George Orwell - Coming Up For Air

MakeEmLaugh · 26-12-2014 9:33pm #1

I started reading Coming Up For Air by George Orwell months ago, but then stopped. It wasn't gripping me in any real way.

There were several observations about England and English people which were typically well-written for Orwell, but they were interspersed throughout a generally uncompelling narrative about a middle-aged insurance worker, disinterested in his wife and children, remembering this childhood.

It's set around 1938, just on the cusp of the Second World War.

One of the more memorable passages is

"There's a lot of rot talked about the sufferings of teh working class. I'm not so sorry for the proles myself. Did you ever know a navvy who lay awake thinking about the sack? The prole suffers physically, but he's a free man when he isn't working. But in every one of those little stucco boxes there's some poor bastard who's never free except when he's fast asleep and dreaming that he's got the boss down the bottom of a well and is bunging lumps of coal at him."

Has anyone else read the book, and do they think it generally lives up to the rest of Orwell's oeuvre?

Harry Angstrom · 31-12-2014 2:46am

Orwell is an overrated writer. He had interesting ideas but his writing style is dull.

livinginkorea · 04-01-2015 1:34am

I have read a couple of his books and really liked them but I realize that he is definitely not for everyone. I was very surprised with the ending to Burmese Days and his Down and Out in Paris and London was hard to read at times due to the poverty.

I think he made the writing easy (and sometimes dull for some of us) for a wider audience and left his more stylish writing for his book and play reviews.

donaghs · 03-03-2015 12:57am

It's not one of his best books, but does have some interesting observations on late 30s England, and reminices of pre-ww1 England. I thought Burmese Days a slighter better novel, but Keep the Aspidistra Flying is the best of the pre-Animal Farm novels.

My favourite Orwell though is the non-fiction ...paris and London. Lots of interesting observations of people and the period. Shows different sides to Orwell, like when working in a Paris Kitchen with lots of Italians he says "I had to use my fists more than once to get common civility" !

I don't mind his writing style and prefer his economic use of words to get his meaning across, than other overly descriptive writers

FaulknersFav · 23-03-2015 8:36pm

I read Homage to Catalonia after spending 2 weeks in Barcelona this past summer. I loved it, wish I had read it before I went. His style of writing is, to me, anything by dull. He's economical with his choice of words but I think the singularity of his style of writing is really vibrant and paced perfectly. Reading Down and Out in Paris and London I felt the claustrophobic screeching pressure of the kitchens he worked in as a plongeur.

Burmese Days was so tragic and despairing, but powerful in its despair.

George Orwell - Coming Up For Air

Comments