There is a reason 1984 and Animal Farm are the famous ones this book is dull. It is the story of a man who first recounts his life before the war and then decides to take some sick leave and visit his old home. Most of the book seems to be devoted to fishing. It is sufficiently cynical but sometimes a plot is nice. Orwell should never use the Hemingway's style. Its not him. I looked all through the book and couldn't find a plot.

"Coming Up For Air" was the first novel of Orwell's mature period. It came out after "Homage to Catalonia" (his memoir of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War and the disintegration of the Republican Left in Barcelona). In this novel, Orwell has finally abandoned the Joyce-inspired experimentation and overtly "literary" feel of his earlier fiction and has begun to find his voice. "Coming Up For Air" manages, in a way that I think only Orwell could do, to be simultaneously progressive and reactionary.

The protagonist, a petit-bourgeois salesman named George Bowling, haunted by visions of the coming war in Europe, laments the loss of the England he grew up in before the First World War. "Is it gone for ever? I'm not certain. But I tell you it was a good world to live in. I belong to it. So do you." Bowling belongs to the Left Book Club and seems to have a deeper awareness of the world than most of his peers, but he prides himself on being a simple sort of man and looks down on everyone, Left and Right, with a sort of genial disdain. Some of his observations are quite amusing, albeit quite cynical: "Nothing matters except slickness and shininess and streamlining. Everything's streamlined nowadays, even the bullet Hitler's keeping for you... I felt in a kind of prophetic mood, the mood in which you foresee the end of the world and get a certain kick out of it." George comes into an unexpected sum of money betting on the horses and decides to use it to revisit his childhood village. Needless to say, nothing of his boyhood remains, his fishing hole has been converted to a trash dump, his first love has become a fat, dumpy hausfrau, and he goes back home to his wife after an RAF bomber accidentally releases live ordnance over the town.

"The bad times are coming, and the stream-lined men are coming too," warns Bowling. "If there's anything you care a curse about, you better say good-bye to it now." Orwell would go on to describe the bad times in his major novels. This one's well worth a look, both for the way we see Orwell learning to deal with the materials that made up the bulk of his major work, and as a not-badly-written entertainment as well.

It's a shame that George Orwell's two best-known novels, "Animal Farm" and "Nineteen Eighty Four" are neither one his best novel. The peak of Orwell's fiction is this almost forgotten novel, "Coming Up for Air." Set in the last few years before a World War II that was obviously looming on the horizon, this elegant book memorably chronicles the life of George Bowling and his attempt to escape domesticity and the horrors to come for a few days by visiting his old home town. Every time I reread "Coming Up for Air," I wonder what Orwell might have achieved if he had lived longer and had not been as ill as he was in the ten years that remained to him. If all you've read of Orwell is his two "famous" novels, you owe it to yourself to read this.

The book 'KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING' (c.1935, 1956) by George Orwell, i.e. Eric Arthur Blair, reads as a monologue which followed the life of one Gordon Comstock; a thirty year old poet working in a self imposed dead-end job, first at a small book store in 1935 London, then another poorer paying book shop after being fired for a night in jail.

It is a simply written and rather pointless novel littered with transparent metaphors; weak analogies; self-contradictions; blatant leftist doctrines; a whopping tautology; and a visible conclusion. George Orwell didn't seem to pay much attention to his own advice found in 'Politics and the English Language'.

The main character, Gordon Comstock, a struggling poet, lived in self-inflicted exile of poverty and decay to flee from the 'Money-God' and to rub elbows with his fellow working class heroes. Living in hovels, eating swill, falling into debt, dressing in tatters, working minimum wage jobs, allowing himself to become slightly malnutrishined, Gordon Comstock had romanticized the proletariat to the detriment of his health, social life, and career. He didn't seem to understand that these conditions are a dibilitating and not a fortifying aspect of working class life. Conditions despised by the very people he tried to emulate.

The simple Aspidistra, a potted plant, is Gordon's symbol of the middle class value system he detested. But the plant appears to be ubiquitous as it is found on every window sill of middle class family homes in England, from which Gordon is trying to flee. Then Gordon had a revelation that the middle class were the working class who had kept themselves respectable - had kept the Aspidistra flying. (This is a theme that occurs in later Orwell writings.)

Anyone with a college course in psychology would recognize that the character Gordon Comstock displayed symptoms of chronic depression; latent homosexuality; anxiety neurosis; bi-polar mood disorder; and obsessive guilt.

If, as some critics have suggested, this work is autobiographical of George Orwell, then the observation made by one of his biographers that, "The British are the only people who spend a lot of money to send their children to school to become emotionally damaged", was a process that afflicted George Orwell.

But who was this book written for? It would seem the author's fellow socialists. The author had to communicate his proletariat values somehow to his international fellow travelers! It always appears that socialists try to out-do each other's counter-bourgeois experiences. And KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING came across as a chronicle of leftist one-upmanship: the - I'm more working class than you are - attitude, by living shoulder to shoulder with the poor, then leaving when bored. (We call this 'slumming' in my working class neighborhood, and its annoying!). What is so original or novel about a struggling youth living his dream? KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING is more of a socialist polemic than an original story with a moral.

A good book to compare with 'KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING' is: 'WANDERER' by Sterling Hayden. Schooner captain Sterling Hayden gave a similar account of working class privation as he fled from a middle class background, then tramped around the U.S. following his nautical dream during the great depression, and was deeply influenced by American socialists of the time. Yet Sterling Hayden's poverty was real, not self imposed as Orwell's.

I found 'KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING' somewhat disappointing, but required reading as a fan of George Orwell.

It is a bit difficult task to place George Orwell (pen name for Eric Aruthur Blair) in the history of the 20th century English literature. A novelist? A journalist? A critic? Or just a guy who loved propaganda? Whatever it is, he is and will be remembered as the one who wrote "1984" and "Animal Farm." Still, before he wrote these famous works, he wrote a pretty good book of novel, and that is what you're looking at now.

"Keep the Aspidistra Flying" one of the most starange titles you ever see, is about a "poet" (and formerly a copywriter for advertizing company) Gordon Comstock, who, with sudden desire to be free from the curse of money, left this good job and starts the life of an aspiring artist. As he had previously a book of his own poems published (the title "Mice"), and received a review from The Times Literary Supplement, which said "exceptional promise," why not pursue his way as an artist? And his next project "London Pleasure" which must be the next Joyce or Eliot will be completed soon, probably next month, or next year perhaps....

As his misadventure starts, Rosemary, his long-suffering but always faithful sweetheart, naturally is dismayed, and it takes a long time for him to realize that his happiness, whatever it is, is possible with her presence. But aside from the romantic aspect of the novel, which in itself is well-written with good portrait of independent Rosemary, the book attracts us with the author's satire on the middle-classness of England, which is represented by those ugly, die-hard aspidistra decorating the windows of every house. Gordon's loathing of respetability is deftly turned into a dark comedy that attack the parochical mind of some people, sometimes including Gordon himself. For instance, Gordon, no matter how poor and disheveled he becomes, never lets his girlfriend Rosemary pay the check of lunch because, in a word, it is not proper. Those who are interested in Englishness might find something amusing in this book, I assure you.

As is his satire, Orwell's English style is always full of power, brisk and lively, and never lets you bored. The only demerit is, as time has changed since then 1936, some names are no longer familiar to us; once hugely popular novelists like Ethel M Dell is mentioned with derogatory comments from Gordon, and her bestselling novel "The Way of an Eagle" is clearly treated as trash in Orwell's mind, but in the 21st Century whoever read them? Hence, some part of the book is lost on us if you don't know these names like Dell or Hugh Walpole, but never mind. Such part consists only small part, and if you don't get it, just skip it.

At the time of publishing, "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" was never a commercial success, and in Orwell's lifeime it was never reprinted, but these facts should not discuorage you from reading it. It is wickedly funny book that makes you, if not smile, at least grin not a little.

The book was made a movie in 1997 as "The Merry War" starring Richard E Grant and Helena Bohnam Carter. The film, more inclined to romance side of the book, is also a good one. Try it.

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.

This book is an endorsement of Marx like the Irish are an endorsement of Pat Buchanan.

When people think of Orwell, they remember him as an anti-Communist and a defender of liberal democracy. This is most certainly correct, but it should also be remembered that he was also a socialist, and a socialist of the old school. In The Lion & The Unicorn, originally published as a pamphlet in the style of Paine or Cobbett, he attacks both the class system of England and its capitalist economic system. He thought that the "inefficiency of private capitalism has been proved all over Europe" and that World War II has "turned Socialism from a text-book word into a realisable policy." As a socialist, he thought that socialists had to make "our words take physical shape." He advocated a 6 point plan that would transform England into a socialist country, which included "Nationalisation of land, mines, railways, banks and major industries" and the "Limitation of incomes, on such a scale that the highest tax-free income in Britain does not exceed the lowest by more than ten to one." One gets the impression that Orwell and Castro would have found a broad area of agreement. For Orwell, freedom, democracy, and socialism, were not incompatible, but were tightly bound together. He went to fight in the Spanish Civil War for the democratic republic, but fought alongside Marxists, Trotskiests, and Anarchists. Calling himself a "democratic socialist" was no contradiction to Orwell.

However, it should be remembered that this book was written in the 1940s. The world was a different place then. The political landscape has changed. If Orwell were alive now, what would his political opinions be? Who knows? You might as well ask what would Thomas Paine's political beliefs be if he were alive today. Anyone who hazards a guess, and there have been many, usually transposes their own political beliefs onto Orwell. Only one thing is certain: Orwell was a man of his time. This book, as do his other writings, reflect this. This is why he will be remembered. To read Orwell is to capture a moment in history, articulated by a man who was deeply involved in the political life of his time, in much the same way as Paine, Hazlett, or Cobbett was. One comes to Orwell and breaths the political atmosphere of the age, and takes from him what is relevant to one's own self. What that will be will vary from one person to another. For my own part, it is satisfying to read someone who believes as passionately in socialism as he does in democracy, and argues for both with the same conviction; who believes in physical courage in fighting against injustice, -"manliness", if you will; who saw through the myth of British Imperialism; and who saw through the horrible snobbishness of the English class system.

The Lion and the Unicorn

George Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn I believe shows him at his best,not afraid to call out for revolution in the middle of the Blitz.In the third part of the book (The English Revolution) Orwell describes his belief that if the war is to go on there must be a Socialist revolution in England and "The Gutters of the streets will flow with blood",if neccesary. This is one of his most differential pieces of work contradicting to an extent almost everthing else he has written .He still calls for the destruction the class system and a fair electoral system but now he comes out in favour of the revolution and putting across (and I believe rightfully so) the true Socialistic principles as told by Karl Marx. His most provocative work.

Ostensibly a novel, this book is Orwell's thinly fictional account of a time he spent "slumming it" in Paris and London. Orwell had read and greatly admired Jack London's book, "People of the Abyss" (1902), which chronicled his time spent among the wretched poor of London at the turn of the century. In the prewar '30s Orwell followed London's journalistic example, and voluntarily entered the ranks of the barely surviving in Paris. His account is rich in it's evocation of sights, sounds, and characters of this day-to-day existence. When he isn't unemployed and pawning his clothes, he works 12-18 hour days as a "plongeur" (dishwasher/gopher) at various hotels and restaurants. It's a pretty awful never-ending cycle of poverty to be caught in, as Orwell's books amply demonstrates. He ends his Paris section by speaking directly to the reader about the reasons for such poverty. Rather than claim any kind of nobility in poverty, he points out that the terrible jobs he and his friends perform are largely useless work and can be easily made obsolete. Later he moves over to London and joins the ranks of the homeless tramps. This section is less vivid and strong, and is better as a simple sociological study of homelessness in Edwardian England. He somewhat awkwardly inserts a lot of info about slang which is interesting, but somewhat tangential. The extreme policies he decries here have been replaced by the modern welfare state economy. Altogether, it's an interesting journalistic/sociological exercise with some strong statements.

In his semi-autobiographical work "Down & Out in Paris and London", Orwell first takes us to Paris in the late 1930's where the narrator (who bears a striking resemblance to Orwell) is living in squalid hotels and desperately trying to get by. Unable to find work as a writer, he gets jobs in hotels and restaurants, working long hours as a plongeur/dishwasher. His accounts of what occurs in the kitchens and back rooms of fine dining establishments make one think twice about dining out. The narrator shares accounts of others he meets living a similar life and how they survive by continually pawning their belongings to buy scraps of food. In the second part of the book, the narrator, sick of life in Paris and longing for the familiarity of Britain, moves back to London to begin a job. The job does not begin immediately so he spends time as a tramp moving from shelter to shelter. The system and policies of these shelters was very enlightening.

I personally enjoyed the Paris part of the book more than the London part. The writing in "Down & Out in Paris and London" is simple yet wonderful and sharp. It is a relatively easy read and highly informative. As you read the book you begin to understand what it must be like to live a life of poverty.

"Down and Out in Paris and London" is Orwell's compulsively readable account of the time he spent among the poor and destitute in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In Paris, he sought work as a "plonguer", trying to stave off starvation, and encountered a range of characters of various nationalities who occupied what might be termed the basement of the Parisian working classes. The descriptions of what it is like to be without any means of support - particularly the tedium of it all - strike true, but the most stomach-churning sections were those devoted to life in the kitchens of the hotels and restaurants.

In England, Orwell lived for a time among the "tramps" - dispossessed itinerants, who according to Orwell were forced into that way of life by the antiquated system of poor relief.

One can contrast Orwell's experiences in France and England, and examine the differences (as indeed Orwell does himself), but in all, this book is a savage indictment of the exploitation of certain sections of society and the damaging effects of the lack of effective poor relief. Even if one takes the view that the poor will always be with us, Orwell's book is a warning that none of our lives are really unaffected by it.

From now on this will my idea of the Raj: Some pathetic drunkards in the jungle who hate themselves and the people they govern. The stifling atmosphere is depicted with such vividness that no reader will easily forget it. At this, Orwell is truly excellent. As for the plot - there are some weaknesses, but it is gripping up to the very end. Of course we cannot be sure whether British rule in India was really like this. However, Orwell had some first-hand experience of Burma. (As a matter of fact, he had served five years in the Burmese colonial police.) And his picture seems very plausible. A friend of mine recently told me of for still liking Orwell at my age; he thought he was a writer for adolescents. That may be true if growing up means putting up with injustice and plain wrong. If your idea of maturity is different, go for this book!

I have to admit to being a huge Orwell fan and having lived in Burma for several years (and having visited the location of the story in "Burmese Days" (Katha), I believe this book presents one of the most accurate representations of the Burmese character and of the relationship (that was) between the Burmese (as opposed to the Karen, the Chin and other minorities). Anyone who desires to understand Burma, its people and its government (Aung San, Ne Win to the present SPDC) should read this book. It is a masterful work that remains important for several reasons.

George Orwell has managed to create an extraordinarily vivid picture of life during the British Colonialism of Burma near the earlier part of the twentieth century. The descriptors used enable the reader to envision the story almost as a film being played out. For example, an entire paragraph is devoted to describing Flory's birthmark, which allows one to understand that this one physical characteristic will play an important part of the story. This is a story of unattainable love and bitter loneliness when one is exiled to the colonies. True loving relationships are conspicuously absent within this tale; and issues of oppression are interwoven within it's seams. Conformity to peer pressure is represented and questioned by the characters, especially the anti-hero, Flory. Orwell does an excellent job of setting and preparing the reader for future scenes while incorportating symbolism within his work; such as introducing several of the characters in the beginning within the conversation between U Po Kyin and Ko Ba Sein. He is masterful at creating drama and suspense throughout until the tragic ending. Why read a novel written in 1934? The answer is simple. This is a timeless classical piece of literature concerning real social problems occurring then as they do now. For anyone interested in a more personal glimpse of history this is a gripping tale for sure.