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Orwell's own experiences inspire this semi-autobiographical novel about a man living in Paris in the early 1930s without a penny. The narrator's poverty brings him into contact with strange incidents and characters, which he manages to chronicle with great sensitivity and graphic power. The latter half of the book takes the English narrator to his home city, London, where the world of poverty is different in externals only. A socialist who believed that the lower classes were the wellspring of world reform, Orwell actually went to live among them in England and on the continent. His novel draws on his experiences of this world, from the bottom of the echelon in the kitchens of posh French restaurants to the free lodging houses, tramps, and street people of London. In the tales of both cities, we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society.… (more)
John_Vaughan: On re-reading these two books it is hard to believe that these two works were written almost at the same time and about the same culture. One by Blair deliberatly self-impoverished, one by Morton - by car!
alv: Orwell lives together with the lowest of the lowest in the Paris and London of the final 20s.
Walraff impersonates a turkish immigrant to the prosperous Federal Republic of Germany of the mid-80s.
Approaching “Down and Out …” I expected pain and misery. And yes, a good bit of it is downright awful. Yet, Orwell is not sentimental. His style is matter-of-fact and frequently entertaining. One sees the source of a good bit of his novel “Keep the Aspidistra Flying” which is set in a similar environment.
Orwell offers some brief, trenchant analysis from a Socialist perspective. He was right then, and now. Just look around at the huge number of down-and-outs in our cities and towns. They live still. In my regional Victorian city they inhabit sand dunes, condemned buildings and vacant crannies. A century on, Orwell remains eloquent. ( )
Very early writing by Orwell. The genre is a little vague - personal history? Social reporting?? Covers his time as a dishwharer in Paris and as a vagrant in London. Strange stuff. The writing is well done, but you'd be hard pressed to foresee a future with Animal Farm or 1984 from this sample. ( )
George Orwell (1903-1950) had a hard time publishing Down and Out in Paris and London (1933), his somewhat fictionalized memoir about his life as a dishwasher in Paris and a tramp in England. It was on the market for three years before Gollancz finally bought it. Orwell had been a scholarship student at Eton and had worked as a rural police officer in Burma. On his return to England, inspired by Jack London, he made immersive expeditions to homeless shelters and barebones roadside hostels, called spikes, for unemployed day workers. He then traveled to Paris, where he was often hungry. Whatever its factual basis, Orwell’s writing presents snapshots of the French and English underclasses. He details the squalor and odd life in a cheap Parisian hotel: “There were eccentric characters in the hotel. The Paris slums are a gathering-place for eccentric people—people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent.” The English tramp, he says, is a result of not allowing migrants to spend more than one night in a shelter before they have to move on. Poverty, he proclaims, leads to a life whose only redeeming virtue is that it “annihilates the future.” ( )
In one sense an easy read, in that the narrative sweeps the reader along: in another, difficult, because the story, describing conditions of brutal poverty as a 'plongeur' in a Paris hotel kitchen, then as an English tramp in southern England is unappetising in the extreme. The diary-like narrative is interspersed with anecdotes from the lives of other characters, such as his Russian friend Boris, and with more political reflections to make a striking and unforgettable short book. Not to be read before going out to a restaurant for dinner.... ( )
The Rue du Coq d'Or, Paris, seven in the morning. A succession of furious, choking yells from the street. Madame Monce, who kept the little hotel opposite mine, had come out on to the pavement to address a lodger on the third floor.
Quotations
[Chapter 30]
The next morning we began looking once more for Paddy's friend, who was called Bozo, and was a screever—that is, a pavement artist. . . . He was an embittered atheist (the sort of atheist who does not so much disbelieve in God as personally dislike Him), and took a sort of pleasure in thinking that human affairs would never improve.
Last words
I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. This is a beginning.
Orwell's own experiences inspire this semi-autobiographical novel about a man living in Paris in the early 1930s without a penny. The narrator's poverty brings him into contact with strange incidents and characters, which he manages to chronicle with great sensitivity and graphic power. The latter half of the book takes the English narrator to his home city, London, where the world of poverty is different in externals only. A socialist who believed that the lower classes were the wellspring of world reform, Orwell actually went to live among them in England and on the continent. His novel draws on his experiences of this world, from the bottom of the echelon in the kitchens of posh French restaurants to the free lodging houses, tramps, and street people of London. In the tales of both cities, we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society.
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An autobiography by George Orwell living in poverty in 1930's Paris and London.
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Orwell offers some brief, trenchant analysis from a Socialist perspective. He was right then, and now. Just look around at the huge number of down-and-outs in our cities and towns. They live still. In my regional Victorian city they inhabit sand dunes, condemned buildings and vacant crannies. A century on, Orwell remains eloquent. (