Coming Up for Air (Penguin Modern Classics)

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George Orwell's paean to the end of an idyllic era in British history, Coming Up for Air is a poignant account of one man's attempt to recapture childhood innocence as war looms on the horizon. 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. 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.” That’s probably all you need to know about George Bowling. Oh, except that he’s fat. George makes a lot of this in this account of his life. Again, it is something he is resigned to—being called “Tubby” by all and sundry—yet finds vaguely irksome. His creator “George Orwell” (in real life Eric Arthur Blair) was as thin as a rake, and 6 ft 2 in (1.88m)! Perhaps he wanted to make George Bowling his antithesis? But no. There are some similarities between the two, and frequently we see observations made by George Bowling which seem rather too knowing about himself; too astute and objective about the world to be consistent with the thoughts of this character. But the voice is familiar … Joe Bowling is George's elder brother. He was not intellectual, and, according to George 'therefore he had a slight proficiency in mechanics'. He never did any sizeable amount of work and worked for his dad as an 'errand boy'. One day when George was younger, Joe stole all the money from the shop till. He was said to have always wanted to emigrate to America, and was never mentioned again.

After ruminating about his life, and where he has ended up, George decides he deserves a holiday, to spend his seventeen quid he won on a horse, and has managed to keep secret from Hilda. On a whim decides to return to Lower Binfield, and catch those carp which he had somehow never got around to catching as a child. The world changes constantly, as do people. But some events are like a shift in tectonic plates: the change is sudden and abrupt. The Great War changed something fundamental in the English lifestyle and George is just the right age to have watched the old world die and the new one take over. As such, he is disillusioned and feels disconnected from the world in which he lives because it is not the one he grew up in. He feels like an expat in his own country. This book is another great slice of pre-WW2 English literature. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It evokes the era perfectly. The book is split into four parts. The second part is full of childhood reminiscences from the early twentieth century. The protagonist recalls his childhood from the perspective of the late 1930s. This section reminded me very much of ' Cider with Rosie' (one of my favourite books), with the key difference that this is fiction. It made me wonder how Orwell managed to so credibly know, and be able to relate, a childhood in a small rural community. Either way it's a stunning section, and also very cleverly manages to highlight some of the seismic changes that took place for the average person in the UK throughout the twentieth century.Eric Arthur Blair, better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English author and journalist. His work is marked by keen intelligence and wit, a profound awareness of social injustice, an intense opposition to totalitarianism, a passion for clarity in language, and a belief in democratic socialism.

He takes us from his earliest memories through his present, and all this remembering leads him to an adventure. It’s an unusual plot construction, but it allows Orwell to give us the long view of middle-class England in the first half of the 20th century. söylemek istiyorum. Kitabın büyük bir kısmında adı geçen Binfield kasabasına yaklaşIk 7-8 mil uzaklıkta oturuyorum ve oraya birçok kez gitmişliğim var. Bu kitapta adı geçen yerlerinin tamamını olmasa da tamamına yakınını gözüm kapalı zinhimde adresleyebildiğim için bu kitabı okumak daha büyük bir keyif vermiş olabilir. Çünkü yaklaşIk 7 yılımı geçirdiğim bu muhitin yüz yıl önceki halinin resmedilmesi beni inanılmaz mutlu etti.

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Orwell's brother-in-law, Humphry Dakin, the husband of Orwell's elder sister Marjorie, a 'short, stout, loquacious' man, thought that Bowling might be a portrait of him. He had known Blair (Orwell) since they were youngsters, when the Blairs lived at Henley-on-Thames and later when they lived at Southwold where he married Marjorie. [6] And yet all the while there’s that peculiar intensity, the power of longing for things as you can’t long when you’re grown up, and the feeling that time stretches out and out in front of you and that whatever you’re doing you could go on for ever.” Throughout the adventure, he receives reminders of impending war, and the threat of bombs becomes real when one lands accidentally on the town. This final section represents the best writing in the book. Different again from what has gone before, we recognise George Bowling’s reactions, partly from experiences we may have had of our own, and also because the path has been so well prepared. This trip was doomed to failure, because the world moves on. But George Bowling poignantly could not believe that what he so wished to be true, was impossible. Bir de tabii ki George Orwell'in sürekli savaş karşıtı söylemleri ve inceden inceye kimi zaman da bariz bir şekilde anti militarist ve anti kapitalist tiratları kitaba hoş bir lezzet katmış.

Ve Tanrım ne güzel bir gündü! Genelde martta görülen ve kışın ansızın mücadeleden vazgeçer gibi olduğu şu günlerden. Son birkaç gündür insanların "açık" dediği, gökyüzünün soğuk ve sert bir mavi olup rüzgarın kör bir jilet gibi insanı rendelediği şu pis havalar hakimdi. Sonra rüzgar dindi ve güneş kendine bir fırsat buldu. Bilirsiniz o günleri." Evet o günler ancak bu kadar güzel anlatılabilirdi. So this story had a reassuring effect on me. To think, George Orwell went through this--the feeling that everything that meant being alive to you was taken away. Then my father went through it, and now me. The universality of the feeling takes the sting away. If the future they feared became the past I loved, chances are, this will keep happening, as the world continues tumbling along. 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. There is plenty of Orwellian social commentary here, but as a nostalgic person myself who has experienced a drastic change in civilization’s priorities along with the complete transformations of the places I once called home, I was caught up in the personal side of the story, and commiserated with George Bowling’s experiences.

PART IV

George Bowling, the middle-aged, middle-income protagonist is a great vehicle for Orwell's musings on pre-WW2 England. Bowling is an insightful, straight talking Everyman character who conveys his thoughts with great honesty and self-deprecating humour. Nereden ve nasıl başlasam bilemiyorum. Öncelikle tek sözcükle özetleyeyim de. Mükemmel! Gerçekten mükemmel bir kitaptı. Hayvan Çiftliği ve 1984 ile tanınan George Orwell'in bence ilk okunması gereken eseri. Çünkü zekasını, sözcüklerle oynama becerisini ve muhteşem bir yazarın sinyalini veren çok güzel bir eser bu. Ultimately this is a story about running away, or at least the desire to run away, and it includes some of Orwell's best comic writing. There's a particularly inspired moment when George, in the process of trying to escape for the weekend without letting anyone know, glances at the road behind him and imagines everyone in his life in hot pursuit, including Hitler and Stalin on a tandem bicycle: "There's the chap who's trying to get away! After him!"

Orwell kitabı çok yalın bir dille kaleme almış, süslü cümleler yok ama anlatılan onca düşünce var. Kitapta savaşın insanlar ve ekonomi üzerindeki etkilerini görüyor ve orta sınıfa mensup bir sigortacının ağzından okuyoruz. Kitabın dili öyle güzel ki, hem anlatmak istediğini anlatıyor hem de sizi hiç yormuyor, akıp gidiyor. Kitapta hem sistem eleştirisi, hem hayata bakış, yaşamın evreleri, savaş.. bir çok konu işleniyor ve hepsi de kitaba öyle güzel yerleştirilmiş ki, okuduktan sonra ufkunuzun açıldığını hissediyor ve yazarın değindiği noktalarla ilgili düşünmeye başladığınızı fark ediyorsunuz. In 1937 Orwell spent some months fighting in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded in the throat in May 1937, by a Nationalist sniper at Huesca. [2] He’d think it was a wonderful thing that a son of his should own a motor-car and live in a house with a bathroom.”Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives. This first section is very reminiscent of H.G Wells, in his social novels such as “Kipps” or “The History of Mr. Polly”. We know that as a boy, Eric Blair did admire H.G. Wells, to the point of him being a favourite author. He enjoyed those novels, because they evoked particular aspects of life in England before the First World War, which made George Orwell recall comparable experiences of his own. Perhaps George Orwell had those novels in mind as a template. Their protagonists are very similar, although George Bowling tells his own story. George Bowling wants to return to the town of his childhood to take a breath of air - to relive the joys of fishing, which was his main hobby and the only true love. We can almost smell the grass and nature on a summer’s day while fishing, and the sweet aroma of the candy George and his friends loved to buy. This is a lovingly detailed picture of a world long gone; of a world which was disappearing by the time George Bowling was sharing his recollections, in 1938. This second part is a lengthy exposition which feels so authentic and drawn from life, that once more we wonder about the two Georges. How did George Orwell, famous for his keen eye and exceptional journalism, come to write such a different piece? For this, we need to look at his life up to that point. George Bowling is an unhappily married, middle-aged insurance salesman and social conformist. One day, after an unexpected windfall of cash, he embarks on a sabbatical journey to his childhood home hoping to find a respite from his miserable existence and to re-discover the mythical ’Walden Pond’ of his youth. But, much to his dismay, George discovers that every touchstone of his upbringing has been obliterated by urban sprawl and development.