I think I need to start this review with an apology to George Orwell because like many people, I read Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager and assumed I'd read everything by Orwell that was worth reading. I was obviously wrong because Coming Up for Air is a great book, though very different from his two most famous novels. In a way, though, I'm glad I've waited until now to read it because I'm not sure I would have appreciated it as much when I was younger.Coming Up for Air was published in 1939 and tells the story of George Bowling, a forty-five-year-old insurance salesman who is bored with his dreary, middle-class existence. Married with two children, George's biggest worries are his mortgage, his weight and the risk of losing his job, but with Europe on the brink of war he knows that the monotony of his life could be about to change. On the day that he receives a new set of false teeth, George takes a trip into London where he sees a poster that triggers memories of his childhood and Lower Binfield, the small, peaceful town where he grew up. George is tempted to return to Lower Binfield for the first time in years, but if he goes back now, what will he find?Based on the other two books I've read, this is not really the type of book I would have expected from George Orwell. However, there are some similarities with Nineteen Eighty-Four in Orwell's surprisingly accurate predictions of the future. Reading this book gave me an eerie feeling, knowing that it was being written just before the beginning of the Second World War, when the author could have had no real knowledge of what was to come, yet anticipating the changes that would soon be upon the nation."I can feel it happening. I can see the war that’s coming and I can see the after-war, the food-queues and the secret police and the loudspeakers telling you what to think. And I’m not even exceptional in this. There are millions of others like me."My favourite part of the book was the long section in the middle where George looks back on his childhood in Lower Binfield at the turn of the century. This whole section is a lovely nostalgic portrait of an England that is now gone forever...that had already gone by 1939, destroyed by the First World War."1913! My God! 1913! The stillness, the green water, the rushing of the weir! It'll never come again. I don't mean that 1913 will never come again. I mean the feeling inside you, the feeling of not being in a hurry and not being frightened, the feeling you've either had and don't need to be told about, or haven't had and won’t ever have the chance to learn."The novel doesn't have a lot of plot, but that wasn't a problem; I didn't find it slow at all. There's not much dialogue either, as we spend the whole book inside George's head with his thoughts and memories. Despite this, I found the book completely engrossing. The only time I got bored was with George's long and enthusiastic description of fishing, his favourite hobby until the age of fifteen. But even this was steeped in nostalgia:"The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool — and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside — belongs to the time before the war, before the radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler."George's actions and opinions are not always very admirable and his views on the women in his life leave a lot to be desired, but despite his flaws, I couldn't actually dislike him. He's so ordinary; not a hero, but a real human being with good points and bad points. He has a wryly funny, self-deprecating narrative style which saves the book from becoming too depressing, though overall I found this a sad and poignant story rather than a humorous one. I don't know much about Orwell's own life, but I'm sure this book must have been autobiographical to some extent.I loved Coming Up for Air and will certainly consider trying another of Orwell's books.
One of Orwell’s less well known novels; it is a rather bleak comic novel written and set in 1938/1939. It is a well written novel about nostalgia, the lower middle classes, relationships between men and women and middle age. Orwell is primarily a political writer and as he said himself, “Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism.” Given works like 1984 and Animal Farm, it isn’t surprising that this one can be forgotten. Coming up for Air is narrated by George Bowling; a man living in the suburbs with a wife and two children, in his late 40s and in an unexciting but stable white collar job. Orwell has always created his male leads with a strong sense of inadequate masculinity; some self-awareness, many and obvious faults. In terms of plot, at the beginning of the book George is bemoaning his lot, his wife, job and life. We then have the nostalgia where he recalls his childhood pre 1914 in the Edwardian era in a town called Lower Binfield. Later in the book George takes some holiday and without telling his wife goes back to Lower Binfield after a gap of 25 years to search for his past, which, of course, has disappeared. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Some people have found George Bowling endearing; he isn’t. Orwell draws his caricature sharply. He is human, not a grotesque. But consider the point where George is laid on his bed and considering how women let themselves go after marriage; conning men to get to the altar and then suddenly rushing into middle age and dowdiness. This is from a man who is 45, fat, has false teeth and bad skin and wears vulgar clothes. Orwell is laying on the irony with a trowel. Late in the book George sees an old girlfriend from nearly 30 years previously. She has changed greatly and he barely recognises her (he inwardly reflects that she has aged badly without making the jump that she has not recognised him). George does have moments of clarity when he almost grasps how ridiculous he is, but not quite.The female characters are not well drawn and are feminine stereotypes, although Orwell does capture the monotony of suburban life. Usually Orwell’s female characters are more rounded (Julia in 1984), but the focus here is firmly on George Bowling and he certainly perceives the women around him in two-dimensional ways. Orwell is also satirising suburbia, he describes the road on which Bowling lives as a “line of semi-detached torture chambers”. Although Bowling dislikes his lot, he accepts it reluctantly, despite his brief foray into his past.Ever in the background is the threat of war; by this time war with Hitler was seen as inevitable and there is a sense of impending doom. George is aware that a good deal of what is around him will be destroyed, as the 1914-1918 war swept away the world of his childhood. Orwell also lets his own political feelings slip in occasionally and his description of a New Left Book Club meeting is very well drawn. It is a good read and has a deep vein of humour in the face of coming destruction. Not Orwell at his best, but certainly a different aspect of his work.
What do You think about Coming Up For Air (1969)?
لقد كنا نملك في الماضي شيئا لم نعد نملكه الان..شئ لا يمكن امتلاكه في حياتي الحالية..شئ رجعت ابحث عنه و لم اجده و مع ذلك لا ازال اؤمن بوجودهان رائحة الأزهار هي نفسها بالنسبة لي..لكن هل رائحته هي نفسها بالنسبة للأزهاريموت الانسان عندما يتوقف دماغه ..اقصد عندما يتوقف دماغه عن استيعاب أفكار جديدةتستمر الأشياء بالحدوث و تستمر الحياة كالحرب تماماان موته يؤلمني الان اكثر مما آلمني في حينهيا الله ما اجمل ذلك العام..هدوء و خضرة و هو لن يتكرر ثانيا..لا اقصد ان العام هو الذي لن يتكرر ..إنما الشعور الداخلي باني لست علي عجلة من امري و اني غير خائفتكمن المشكلة الاساسية في وهمنا بأننا نملك شيئا نخسرهكتابة اخري ما بين حربين ..محاولة الرجوع للبحث عن الماضي و استنشاق هواءه و اكتشاف ان رجوع الايام و رجوعه اليها ك رجوع يونس الي بطن الحوتجورج اورويل ان جاز لي اقول تالت و رابع و تاسع له و عليه روح يا شيخ الله يرضي عليك ..الصعود للهواء من اقرب كتبه ل روحي
—داليا
I didn't expect this to be such a funny book. It was funny to the degree that you can expect any old writer to be funny - the writing was sharp, and the narrator was oafish with some funny lines.The protagonist, a fat, bumbling, middle class Englishman came across as a dark version of Oliver Hardy. Full disclosure, I've never seen Laurel and Hardy, and they may be just as dark for all I know.The story also put into words my distaste for the empty, "middling" class, powerless but informed rut so many people seem to descend into. Fatty Bowling seems perpetually nostalgic about his past, rueful about his present, and apathetic about his future. His wife seems even worse, although this might be due a lot to the bias of the narrator, as it is told from his perspective.There is a great moment where Fatty, complaining about his wife, has this to say about his Wife's demeanor:"For hours, sometimes, on Sunday afternoons or in the evening when I've come home from work, I've lain on my bed with all my clothes on except my shoes, wondering about women. Whey they're like that, how they get like that, whether they're doing it on purpose. It seems to be a most frightful thing, the suddenness with which some women go to pieces after they're married. It's as if they were strung up to do just that one thing, and the instant they've done it they wither off like a flower that's set its seed. What really gets me down is the dreary attitude towards life that it implies. If marriage was just an open swindle-if the woman trapped you into it and then turned round and said, "Now you bastard, I've caught you and you're going to work for me while I have a good time!' - I wouldn't mind so much. But not a bit of it. They don't want to have a good time, they merely want to slump into middle age as quickly as possible. After the frightful battle of getting her man to the altar, the woman kind of relaxes all of her youth, looks, energy, and joy of life just vanish overnight... What Hilda lacks - I discovered this about a week after we were married - is any kind of joy in life, any kind of interest in things for their own sake."The irony here is that George Bowling, who only in the most recent decade actually earned the moniker "Fatty," is exactly the same. I presume that one of the reasons why this erosion of vigor and vitality and virility is because they remain ignorant to it. And any reward he can claim as to the progression of his career was entirely driven by luck, and the mere chance of being at the right place at the right time when Greater Men considered him for a moment. And while George is happy to explain how he fell from one position into the next, he still holds a deplorable sense of entitlement, and doesn't bother to keep the momentum of his personal development going. Bowling neither deserves what he has, nor does he appreciate it, nor does he take advantage of it.So while I didn't agree with the protagonist, I still very much enjoyed the book because of what Orwell makes of Bowling. Thanks very much George, here is a life lesson I won't soon forget.
—Fraser Kinnear
Vŕtalo mi v hlave, prečo sme len všetci takí somári. Prečo ľudia neprestanú márniť čas kadejakými idiotstvami a prečo radšej nechodia po svete a nepozerajú sa na veci? napríklad ten rybník - čo v ňom všetko nie je! Mloky, vodné slimáky, vodné chrobáky, potočníky, pijavice a pánbohvie koľko iných vecí, ktoré uvidíte iba pod mikroskopom. Mohli by ste stráviť celý život, ba desať životov tým, že sa na ne pozeráte, a ešte stále by ste neboli hotoví ani len s tým jediným jazierkom. A celý čas taký akoby pocit úžasu, taký zvláštny plameň vo vás. Jediná vec, čo stojí za to, a my ju nechceme. Román zatienený autorovými najznámejšími dielami, čo je veľká škoda. Výborný opis krízy stredného veku Georgea Bowlinga, ktorá akoby odzrkadľovala medzivojnovú situáciu nielen v Anglicku, kde sa dej odohráva. V istých častiach veľmi autentické, obzvlášť návrat do Dolného Binfieldu a celý dej v ňom vtiahne čitateľa a nepustí. Úplne iný Orwell (aj keď v hlavnej postave sa občas odrážajú črty Winstona Smitha) komornejší, povedal by som osobnejší, určite aj stráviteľnejší, ale hlavne tiež viac než zaujímavý.
—Matej Laš
