25th March 2010
One of our longest and most wide-ranging discussions ever arising from the book in question. Seven of us present and four definite votes of approval for 'Coming Up for Air'. I was a bit more ambivalent, Ras was unimpressed finding it somewhat tedious whilst Mark T has yet to finish it. The overwhelming prevailing view was that Orwell's ability to turn a phrase and, in particular make an observation about life and the world is almost unrivalled. It was difficult to stop people (particular Richard) from reading out their favourite quotes, which seems a good indicator of whether a book has made an impact on its readers or not. The root cause of the slight divergence of opinion was mainly around the slow pace of the novel and/or the debatable question of whether it was a novel or not i.e. given that so little actually happened, could it actually be described as a story as opposed to Orwell wanting to expound on his opinions about the world and using the setting of a person's journey into their past as a mechanism for doing so.
Putting these points to one side, there was little doubt that Orwell struck a chord with many of us in terms of the observations he made about the world and life experiences (too many for me to either recall in full or select the best ones) - hence the wide ranging discussions that took us into questions about whether the world is a better place to live nowadays than it was thirty/forty years ago, global warming and misogyny.
There were a few other minor debates about the book - such as whether George Bowling was a believable character or an old Etonians version of what a lower middle class insurance salesman would have lived like but beyond that the clear view was that Orwell's writing style had both created a pleasurable experience (for most) and generated much discussion and conversation (for all).
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