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1. Homage to Catalonia has the distinction of being on my mental to-read list for longer than any other book. I've wanted to read this book longer than any of the people who elbowed or punched me in the face this week have been alive. I figured after almost twenty and half years I should finally read it.

I've owned the book for over a decade.

I have no clue what book now currently holds the distinction book I've wanted to read for the longest time but haven't.

2. When I was a senior in high school I wrote a paper for a friend of mine on this book, he was a year older and a freshman at Fordham. I had been visiting him, and he needed to write a paper on this book. I'm not sure if he read it or not. I hadn't. The paper was on the relationship between the Anarchists (CNT) and the Communists (PSUC). I dictated the paper to him, highlighting the ideological differences between the two groups and why the Communists would turn on the Anarchists. Prior to the evening that we did this I don't know if I had ever really known anything about the Spanish Civil War. I don't remember having ever really learned anything in school or had read anything about Anarchism or Communism (beyond what we learned growing up in the waning and thawing days of the Cold War, not necessarily the most objective facts being passed on to young minds). I babbled on about the differences between these two ideologies. My friend typed and gave me some bits he knew or remembered from the book to get my reaction to them.

It was the first college paper I wrote, and it wasn't for myself. My friend later told me that he got his highest grade for that class on this paper.

It would take me two decades to actually read the book.

3. The Spanish Civil War I think of as one of the great tragedies of the 20th Century. Fuck the 60's. To me this was the last stand of idealism.

4. The book.

George Orwell went to Spain to report on the war in late 1936. Arriving in Barcelona he got caught up in the revolutionary feeling of the city and joined the militia. His credentials to get him into the country were from an organization aligned with the POUM, a politically fairly insignificant group in the hodgepodge of alphabet groups that made up the Spanish Government who were fighting Franco. Orwell wasn't necessarily happy about joining the POUM, he would have rather joined up with the Communists, which was where his sympathies lay at the time. But, he also wanted to help defeat this threat of fascist, and wanted to do his part and kill at least one fascist in battle. So he joined and after a short time went to one of the fronts.

It's significant that Orwell had joined the POUM. About six months later the POUM would be a suppressed political group, branded fascist traitors by the Communists (PSUC), they would be accused of the heretical crime of Trotskyism, and many of the leaders would disappear into jails, never to be heard of again, and the rank and file arrested as fast as they could be found. Orwell would end up escaping from Spain and evading arrest as friends of his were arrested, disappeared and ultimately died in the custody of the Communists.

The book itself is mostly a narrative of Orwell's time in Spain. A travel essay where instead of describing his Holiday in the Sun in some exotic place he ends up spending four months living in a trench, takes part in an ineffectual assault on a fascist position, goes on leave just in time to arrive back in Barcelona to witness and take part in the street fighting of May 1937, goes back to the trenches, gets shot in the throat, and arrives wounded back in Barcelona just in time to be branded a traitor and an enemy of the state because he had been in a POUM regiment. Interspersed with this narrative are some chapters on the political climate of Spain and the gross distortions and lies about the various political groups that were being trumpeted in the press both in Spain and abroad.

Orwell's narrative of his time in Spain is great reporting on the time. It's fairly amazing today to think that he did what he did. There was no real reason why he should have signed up to fight in this war. It wasn't his country. He was caught up in the revolutionary possibilities being exhibited in Barcelona at the time, and as he says he was tired to seeing the fascists up until this point winning at everything they tried, so it makes sense why wanted to take part, but I think about myself and other people I've known and I can see myself being sympathetic to the cause, but to actually sign up, live in a cold trench with almost no food, and shooting and getting shot at with antiquated rifles? This isn't like deciding to go sleep in a park and play bongoes in order to collapse the capitalist system.

The real message to the book though is in Orwell himself. He never politically sympathized with the POUM or the CNT (I don't know how to describe the POUM, revolutionary-socialist might work, but those terms get clouded, but they need to be put in perspective with the Communist position, which wasn't revolutionary at all, but was attempting to hold back the floodgates of revolutionary fervor, so as not to alienate the middle class and foreign interests-- in case you forgot the CNT are the Anarchists, who played a very significant role in the Spanish Civil War, especially in the early days, and their role lessened when the big backer of the Government (which is the side this whole alphabet soup were fighting on) became the USSR and the better weapons and stuff were finding their ways into the hands of the various Communist armies and militias), he saw problems with the waging of a revolution alongside creating a united front against Franco. Orwell might have been naive, but he sort of thought that the war could be won by a united front, and then the revolution, true equality as was being attempted and exhibited by the POUM and CNT at the time could be had by all. If this doesn't make too much sense it might be my fault in explaining it, or it might be in the small differences between the groups and their aims that make them essentially incompatible with each other. Sooner or later the differences between them were going to become visible. And they did, and through lies and distortions people who had been risking their lives in fighting against the fascists were overnight turned into enemies of the government. Men returning from the front were finding themselves being branded the very thing they had been fighting against. They were arrested. The atmosphere of Barcelona became what we might later call Orwellian.

But back to Orwell himself. He wasn't politically sympathetic to the abstract ideas these groups might have had, but he was more than sympathetic to The Truth and the individual men who he had known, served and fought with. He knew they weren't a fifth column looking to help the fascists, they were people who believed in protecting their country, they were people who were giving their lives and comforts to holding lines and carrying out dangerous assignments. And the truth, as it was being broadcast now by Communist organs was that they were traitors. English Communist newspapers were calling for the execution of the them for being traitors to the revolution. Things Orwell had seen first hand were being reported as the exact opposite and being passed off as truth, and these distortions when they were noticed were shrugged off by fellow-travellers as necessities of the forward march of progress.

It might not seem like a big deal that Orwell was shocked by the lies he saw, and that he was more deeply committed to the truth than to an abstract political concept or the Party line, but you can compare him to other intellectuals at the time who needed to have the atrocities of Stalin to be beyond any hope of being wished away before they turned away from their love affair with Stalin's vision of pragmatic action. Or you can compare Orwell to someone like Hemingway who knew full well that a friend of his had been innocent of the charges he was arrested for in Spain, but he had no problem with supporting the official line that even if he was innocent he was still guilty of treason, because the Party had said so.

To write this book when Orwell did was courageous. The truth being held to be less important than orthodoxy. It would be kind of like one of those Evangelistic money-makers coming out with a book exposing all the fraud, lies and deceit that his fellow cronies were taking part in. Or a Conservative pundit coming out with an attack on the lies and fleecing the neo-cons have been a part of, say a month before a presidential election.

Needless to say, this book of Orwell's was pretty much ignored when it came out.

Today, with the Spanish Civil War something that most people don't really know about or care about, this book stands as an interesting read about a man going to war, but more importantly as a testament to one man's dedication to the truth and his strong moral fortitude.