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Washington, DC
Bruce Robbins is entitled to his roomtemperature resentment of me ["Prisoner of Love," Dec.6], but he makes a false allegation when he says that I have "repeatedly claimed Orwell's mantle." To the contrary, and leaving aside the fact that I don't believe in "mantles" anyway, I have taken every opportunity to disown this aspiration. My denial doesn't involve me in much immodest effort: Orwell suffered from censorship and hardship all his writing life and took a bullet from a Francoist while narrowly escaping another one in the back from Stalin's agents in Catalonia. My own life has been somewhat easier, and better rewarded. Moreover, Orwell wrote much better than I do and was capable of producing serious fiction, which I am not.
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