Down and Out in Paris and London
Down and Out in Paris and London
Tags: Down, london, Paris
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December 21st, 2009 at 11:39 am
This is a beautiful piece of writing and a wonderful example of humanity. Orwell looks at some of the most downtrodden and neglected in society, lives with them and brings back this amazing document of their experiences and the elements that influence their lives. His gaze is crystal clear and his concern for these bedraggled souls is touching. An astounding book, please read it.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 2:22 pm
It’s hard to believe that Orwell wrote this while dying for B.T during the Spanish War of Independence. General Franco later said it was his favourite travel book, an accolade of great worth, indubitably.
Neverthehence, Orwell describes hotel work and other such drudge with great enthusiasm; the chapters concerning his rise to the top of the Parisian Restaurant scene and his now infamous showdown regarding Escoffier’s Quails-a-la-Newburg is truly the stuff of merry mirth made.
As Trampmaster-General, Orwell was quick to meet wife Paddy, and subsequently father Tony Blair, thus imbueing him with both frugality and an affection for cigarette dog-ends, policies so clear in the last 50 years of British politics.
This fictional travel-guide to two of Antiquity’s greatest lost cities desrves it’s rightful place in the canon of George Blair’s work … where it now resides.
Rating: 5 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 2:42 pm
I found this book to be an excellent read, and it really outlined the problems encountered by the povery-striken at that time. I was left feeling very grateful for what I have. However there are a couple of mentions of the forties in the book (p132 – it was a little stuffy room with the high-backed pews that were fashionable in the ‘forties) – can anyone clear up what Orwell may have meant by this?
Rating: 4 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 3:57 pm
George Orwell, whose real name is Eric Blair, was born in India in 1903. He served in Burma with the Indian Imperial Police and spent the end of the 1920s – as any self-respecting author would’ve done – living in Paris . Orwell later fought for the Republicans against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. He became well-known following the publication of “Animal Farm” (a satire on Soviet Russia) and died in 1950, shortly after the publication of “1984″.
“Down and Out in Paris and London ” was first published in 1933 and is a largely autobiographical account – though there have been a few tweaks here and there. It covers Orwell’s times living on the breadline : working as a plongeur in Paris, being caught out by con-artists and life as a tramp on his return to England. The book was originally called “A Scullion’s Diary” and – it would appear – focused only on his days in Paris . After it was rejected a few times, Orwell tried his luck with the stories of his life on the streets in and around London added. To be honest, I find it a pity this happened, as the stories set in Paris are much more readable. While some of the characters we meet – Charlie, for example – are far from admirable, Orwell himself doesn’t come out of the book entirely unscathed. His occasional foolishness is forgivable, but his apparent snobbery and insincerity can be a bit hard to take. For example, as the book closes, he comments he’d like to know people like Paddy (a fellow tramp he’d met in England ) “intimately”. However, on the very same page, the news of Paddy’s apparent death is met with barely a shrug of the shoulders : “perhaps my informant was mixing him up with someone else”. More honestly, it’s clear from how he wrote about Paddy that Orwell considered himself better than his ‘mate’ and – rather than getting to know him intimately – just didn’t care.
Recommended with reservations : if you only read two books by George Orwell, make this your third pick.
Rating: 3 / 5
December 21st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Orwell lived the life. Remember watching the movie ‘Moulin Rouge’ and seeing the romantic vision of a struggling artist bashing out words on a typewriter, plagued by poverty and alcoholism one moment only to be feted as a genius the next. This was a reality for Orwell, though he did not enjoy the overnight success Ewen McGregor managed in the movie. What is interesting is that Orwell noted his experiences. He sought out new places to see and experience in a headlong rush into the reality of poverty. He found a humanity amongst the poor that was never present in the wealthy and documents this without patronising them as a class. This is one of the best studies of poverty and its reality within the twentieth century and should be studied by any reader with an interest in how we ended up in the present situation.
Rating: 5 / 5