I’ve been reading D.J. Taylor’s enormous overview of 20th-century English literature on and off for four or five years. It’s called The Prose Factory, which isn’t a great title for a book that also covers poetry, but it’s certainly been interesting. Like anybody with a private interest, some things loom larger than perhaps they ought – and with Taylor it is George Orwell. He’s obviously a significant figure of the 30s and 40s, but it’s astonishing how often Taylor manages to mention him.
I’m actually thirty years further forward in The Prose Factory, but picking it up reminded me of its Orwell-dominance, which in turn reminded me that I wanted to read more Orwell. I’ve read the big-hitters – Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm – and I’ve read Homage to Catalonia. I thought all of them were brilliant, and have had several others for many years. Simply because it’s been on my shelves the longest, seventeen years, I took down Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936) recently.
I think Orwell might fall in that category of author you don’t see mentioned that much in the blogosphere, simply because we all read him long before we started book blogs. I don’t remember seeing a review of this one, or any of the lesser-known novels, and it’s a pity because it’s rather brilliant. I’d love it for the opening scene alone.
Gordon Comstock is the ‘hero’ of the novel, and as it opens he is working in a secondhand bookshop that also functions as a library for twopenny books. He is working on his own poetry, and has had a volume published that the Times Literary Supplement said showed promise. The extended scene in the bookshop/library is effectively to set up Gordon’s position on a scale of intellectual snobbery. I’m glad I read it now rather than seventeen years ago, because I think most of the names in the passage below would have meant nothing to me then – whereas now I can understand them as Orwell intended the reader to: as a barometer of the reading taste Gordon is setting himself against.
Eight hundred strong, the novels lined the room on three sides ceiling-high, row upon row of gaudy oblong backs, as though the walls had been built of many-coloured bricks laid upright. They were ranged alphabetically. Arlen, Burroughs, Deeping, Dell, Frankau, Galsworthy, Gibbs, Priestley, Sapper, Walpole. Gordon eyes them with inert hatred. At this moment he hated all books, and novels most of all. Horrible to think of all that soggy, half-baked trash massed together in one place. Pudding, suet pudding.
Some of these names might only be familiar if you’ve studied popular culture of the period – does anybody read Warwick Deeping now? – but others have lingered. It’s a mix of the middle-class and the lower-middle-class, all with pretensions above their stations. Those who read Galsworthy thought themselves intellectuals; those who read Ethel M. Dell probably thought themselves above those who read westerns. All of it makes bitter Comstock feel angry and repelled – and bitterness is the keynote of his personality.
He lives in poverty – or, at least, poverty for someone of his education and intelligence. The only people he sees are a rich friend called Ravenstock, who tries to help get his poetry published and offers (and is refused) to lend him money, his girlfriend Rosemary, and an aunt Julia who is ever poorer than him, but from whom he still borrows money. It fits his code of pride that he cannot borrow from a rich friend, but will from a poor relative.
Pride is the other keynote, alongside bitterness. His stubbornness is infuriating. He won’t let Rosemary pay for dinner when they go out, because the man must pay for the woman – even if it means he can’t pay his rent or can’t afford to eat for the rest of the week. Rosemary puts up with an awful lot, and sticks with him despite all his moroseness.
Iterated through the novel, either in Gordon’s dialogue or in his internal dialogue, is that everything comes down to money. He can’t marry Rosemary because he doesn’t have money. She won’t sleep with him – so Gordon argues – because he doesn’t have money. He can’t work as a poet because he doesn’t have money. And he doesn’t have money because he left a relatively well-paying job in advertising in order to get out of the capitalist machine.
What’s so impressive about Keep the Aspidistra Flying is that Orwell has a mouthpiece for a point of view with which he evidently has substantial sympathy – and bravely chooses to make that mouthpiece objectionable. As well as bitter and proud, Gordon is stubborn, selfish, and often unkind to the long-suffering Rosemary. But there is also enough good in him to make the reader (this reader, at least) not hate him. He loves the beautiful and noble. He partly cares so much what people think of him because of his own low self-esteem, and his recognition that others have achieved much more. On the whole, he falls down on the side of being unpleasant. But it is so well-judged a portrait that he does not become a villain – rather, he is a friend that we are frustrated by and beginning to be sick of, even if we agree with him in essentials.
Orwell apparently thought little of the novel, and didn’t want it reprinted. I don’t agree with him. It doesn’t have the sophistication of Nineteen Eighty-Four but it does have the same brilliant prose. He is the best writer I’ve read for writing that is entirely unshowy and is yet superlatively good. The plot is simple but perfectly judged, and I’m all the keener to read those other Orwells I’ve got on the shelves. In some ways, it’s a shame that his dystopian novels are the only ones that are widely remembered, because he so strikingly observed the real world too.
This is one of his that I’ve always meant to read and never got round to – you do make it sound very tempting! I watched the film adaptation with Richard E Grant in the 90s and from my vague memory I think they probably made him more likeable than he sounds here. I’ve realised that means I’ve been intending to read this for more than 20 years – I really should get to it!
Oo I didn’t realise there was a film – Richard E Grant would be perfect for this role.
You cannot go through life without reading The Road to Wigan Pier or Down and Out in London and Paris. Absolutely brilliant. Personally 1984 is my least favourite book of his but the concept of course is quite realistic. But for reading pleasure I don’t think it is anywhere near his other lesser talked about books.
I don’t think I have Wigan Pier, but do have Down and Out so will make sure to get to it before too long!
I recall someone recommending this novel to me many years ago, so your post is a timely reminder. Like Pam, I suspect there is much pleasure to be gained from Orwell’s lesser-known works, Aspidistra, Coming Up for Air, etc.
Yes, agreed! Those sorts of books that have probably never gone out of print but don’t get as much attention as they deserve.
I agree with you, Orwell is an excellent observer of human nature and especially of human nature shaped and influenced by society. I read this one a long time ago and felt Gordon was profoundly unlikable, but at the same time you can’t help but feel sorry for him too.
It’s so masterfully handled!
You’re right about us all having read our Orwell before we started blogging – this is one of my favourites of his and I’ve read it more than once, but not after I started my LiveJournal! I have just consulted my Reading Journal record and find I last read it in 1997, a copy I’d acquired in 1989, which sounds about right. I get the rhythm and some of the words of that poem he’s writing in the book in my head quite often, though!
Just to riff further on this point about reading Orwell before we all started blogging…
I’m wondering if this means perhaps that we are an unintended clique of readers of about the same age?
When I started blogging a bit over 10 years ago now, there were some among the bloggers I loved who were written by readers younger than me. But one by one, they have left the blogosphere, either temporarily or for for good. Iris, for example, who introduced me to Dutch literature and wrote thoughtful reviews about so many other books, is no longer around for two of the most common reasons: having children, and the PhD.
If there are younger readers sharing their joy of discovering the authors we all read long ago, I do not know who they are. Are they on Instagram?
Interesting! Yes, I think lots of the younger reviewers went to YouTube and tumblr and such places. Long-form writing is out of vogue. Though there are a few younger ones around – Sheree at Keeping Up With The Penguins is great – and I think I’m about the same age as Iris, so maybe I’ve clung on as a younger blogger even after 13 years blogging!
I always think it’s slightly odd that my blog doesn’t necessarily reflect my favourites, because some of them were read long before blogging!
It’s a long time since I read this, so I’m overdue a revisit too. I love Orwell’s writing – just brilliant and I agree that his lesser- read works really deserve more attention. And totally agree with Pam about Road to Wigan Pier and Down & Out. I consider my self very lucky to have studied him at Grammar School.
Excellent! Yes, I feel like going on a bit of an Orwell binge now…
Excellent piece – thank you for this, it is just the nudge I need to take him off my bookshelf and re-acquaint myself with his lesser known works. I’ve been so absorbed in discovering new (old) authors that I tend to let my eyes slide past the names that seem almost like cliches. That is so wrong! Must return to Orwell, as well as Graham Greene and Waugh. Thanks for reminding me!
Excellent, Tess, hope you enjoy returning to him!
Like you, I’d only read Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm before last year when I read Down and Out in Paris and London, which was terrific. I take it that it’s not as straightforward a memoir as I initially assumed (more of a “nonfiction novel,” maybe). I bought a secondhand copy of The Road to Wigan Pier directly afterwards and need to read that soon. I agree with you that his prose is effortlessly wonderful.
I must get to Down and Out before too long – he is just such a master of prose.
I read this many years ago and I hadn’t remembered that much about it really. I know I thoroughly enjoyed it though. I would definitely get more from it now. You make me want to re-read it.
Grab it off the shelf, Ali!
I read this one, too, long before blogging, in a serious Orwell phase. I remember it as pretty good, but I’ll double down on the Down and Out & Wigan Pier recommendations if you haven’t read those. And a good-sized volume of essays.
The bit with that list of authors is great–I’d forgotten that, but I’m not surprised. I’m just now reading Galsworthy–and liking him, uh-oh!–something I would never have done while I was reading Orwell.
I do have the Narrative Essays and Critical Essays collections that came out ten or so years ago, and have enjoyed dipping through. And yes, I’ve read some Galsworthy and enjoyed it – and Priestly! The only Sapper I read was pretty reprehensible though.
Orwell is a great essayist too, don’t neglect those.
Orwell’s essay about being a second-hand bookseller (in Books versus Cigarettes?) is IMO more worth reading than Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I have absolutely no patience with Gordon Comstock, who has only himself to blame for his situation. My favourite Orwell novel is Coming Up for Air.
We did an episode of Tea or Books? on ‘Bookshop Memories’! It’s great – though I think the opening chapter of this rivals it. Thanks for the Coming Up For Air rec!
I have two collections and have browsed through them :) Just a great all-rounder!
I must put this on my wishlist.
Do, Marianne!
As an aside on Warwick Deeping. His best seller Sorrell and Son..(good title) was filmed as a ITV series as late as 1984. I picked up a copy in a charity shop. Sadly , at least for me had not aged well.
Oh, didn’t know that! I mostly know him as Q.D. Leavis’s punching bag…
It’s funny, isn’t it, because often when writers write both realistic works of fiction and genre-ish works, it’s their genre-ish books that are overlooked or, at least, pushed to the far side of the bookshelf, but, in this instance, the opposite has happened, and we all think of his speculative writing as the real deal. Thanks for the encouragement to take a closer look at the bulk of his oeuvre!
Good point! The only other example I can think of is Aldous Huxely – so prolific, and only really Brave New World remembered.
Not Crome Yellow? Think I may be showing my age again :-)
I have read it, and I haven’t actually read Brave New World, but I’d imagine the latter was rather more famous to the world at large!
I read this years ago and I loved it. I also recently read Orwell’s novel. Coming up for Air, and it too is excellent. The Richard Grant movie is called A Merry War and it also stars Helena Bonham Carter. I just saw that it’s available on Amazon Prime, so I’m excited to be able to watch it again.
This is actually my favorite Orwell. It’s about the world we live in; a kind of totalitarian capitalism. And gosh, it’s so relentlessly bleak (and yet in a comically tragic way).