Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell (EPUB)

Description

A novel by the author of 1984 about a man determined to reject middle-class values who finds living in noble poverty more difficult than expected. Gordon Comstock despises the materialism and shallowness of middle-class life—the worship of money, the striving for dull, stuffy respectability. To live up to his ideals, he quits his lucrative position as an advertising copywriter and devotes himself to poetry and other high-minded pursuits. But low-paid part-time employment and a constant shortage of cash is not exactly conducive to creativity and happiness. The stress even causes him to lash out at his devoted girlfriend, Rosemary, who he suspects of preferring a richer man. This sharply witty novel about the difficulties of idealism and the effects of financial strain is yet another outstanding read from the genius who brought us Animal Farm, Down and Out in Paris and London, and other enduring works.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Orwell tells us the story of a man who revolts against money, accepting all consequences of such action and, in keeping his position and pride, also loses access to lots of the good things in life that people in his “class” often take for granted. He acts like some sort of socialist, in a time when industrialism and financial exploration was forcing the elite and the poor alike to work more, or to employ their time in an effort to make money (the compromise the main character does not wish to make). Perhaps it’s the girl who loves him the one responsible for him eventually stopping digging a hole from himself. One eventually stops fighting the current.

⭐There’s no shortage of aspiring artists willing to suffer for their art. But few are willing to learn how to draw. Here Orwell tells the story of Gordon Comstock, a struggling poet determined never to sell his soul to the “money god” for the sake of middle class respectability. But, aside from a few half-hearted attempts at poetry, Gordon isn’t eager to devote himself to any other god either. He doesn’t study. He doesn’t progress. He languishes working at bookshops and living in a garret.Most of us can probably sympathize with Gordon’s revulsion for philistine corporate managers and his desire to escape from their world. Is this escape a wise choice? Well, that depends on what I would be doing instead. Sometimes it might seem that my job is the sole obstacle to developing my mind and pursuing the unique project my genius and mine alone is capable of. But before I take the radical step of quitting, I should honestly ask myself, do I really have enough discipline to work on my own projects? Do I really have enough faith in my own projects to devote myself to them? Gordon lacks discipline. He lacks faith in his projects. So by abandoning the corporate grind, he only sends himself on an ever worsening spiral into gloom and doom.Those without hereditary capital are seldom entirely frank with themselves about the limitations this places upon them. I like to imagine I’m pursuing my dreams, so I don’t think much about how closely the lucrative job matches my dreams. Orwell explodes this self-delusion. Without money, I’m forced to choose what I do based on money, or to suffer. Unless I’m a true ascetic, and true ascetics are rare, my passion to develop my genius and my virtues must remain unfulfilled. By showing the contrast between Gordon’s life, with no hereditary capital, and the life of his wealthy friend Ravelston, Orwell makes it clear that those without hereditary capital can seldom afford to cultivate virtue or genius.Showing his acute dialectical skill, Orwell presents arguments both for and against the “money god” in the most compelling terms. He begins with a parody of Paul’s sermon on charity, “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not money, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. …” On the other hand, Orwell’s characterization of the obtuse, philistine corporate manager is exquisite. Whether I devote myself to cultivating virtue, or sell out to the “money god,” after reading Keep the Aspidistra Flying, I will look at my decision with far less self-deception and false optimism.

⭐After recently reading the 4 volume set of the essays, plus Coming Up for Air, which I found in my shelf unread, I had thought that the Aspidistra would be the closing session on Orwell for me. I thought I had covered the field. Unfortunately and surprisingly, the aspidistra are so fresh and enjoyable, despite their sordid subject, that I find myself under compulsive pressure to order the books that I have not read yet (the Clergyman’s Daughter, the Road to Wigan Pier, Down and Out in Paris and London).As much as I like to look at plants, assuming they grow wild or they are cultivated by somebody else, I am no gardener nor botanist. I honestly did not know what an aspidistra is. I looked it up in the Langenscheid’s Dictionary English – German. I learned that an aspidistra is an Aspidistra. Aha. Google Images teach me that the thing is a somewhat non-descript and somewhat unkempt pot plant. It seems to like growing in places that no self-respecting plant ought to survive. Orwell’s novel has them as a symbol for undestructability under nasty circumstances.For the novel’s hero Gordon Comstock, they are the enemy. They are allied with the oppressors, the seedy boarding houses and lower middle class dwellings that he loathes so much. They symbolize the lack of money; money rules, specifically when you don’t have any.The twist of the ‘plot’ is that Gordon chose to be poorer than he needed to be, by throwing away ‘good jobs’ in the money making world. We have here a study in the pretensions of poverty.The most brillant parts of this amazing novel have us watch confrontations, or should I say Pas-de-Deux, of different social strata. Gordon tries to hide and is ashamed of his poverty, while his friend Ravelston is trying to hide and is ashamed of his wealth. The rich man is the socialist, who tries and tries to convince the poor man of the merits of socialism. Gordon can’t be bothered, he doesn’t have enough money to be a socialist.The novel is far exceeding my expectations and I may have to think again about my classification of Orwell as mainly an essayist.

⭐I can’t say that I enjoyed this at all. Orwell’s first published novel might be regarded as important by some in reflecting his personal disillusionment with capitalist society, but the character of Gordon Comstock is so unlikeable that it’s difficult to feel much empathy with him. Comstock is so obsessed with not caring about money that instead of a societal rebel he comes across as ridiculous, juvenile and very tedious. I can’t really understand why the long-suffering Rosemary and Ravelston wanted anything to do with him. Instead of portraying the depths of poverty, Comstock just seems the victim of self-inflected idiocy. I found his character rather unbelievable and the book, although relatively short, a depressing and tedious read.

⭐Since history repeats itself, Orwell’s caustic parody of capitalism in 1930s London still seems remarkably relevant in our post-financial crisis, commercially manipulative world of making people want things and often paying them too little to produce them.Orwell’s anti-hero Gordon Comstock is not just trying to escape the clutches of what he calls “the money god” but is also a mouthpiece for the author’s own pet hats and self-doubt over his ability to succeed as a writer. In the first chapter which could stand as a short story in this own right, Gordon painfully perfects the first verse of a poem during a boring shift in a bookshop, in between raging at the adverts in the street which remind him of the better paid job in copywriting which he has abandoned on principle to get out of what he regards as a corrupt system. He despises most books on sale for being “turned out by wretched hacks at the rate of four a year, as mechanically as sausages and with much less skill.” With only twopence halfpenny left until the end of the week, not enough for the cigarettes he needs – like Orwell? – to be able to write, he is beginning to realise that “you do not escape from money by being moneyless. On the contrary, you are the hopeless slave of money until you have enough of it to live on”.Gordon is frankly rather tedious and unlikeable in his negative view of the world and borderline mentally ill in his desire “to lose himself in smoke-dim slums of South London sprawling on and on, a huge graceless wilderness… great sluttish underworld where failure and success have no meaning; a sort of kingdom of ghosts where all are equal.” Yet it is revealing to be transported back to the 1930s, beginning to emerge from a deep Depression, with the poignant wisdom of hindsight that the destructive war which Gordon claims to welcome is in fact imminent.People tolerate appalling bedsits with repressive landladies, but expect to receive in the evenings letters posted earlier in the day. It’s a remarkably cheap world to modern eyes, where Gordon can take his girlfriend Rosemary on a trip to the country for only fourteen shillings (seventy pence). But it’s also riddled with social divides and casually-voiced prejudices that make us wince: Gordon comes from one of “those depressing families, so common among the middle-middle class, in which nothing ever happens”; his landlady is obsessed with “mingy lower-middle-class decency”; a poverty-stricken old couple, in a society with no proper pension system, are “the throw-outs of the money-god. All over London, by tens of thousands, draggled old beasts of that description: creeping like unclean beetles to the grave”.Gordon’s upper class friend Ravelston is unusual that “in every moment of his life” he is “apologizing, tacitly, for the largeness of his income” but still adores his girlfriend Hermione who remarks, “Don’t talk to me about the lower classes….. I hate them. They smell”. As narrator, Orwell often seems guilty of unconscious flashes of snobbery and prejudice – anti-semitic comments or cruelly amusing descriptions of a dwarf, but all this seems part of what was acceptable at the time. Ironically, advertising of specific brands, mention of real people or companies and “alleged obscenities” all had to be edited out at the last minute, leading Orwell to resist reprinting of a book he felt had been “garbled”.There is in fact a good deal of humour in the book, not least in the aspidistras, symbols of “lower class decency” which refuse all Gordon’s efforts to kill them off. When Gordon stops moaning there are some striking descriptions: “the mist-dimmed hedges wore that strange purplish brown, the colour of brown madder, that naked brushwood takes on in winter.”Apart from hoping that the likeable Ravelston and Rosemary might “get together”, there is the impetus to find out whether the book will end in tragedy or something will make Gordon surrender to “the money-code”.

⭐It’s absolutely stunning. So utterly dull and boring (subject wise) but so well written and enthralling that you can’t put it down. It’s about Gordon Comstock’s pursuit to be rid of the dirty moneycentric world as he goes from failure to failure, wallowing in his own destitution. He longs for wealth yet he seeks to properly impoverish himself. His poems never seem to go anywhere. Neither does his life. A true story of pessimism and self loathing. A contemplation of British class based capitalist society. Fantastic read. My favourite of Orwell’s novels…

⭐Very easy to read novel with a young fairly gifted and educated man approaching thirty but fussy about work that suits his talents. Luckily a sudden responsibility saves him from further wasting his time and he settles to a conventional life.

⭐“Keep The Aspidistra Flying” has always been my favourite Orwell novel outside the “big” works. The central character resonates with me in an undefinable way.

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