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Title: Keep the Aspidistra Flying by George Orwell ISBN: 0-15-646899-9 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: 19 March, 1969 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (34 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: conforming a non-comformist
Comment: Having completed "Keep the Aspidistra Flying", I have now read all of the novels of George Orwell. I can say with such authority that this one may be his best. George Orwell was, first and foremost, a Socialist and this book is his examination of being a Socialist in a Capitalist world. His hero, Gordon Comstock, is mired in a dead-end job that is just middle-class enough to require proper dress and behavior but not enough to enable him to afford any but the most essential living expenses. We sympathize with him. Or at least we do until we realize that his disdain for the pursuit of money has pointed him in the opposite direction. He is so anti-capitalist that he purposely keeps himself in his lower state. He quit a previous job because it paid too much. He won't strive beyond his current status because then he would enter a higher social status. He is convinced of the righteousness of his beliefs even though he has bled his sister dry "borrowing" money from her over the years. She "lends" him the money because the family always had such high hopes for this erudite young man. Gordon complains, to those that listen, that money is the root of all evil yet he is so ready to be victimized by it. He complains to his girl-friend that she measures him by his net-worth. This isn't true but he can't see that the problem is that HE is measuring himself by his own net-worth. He talks the talk but can't walk the walk. Well, money leads to one disaster of his own making and ends up as the solution to another "disaster" of his own making. I'm sure the prospective reader would prefer to read the book to see how his story ends so I won't go into any more details here.
This novel is enjoyable on many levels. I found myself, like most, getting upset with Gordon Comstock for his self-destructive "nobility". I was ready to rant and rave about it until I remembered my post-college Bohemian days and realized that I went through such a stage myself. I'm sure many of us have and so I think there is a personal connection that will appeal to a lot of readers. For pure literary merit, this is a hard 20th Century satire to top. Orwell scared a lot of people with his futuristic novels "Animal Farm" and "1984". He tried to indoctrinate many a reader with his Socialistic essays including his half-novel/half-essay; "The Road to Wigan Pier". I have a feeling that he was poking fun at himself in "Keep the Aspidistras Flying". Maybe that's why it works so well.
Rating: 4
Summary: An Orwellian tale of the British middle class.
Comment: The aspidistra plant is symbolic of the statis quo to our belligerent anti-hero Gordon Comstock; of common British middle-middle class stock; a family that "nothing ever
happened to." His battle against the aspidistra and money and making good is existential but he doesn't know this having never read THE STRANGER because it hasn't been
written yet. This narrative of all the things wrong with a consumer/free market/capitalist society between world wars could easily be written now by some starving young writer
in any large city here in the United States of America. Here is a man who realizes early on that "Faith, hope, money --only a saint could have the first two without having
the third." Yet I found myself rooting him on, wanting him to win his battle which is really impossible to do because even if you are on the fringes of a society you are still
inescapably part of it. In this way THE STRANGER is the book with the happy ending despite the declarations on the jacket of KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING of an "upbeat ending".
Rating: 4
Summary: The Tedium Of Poverty
Comment: It being the 100th anniversary of George Orwell I decided to read one of his books that I hadn't gotten around to yet that was recommend to me a while ago, Keep The Aspidistra Flying. It is a novel about a poet who is trying to live outside the capitalistic system with abysmal results. He vividly describes the tedium and sordidness of middle class poverty, which differs from the equally demoralizing squalid poverty of the common classes.
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Title: Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell ISBN: 015626224X Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: March, 1972 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Burmese Days: A Novel (Harbrace Paperbound Library, Hpl 62) by George Orwell ISBN: 0156148501 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: May, 1974 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Coming Up for Air (Harvest Book) by George Orwell, George Crwell ISBN: 0156196255 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1969 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell ISBN: 0156421178 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: October, 1969 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: A Clergyman's Daughter by George Orwell ISBN: 0156180650 Publisher: Harcourt Pub. Date: June, 1969 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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