Rating: 
Summary: If real life is a turn-off, just do this
Review: The best of George Orwell's lesser known novels is undoubtedly Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a riotous look at an intelligent and capable young man who is determined at all costs to avoid success. I wonder if any part of this tale is autobiographical, not so much in the events, which I know sometimes mirror living conditions in Orwell's own life, but in attitude. Gordon Comstock is the young man in question, somewhat educated and with modest family connections. After being the pride of his family - the smart one - he gives up his "good job" at an advertising agency to specifically seek out "not a good job", which leads him to become a bookstore clerk. Why this happens is a bit of a mystery to me, though doubtless it will be less so to other readers. In a nutshell, Gordon is at war with money. This is no deep secret that he comes to accept; it is explicitly part of his character. He doesn't care for the rat race, he doesn't like wasting his writing talents by making up stupid slogans for unnecessary or even worthless products, aimed at people too stupid to make intelligent purchasing decisions. He is good at that job, but decides he doesn't need the money. He needs the time to work on his own poetry, a long and perpetually unfinished work about London life.
The main problem he faces is that he can't afford anything on his "not a good job" salary. Not a decent place to live, not halfway-decent food or enough cigarettes to last the week, and certainly not enough to take his would-be girlfriend out for a day. Gordon's war against money is serious business.
The plotline here is simple enough. Gordon goes from day to day living his wretchedly impoverished life, wondering often how the truly lower classes manage on half his salary while supporting a wife and ten kids. He has rich friends, socialists like him. He thinks appropriately rude thoughts about the customers in the shop where he works. He goes out and tries to have good time while spending nothing, avoiding looking cheap, and disparaging his poor circumstances. This guy really reminds me of a character from a Dostoyevsky novel, perhaps Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment (though Gordon doesn't kill anyone; he does get arrested for public drunkenness, but that's as far as it goes). Smart, impoverished, at war with himself and the world. It all fits, but in a nice Orwellian way.
To end on a light note, lest there be any confusion, the aspidistra is a sturdy and rather unexceptional houseplant that thrives on low light levels. Gordon goes on and on about these plants at various times in the novel, like it's some sort of fetish. I'm not sure if things have changed much, but though Orwell makes the aspidistra out to be the national plant of England, my British co-worker had to do a google search to tell me what one looked like exactly. I guess they've gone out of favor a bit since the thirties.
This may be Orwell's finest proper novel. Personally I liked it better than Animal Farm or any of his other lesser-known novels. 1984, of course, is the best-known work, but is so outrageous in its politics that there's not so much room left for simple storytelling. Gordon Comstock is the sort of character I know so well now that I could sit down and have a beer with him and feel like we're old friends (albeit the kind that don't always get along).
Rating: 
Summary: 'Slumming'
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Overlooked but Overhwelming
Review: The petty nature of Gordon Comstock may seem like small potatoes compared to 1984 and Animal Farm but Comstock's life is Orwell showing us how suffocating our society is, and how suffocating our own vanity and aspirations can be. Like some sort of 1950's Seinfeld Comstock is funny, witty, sarcastic and loathesome. Readers will either root for Gordon's bitterness and refusal to get in line with all the other capitalists, and some readers (like Gordon's relations) will wonder what he's moaning about. Like the rest of Orwell's work this book is consistent in showing us how dehumanising our world can be. Orwell's critics accuse him of writing ciphers and not characters with any great depth, but Comstock is Orwell, with all the unrealistic attitudes that entails.
Rating: 
Summary: It will earn you points at cocktail parties
Review: There is a reason why this isn't one of Orwell's most-read books. While it isn't terrible...it isn't all that good, either. There seem to be two stories here: one is a fun satire of the classes and of the advertising industry (Do you suffer from P.O.?) and the other is a dreary examination of a peevish little man. Fortunately, the second story is sandwiched between the clever parts and, when the protagonist gets unbearable, you can just skip over the aforementioned parts. The benefit of this book is that it is short enough so that one can read it in a few sittings and, later, wow one's associates at cocktail parties with intimate knowledge of an obscure work by Orwell.
Rating:
Summary: Not a masterwork
Review: This bit of capitolism bashing is not a bad novel, but if "1984" is worth five stars (and we all know it is) then this amusing, if somewhat forgetable, narrative can not be given half its status.
Anyone who gave this book three or more stars should certainly re-evalute their opinion with the above paragraph in mind. Though, perhaps I have under-rated the book based on lofty expectations provoked by his latter work.
Anyone who may have given this book five stars:
Do you honestly think this first novel is the equal of a titan of literature like "1984"?
It simply doesn't deserve the same status.
Rating:
Summary: A lesser, but still a good Orwell
Review: This book is certainly not up to the level of Orwell's masterpieces, _1984_ and _Animal Farm_, but is fairly entertaining nevertheless. The theme is the idealism of youth versus the realism of adulthood. Our hero, Gordon Comstock, believe strongly in socialism, and refuses to compromise his values by taking what he calls "a good job" and becoming part of the "money-code," i.e., being corrupted by society's obsession with making money. He just wants a part-time job and to be left alone to write his poetry, which he was having a great deal of difficulty having published. Comstock does manage to secure a good, well-paying job as a copy writer for an advertising firm (the epitome of crass capitalism), but resigns so that he could achieve his lifetime desire to sink in the mud. Comstock eventually comes to realize, however, that being poor means being forced to borrow money from his publisher friend (who runs a small literary magazine called "antichrist") and from his loving, but long suffering girlfriend, Rosemary. This Comstock cannot allow himself to do. He also cannot, without having money, provide Rosemary with the happiness she feels that she deserves. Comstock eventually throw in the towel and secures himself a happy ending of sorts. The ending that Orwell chose feels tacked on. It appears that Orwell was unsure how he wanted to end the book, so he decided to write this one, which seems a bit too facile. Orwell, however, makes his point of the idealism of youth quite well, and does so with much humor. An example of this is the section where our hero does a little too much celebrating, thereby landing in trouble (nothing permanent) when he spends the money he receives from the publishing of some of his poems. Orwell's allusion to the growing of a few white hairs associated with becoming an adult is apt and, in a way, quite sweet. I felt, however, that Orwell treated the issue of youthful idealism v. adult corruption in too much of a black and white, all or nothing manner. Is it not at all possible for someone to hold a good paying, full time job and still write poetry in his spare time? I do not believe that working for an advertising firm as a copy writer should compromise one's deeply held beliefs in socialism. It would hardly place our hero in the same class as a wealthy corporate executive, much less on the same level as a John D. Rockefeller or a Donald Trump.
Rating:
Summary: A tale of a middle class man who turns against money.
Review: This is a book about Gordon Comstock, a man scarred by his families outlook on money, who ruins most of his life because of it. His traumatic experiences at boarding school made him jealous of the wealthy. He really never hated money, but because he never had much of it, he resented it. He later shows his love for money by taking the 50 dollers from a newspaper article and spending it all in one night. I felt sorry for his girlfriend Rosemary, who had to put up with his antics. He was a sex craving idiot who threw his life away, and he was a very good creation. George Orwell's most human book. It showed the lives of the low middle class very well.
Rating:
Summary: Why bycotting the system cant change a thing
Review: This is Orwells best pre-war novel by far,it creates a belivable central caracter Gordon, Who is hypocritical(he refuses charity or loans but sponges off his long suffering sister),pig headed and ignores the fact that he is surronded by loyal friends and family who he constantly makes feel worthless. Yet gordon is in his dogmatic way, right about the "Money-god" and the so-called english middle class respectabilty, that his family vainly and tragicly try to keep.This book is full of deeply black ironic humor wich makes it orwells funniest book. His final 'surrender' to the money god is Orwell's recognition of the fact that you cant change the worlds injustices by trying to boycott the system ,and that any such stand is doomed.From then on Orwell rightly belived society had to be changed by action.
Rating:
Summary: A must-read for anyone who has ever wanted to be a writer
Review: This novel tells the story of Gordon Comstock and his refusal to "settle" for a job that he hates just because everyone thinks he should do it. He is a writer and a starving-artist by nature, and he struggles between the decision to live in poverty, or become part of the "money" world. A real eye-opener for anyone that has that artist's mentality.
Rating:
Summary: Engrossing.
Review: Time magazine called this book "exceptionally human" and one of Orwell's warmest works. I am thinking that compared to 1984, The Satanic Verses must seem warm...still... Gordon Comstck is a self-important self-consious class-despising poet nebish...who's story is actually fascinating. Gordon drops out of society, worried that the money world was compromising his credibility as a writer. The minute he is poor, however, Gordon becomes an insufferable whiner... and the fun starts there! No matter what Orwell is writing, he is the consumate reporter, always close enough to a situation to report it in brilliant detail, yet composed enough to never let emotion compromise his reportage. This is true of his novels and essays. "Keep the Apidistra Flying" is a surprisingly charming and quirky tale from one of our centuries (last century now, I guess) greatest reporters.
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