Raffles and Miss Blandish is the twentieth of The Essays that are placed on the 917th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the algorithm changes the compilation, who knows what the data used is, but if it takes into account the ‘reading public’, then the chefs d’oeuvre will descend, and the likes of The Da Vinci Code will dominate the arena, and they will become the GOAT – nevertheless, you have more than five thousand reviews on books from the aforementioned site and others, with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists waiting for you on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html if you care to check them

 

Raffles and Miss Blandish is the twentieth of The Essays that are placed on the 917th spot on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the algorithm changes the compilation, who knows what the data used is, but if it takes into account the ‘reading public’, then the chefs d’oeuvre will descend, and the likes of The Da Vinci Code will dominate the arena, and they will become the GOAT – nevertheless, you have more than five thousand reviews on books from the aforementioned site and others, with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and other lists waiting for you on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html if you care to check them

 

 

9 out of 10

 

The Essays of Geroge Orwell are delightful, the critic who said that they could very well surpass Nineteen Eighty Four https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2024/12/nineteen-eighty-four-by-george-orwell.html – ranked sixth on The Greatest Books of All Time may be on to something, however, I have been very impressed so far

 

Raffles and Miss Blandish is already essay number twenty, ergo I have already established that there is nothing but cause for jubilation waiting for me ahead, although Orwell has a very different perspective on some art

 

The preceding essay, Benefit of Clergy, Some Notes on Dali https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/10/benefit-of-clergy-some-notes-on.html takes down Salvador like no other, maybe, and I must say that I had not been a great fan, but after The Benefit, well Dali is down on the floor

“No Orchids is the 1939 version of glamorized crime, one of the stories which play the limelight on the criminal rather than the policeman…” and now a spoiler alert: George Orwell will give you the whole of the book in just a few lines, very much worth reading

 

“Miss Blandish, the daughter of a millionaire, is kidnapped by some gangsters who are almost immediately surprised and killed off by a larger and better organized gang. They hold her to ransom and extract half a million dollars from her father. Their original plan had been to kill her as soon as the ransom-money was received, but a chance keeps her alive. One of the gang is a young man named Slim, whose sole pleasure in life consists in driving knives into other people's bellies. In childhood he has graduated by cutting up living animals with a pair of rusty scissors. Slim is sexually impotent, but takes a kind of fancy to Miss Blandish. Slim's mother, who is the real brains of the gang, sees in this the chance of curing Slim's impotence, and decides to keep Miss Blandish in custody till Slim shall have succeeded in raping her. After many efforts and much persuasion, including the flogging of Miss Blandish with a length of rubber hosepipe, the rape is achieved. Meanwhile Miss Blandish's father has hired a private detective, and by means of bribery and torture the detective and the police manage to round up and exterminate the whole gang. Slim escapes with Miss Blandish and is killed after a final rape, and the detective prepares to restore Miss Blandish to her family. By this time, however, she has developed such a taste for Slim's caresses that she feels unable to live without him, and she jumps, out of the window of a sky-scraper…”

 

My view on No Orchids was rather different, or else I had not seen what George Orwell explains, hence the difference between the average man and the luminary https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/10/no-orchids-for-miss-blandish-by-james.html I found the book astounding (or almost there) and thus I was part of the audience, large enough to make this a classic

About half a million copies had been sold when George Orwell wrote his note, and he has praise for the narrative, apparently inspired, or at least the plot from William Faulnker’s Sanctuary, we get that the two are very different in atmosphere, what I could not get is how on earth I did not find that ending overwhelming

If you have read the quotes, summary of Miss Blandish, then you know of the suicide, and what a reason for that, so much abuse that she has to end her torment, in some ways, this is dissatisfying now, although it makes the whole thing so credible

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’