The Art of Criticism: 14 Solid Sentimentality

Beginning of article

The matter of Raymond's style remained a mystery to me for many years. Why, for heaven's sake, could he not be clear? Or rather, why did he choose to write in a manner which could only be understood by other highly educated people, or by those already versed in the modish junk terminology of left- wing politics? Here was a man who believed that ideas should belong to the whole population, whose own best work had sprung out of his time as an adult education tutor, yet who persisted in ploughing through the English language as through a field of dry bones . . . How could this highly sophisticated man not see that unless he laid his thoughts out clearly and simply in everyday …