Guest Post
My Aspidistra Days
George Orwell is known for his big name
titles Animal Farm and 1984, but he also wrote a lesser known
book that was a commercial failure upon its release called Keep The
Aspidistra Flying. The book tells the story of Gordon Cornstock, a failing
poet who gives up a good job to work in a bookshop in the pursuit of his “art”,
while repeatedly failing to bed his girlfriend. All the while, a plant called
an aspidistra watches him, almost mockingly, from the windowsill of his poky
little apartment.
The whole struggling writer thing is
something familiar to many young people, and my book, Head of Words, was
written based partly on my own “aspidistra” days. A year after finishing
university and moving home, I decided to return to my former haunt and moved
back to Bristol. However, all my friends from that time were holed up in shared
houses and I was forced to live on my own, in the seediest of seedy bedsits in
a rather unpleasant part of Bristol called Easton.
I only lived there for six months, on the
third floor of a terraced house that had been converted into bedsits, but it
was probably the most influential period of my life. I saw things during those
six months that I would never have otherwise had any experience of, and many of
them would end up being part of Head of Words, which I wrote about two
years later.
I'm envious of writers who can churn out
what the market demands at will, not to mention envious of their sales figures,
but I am a different kind of writer. I write first for myself, and if what I
write appeals to the masses, then so be it. If not, so be it. Head of Words
was a fascinating book for me to write, but one that I feel will divide
opinion. In the space of a chapter it can veer from goofy comic scenes to dark
scenes of drug taking, prostitution and suicide, scenes which are influenced by
the days I lived at the end of a street patrolled by heroin-addicted
prostitutes and shared a communal toilet/shower with a guy I suspected was a
drug dealer. While some of these social issues are examined in the book, and
indeed the flat where Dan Barker lives is my old bedsit (with an added bedroom
and bathroom), Head of Words is more than that. It is a story of a man
who doesn't know himself, but it is also me celebrating (or should it be
mourning?) some of the people whose lives briefly crossed with mine during my
aspidistra days, and therefore a book that is very close to my heart, even if
it proves to be a critical and commercial failure. I can live with that,
because I will forever be proud of the monument that it is to a fascinating
period of my life.
I was only ever a spectator during those
few brief months, but many of those lonely people I saw wandering up and down those
streets at night are probably dead now. In a sense, then, Head of Words is
my tribute to them.
Chris Ward
About the Author
Chris Ward is a native of Cornwall, England, but currently lives and works in Nagano, Japan. He is the author of 33 published short stories, around the same number of unpublished, and eight unpublished novels, the best of which will eventually see the light of day.
He spends his time, snowboarding, writing, playing guitar in his rock band, Steampunk Unicorn (find us on youtube!), and generally having too much to say about just about everything.
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Author's Links
Book Blurb and Review coming soon!! I see a giveaway in the future.
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