Keep The Aspidistra Flying -

However, Gordon quickly learns that poverty isn't romantic; it's just exhausting. It makes him bitter, self-centered, and often cruel to his long-suffering girlfriend, Rosemary. What is an Aspidistra, Anyway?

The story follows , a struggling poet who has declared a one-man war on the "Money-God". Gordon quits a promising career in advertising—a field he views as the "dirtiest ramp" of capitalism—to take a low-paying job in a second-hand bookshop. He lives in squalid, freezing rooms, convinced that by embracing poverty, he can remain an "authentic" artist. Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Long before George Orwell was warning us about Big Brother, he was writing about a much more mundane, yet equally suffocating, tyrant: . However, Gordon quickly learns that poverty isn't romantic;