Down and Out in Paris and London

Orwell's writing is just astounding. Deceptively simple, and beautiful.

His descriptions are so evocative. For example, describing the character of the street (the Rue du Coq d'Or) where his Paris lodgings were located:

Quarrels, and the desolate cries of street hawkers, and the shouts of children chasing orange-peel over the cobbles, and at night loud singing and the sour reek of the refuse-carts, made up the atmosphere of the street. It was a very narrow street - a ravine of tall leprous houses, lurching towards one another in queer attitudes, as though they had all been frozen in the act of collapse.

plongeur

Everywhere in the service quarters dirt festered - a secret vein of dirt, running through the great garish hotel like the intestines through a man's body.

Then the boat drew alongside Tilbury pier. The first building we saw on the waterside was one of those huge hotels, all stucco and pinnacles, which stare from the English coast like idiots staring over an asylum wall.

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. Poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.

Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Everyone who has mixed on equal terms with the poor knows this quite well. But the trouble is that intelligent, cultivated people, the very people who might be expected to have liberal opinions, never do mix with the poor. For what do the majority of educated people know about poverty? ...From this ignorance a superstitious fear of the mob results quite naturally. The educated man pictures a horde of submen, wanting only a day's liberty to loot his house, burn his books, and set him to work minding a machine or sweeping out a lavatory. ‘Anything,' he thinks, ‘any injustice, sooner than let that mob loose.' He does not see that since there is no difference between the mass of rich and poor, there is no question of setting the mob loose. The mob is in fact loose now, and - in the shape of rich men - is using its power to set up enormous treadmills of boredom, such as ‘smart' hotels.

1984

What do you think about when you hear the title of this book? It sounds pretty bleak, don't you think? It sounds like it would leave you feeling dark and depressed about life.

Wrong. Down and Out in Paris and London is the story of George Orwell's experiences living among the destitute in these two major cities ninety years ago. It is told with a hearty cheerfulness that belies the stark living conditions the people in this book undergo. The people Orwell meets are fresh and compelling people and the stories they tell are fascinating.

I'm adding this to my favorite reads shelf.

A penetrating look at poverty in Paris and London based on the author's experiences. Although the subject matter is bleak the book is not; in fact at times it is hilarious. Orwell's prodigious powers of observation and analysis are matched by his ability to put thoughts to the page in a manner that flows effortlessly for the reader. A good primer for imminent oil depletion and global systemic economic collapse.