Books: To the Heart of Matters

DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON (213 pp.)—George Orwell—Harcourt, Brace ($2.75).

BURMESE DAYS (287 pp.)—George Orwell—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

COMING UP FOR AIR (278 pp.)—George Orwell—Harcourt, Brace ($3).

India-born Eric Blair, who died last fortnight (TIME, Jan. 30), was a frail, intense Englishman with an Eton education, a fine nose for humbug and a genius for exposing it. He was only 46 when he died, but in his lifetime he had seen too much of the super-humbug of totalitarianism to be complacent about it. No writer had done more to shatter the complacency of others....