Keep the Aspidistra Flying

In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, a discontented and embittered young man, who believes that "all modern commerce is a swindle," attempts to drop out of the monetary system altogether. He refuses to advance himself in life, obstinately defying pressure from family and friends. He falls willingly into the mire of poverty and self-neglect, until he is trapped by circumstances into embracing the very values that he formerly despised. Gordon Comstock is twenty-nine years old, is well educated, and comes from a middle-class background. As the novel opens, he is working as an assistant in a bookstore in London. It is a routine job, and he earns only two pounds a week, but he prefers it to his former position at the New Albion Advertising Company, in spite of the fact that he showed promise as a copywriter. He refers disparagingly to this as a "good" job and wants no part of it. He sees himself primarily as a poet and is very proud of his one published volume, which was well reviewed but little read. Having declared war on what he calls the "money-god," he wants to live by his own values, not those of a corrupt, materialistic system which grinds the life and spirit out of people.