In all, ‘Keep the Aspidistra Flying’ is a nice snapshot of the elements of 1930s London that Orwell despised the most, and well worth a read for any fans of his. There is also Gordon’s mortifyingly unpleasant love making to Rosemary, parts of which Orwell had to apparently rewrite whilst sat at his publisher’s desk, on account of it being too obscene and too rife for legal action at the time. There are plenty of enjoyable moments to be had in this book – from Gordon’s cringe-inducing refusals to take money from the apologetically well-off Ravelston, to his hapless, drunken liaisons with prostitutes. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. A persistent theme in the book is his constant obsessing over his poem ‘London Pleasures’ which,rather than add to,he merely chops and changes here and there, never progressing any further an ironic title for a poem which acts a metaphor in some way for Gordon’s life, the constant and drastic changes getting him nowhere fast. In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, George Orwell has created a darkly compassionate satire to which anyone who has ever been oppressed by the lack of brass, or by the need to make it, will all too easily relate. Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936) is about a literarily inclined bookseller’s assistant who despises the empty commercialism and materialism of middle-class life but who in the end is reconciled to bourgeois prosperity by his forced marriage to the girl he loves. After Aspidistra, his work and his voice gained influence and growing respect, eventually awe, as his body declined to his early untimely death just after 1984 made him a prophet.The only thing Gordon’s slide into poverty seems to achieve is to cripple his creativity and his desire to write poetry. 323 views 1 year ago Keep the Aspidistra Flying, first published in 1936, is a socially critical novel by George Orwell. George Orwell's career didn't fail or fall short. Survival, survival, survival - is the edge of our aspiration, these days, while everyone posts and only the roar of the mob can be heard!īut, of course, I know better. A rat in a maze where there's just blind alley or trap beyond every turn, the pathetic, poor creature! In the mid-30s when it was written, in London, the social world was quite set no one without family-advantages (read that, 'money') could dream or aspire to self-advancement through hard work, dedication or simple desire, not socially, not in terms of security, respect or being seen as a 'voice.' What I find so difficult about this mid-career novel of Orwell is we, all of us, here 80 years down the line, face the same sort of stuckness today.

Not that the writing isn't good - it's Orwell, after all, a master of prose! But the circumstance, the narrative, these are so grindingly, hopelessly closed. Dreary Fate, Foggy Vistas: We Must Stare at These Now.

Keep the aspidistra flying review