been given assurance of his accurate portrayal of Dimitri Shostakovich. Which is why I had trouble understanding the two students in the Barnes class who opposed what Sir Julian had done. I remember asking, “Do you watch the History Channel with their dramatic re-enactments of actual historical persons?”  I did not say then but say now, how much I appreciated the Grant miniseries because there was no way I was getting through the huge 2017 Grant biography by Ron Chernow. And I am pleased to say The Noise of Time helped me appreciate Shostakovich and listen differently to his music.

I might have asked those two students if Spielberg was wrong to produce the 15th movie about Abraham Lincoln. Who can forget Daniel Day Lewis as Abe? The performance earned Lewis his third ‘best actor’ Academy Award in 2013.  The movie was shot in Richmond, Virginia (hurrah) and declared the best film Spielberg ever produced. 

I think of other movies about famous persons. I greatly admired Patton, starring George C. Scott, with Karl Malden as Omar Bradley.  And decades earlier, as a ten-year old, I saw and have not forgotten The Robe, which was adapted from a novel. To hear and see Jesus made the required Bible study classes more real!  And even better, I was introduced to a young Richard Burton as the slave Marcellus. -😊 What an amazing actor Burton was until he did a Dylan Thomas (both of them Welsh drinkers) and died at 58. Who can forget Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?  Think of all the movies you’ve seen about real persons, both famous and infamous ones.

Speaking of actors and films, I will not be surprised if Burma Saheb is made into a movie. Paul Theroux’s Mosquito Coast was made into one. The word ‘prolific’ fits this writer. Before his 2024 Burma Saheb, Theroux had written 33 novels and 19 non-fiction books. His latest novel depicts the life of Eric Blair during his five youthful years in Burma (see last week’s blog).  My gripe is not that Theroux took a real person and wrote a novel about him. It is this; that not much is known about those five years in Burma for Blair, soon to be known as George Orwell. What bothers me is that facing a void of actual information, Theroux filled it with whatever he desired.  Lots of sex especially, which will help sell the novel and entice movie moguls. Yet what bothers me even more is how Theroux raided Burmese Days, the novel George Orwell wrote years after his time in Burma. The novel Burmese Days was first published in the USA in 1934, and then published in Britain by Victor Gollancz in 1935.

Next week:  Orwell’s character John Flory, age 35, a timber merchant in Katha, Eric Blair’s fifth and brief posting as a policeman for the British empire.