Down and Out in Paris and London

Rating:
Summary: Crisp prose, much to say
Review: If you like very good writing with no frills, Orwell is your man. In this work he has a lot to say: Orwell spent a good bit of his life in poverty in Paris and London. He describes what it is like to be poor, both in the universal sense and comparing the experience in London and Paris of his day (Paris comes out seeming much superior). Orwell includes not only interesting tales of these days of little, but also delves into the psychological and political meanings behind the world of poverty. He makes you think and entertains.

More importantly is the writing style. It is so crisp, so economical. There are no games here, just tight language, well chosen lines and words. It moves well but must have been a very delibertaive process when being put down. Lets hope some of our long-winded New-Yorker type modern writers will learn to write like this past master soon!

Rating:
Summary: Among the poor
Review: "Down and Out in Paris and London" is Orwell's compulsively readable account of the time he spent among the poor and destitute in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

In Paris, he sought work as a "plonguer", trying to stave off starvation, and encountered a range of characters of various nationalities who occupied what might be termed the basement of the Parisian working classes. The descriptions of what it is like to be without any means of support - particularly the tedium of it all - strike true, but the most stomach-churning sections were those devoted to life in the kitchens of the hotels and restaurants.

In England, Orwell lived for a time among the "tramps" - dispossessed itinerants, who according to Orwell were forced into that way of life by the antiquated system of poor relief.

One can contrast Orwell's experiences in France and England, and examine the differences (as indeed Orwell does himself), but in all, this book is a savage indictment of the exploitation of certain sections of society and the damaging effects of the lack of effective poor relief. Even if one takes the view that the poor will always be with us, Orwell's book is a warning that none of our lives are really unaffected by it.

Rating:
Summary: A Winner!
Review: Loved this book. Never read anything else by Orwell (not sure why), but the writing here is easy and unpretentious. Easy to relate as well, if you've ever been down and out, scraping bottom, desperate to make bills, etc. I read somewhere that Ernest Hemingway thought this was a terrific book (& that's high praise, I think). The writing here reminds me of Nelson Algren, Dan Fante's Spitting Off Tall Buildings, Charles Bukowski's Factotum, Kirk Alex'es Working the Hard Side of the Street, and some of the late John fante's novels--but keep in mind Mr. Orwell stays clear of sex and foul language, not that sex or foul language in a book ever bothered me (it all depends on the writer's style of putting the word down, etc.) In Orwell's case it just wasn't his way of doing things; plus you've got to remember this book was written way back in 1933--and yet, still holds up today! That tells you plenty. This is a fine work , a gem of a book.

Rating:
Summary: The view from down there
Review: In his semi-autobiographical work "Down & Out in Paris and London", Orwell first takes us to Paris in the late 1930's where the narrator (who bears a striking resemblance to Orwell) is living in squalid hotels and desperately trying to get by. Unable to find work as a writer, he gets jobs in hotels and restaurants, working long hours as a plongeur/dishwasher. His accounts of what occurs in the kitchens and back rooms of fine dining establishments make one think twice about dining out. The narrator shares accounts of others he meets living a similar life and how they survive by continually pawning their belongings to buy scraps of food. In the second part of the book, the narrator, sick of life in Paris and longing for the familiarity of Britain, moves back to London to begin a job. The job does not begin immediately so he spends time as a tramp moving from shelter to shelter. The system and policies of these shelters was very enlightening.

I personally enjoyed the Paris part of the book more than the London part. The writing in "Down & Out in Paris and London" is simple yet wonderful and sharp. It is a relatively easy read and highly informative. As you read the book you begin to understand what it must be like to live a life of poverty.

Rating:
Summary: The Real Kitchen and Hitchin' Confidential
Review: Like most of us, I read Orwell in high school ("Animal Farm" and "1984") and remained largely unaware that he'd written anything that didn't involve either talking Trotskyite animals or a terrifyingly functional dystopia. A friend of mine gave me 'Down and Out in Paris and London' a month ago, and I was unable to put it down until I was done. In what is basically the chronicle of a couple of months of self-induced misery, Orwell explodes a lot of myths surrounding poverty and the spirit-breaking labor that is, for many, the only exit from it.

We know the gist of the book: Orwell sets up shop amongst the 'common people,' first washing dishes in various Paris restaurants and then tramping around London and environs. Proceeding via introductions and anecdotes--some hilariously funny, others downright heart-rending--'Down and Out in Paris and London' offers a detailed tour of a side of life that most of us will only ever read about. From the painstaking descriptions of exactly what kind of muck is to be found on the floor of a restaurant's kitchen in 1920s and 1930s Paris (you don't want to know, but he tells you) to elaborations on how to skirt begging laws in London and the dangers associated with such living, Orwell makes his points, one after the other. To his credit, though, there is little dogmatic moralizing; when, at the end of the book, he tells you what he's learned, he doesn't seem to feel the need to shove down the reader's throat what is clearly stuck in his own. The feeling is strong, though, that you'd have to be blind, crazy or both, not to reach the same conclusions.

The greatest strength of 'Down and Out,' though, is the manner in which Orwell never attempts to pass himself off as one of the people he is pretending to be. The English band Pulp has a song about rich kids slumming with the common people, but the song points out that, if the going ever really got tough, the rich kids can always call Daddy and have him bail them out. Orwell has to realize that he is in that same privileged situation; his tramping in London, for example, is simply to kill time until he can take up a legitimate position, and, along the way, he is able to borrow money several times from a friend in order to make ends meet. This distance that he subtly maintains between himself and those who have little choice in their fate only adds punch to the lessons he learns, and Orwell's probably privileged reader (at least privileged enough to spend money on books) is permitted to learn alongside him.

There are picky complaints that could be lodged here--the untranslated French passages, for example, which will leave at a loss those without high school French--but, overall, 'Down and Out in Paris and London' is a great read, one of those few books that manages to be both entertaining and properly disturbing. It has all the wit and scoop of later efforts like Bourdain's recent best-seller, 'Kitchen Confidential,' or Ehrenreich's 'Nickel and Dimed,' but 'Down and Out,' after bigger game than Bourdain and less unforgivably preachy than Ehrenreich, manages to dig deeper under your skin and stay there longer. And that, as Orwell concludes, is a beginning.

Rating:
Summary: A Different Point of View
Review: In this book George Orwell describes how it really is being a lower class individual in two of the most famous cities in the world. I believe that every single person who reads this book will have a different look on a homeless person afterwards. The only people who are able to read this book obviously are not in this situation, and reading something like this expands your knowledge of something you know nothing about. The book reads very quickly and is very informative. I personally do not read that often in my young busy life, and this is a book that I actually finished so that has to say something. I highly reccomend this book.

Rating:
Summary: My Favorite Orwell Book
Review: Orwell was the type of writer who was so
dedicated to his calling that he abandoned his
petty bourgeois ways to take up with the
scavengers, feeding off the crumbs of
respected society. Poverty seemed to have
cleansed his writing style and given it a hightened
sense of intensity. I lived this book when I read it.
I would highly recommend it to aspiring writers.

Rating:
Summary: Poverty in Europe
Review: In Down and Out in Paris and London, George Orwell brings to life the tales of people experiencing poverty in Paris and London.
I thought he beautifully described his life in Paris as a plongeur at Hotel X where he worked in a filthy 110 degree cellar for long hours, only to be paid about 20 francs a day. He had to trade his clothes into a pawn shop just to eat.
In London, Orwell lived his life as a tramp, living in hostels called spikes and suffering from complete boredom. There he meets a man named Paddy, who lives in the spike with him, and Bozo, who teaches him about street beggars.
Overall this was a great book. I love it how Orwell adds true stories from other plongeurs or tramps in order for us to further understand life in poverty.
"It is altogether curious, your first contact with poverty. You have thought so much about poverty-it is the thing you have feared all your life, the thing you knew would happen to you sooner or later; and it is all so utterly and prosaically different. You thought it would be quite simple; it is extraordinarily complicated. You thought it would be terrible; it is merely squalid and boring. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping." -G. Orwell

Rating:
Summary: Plotless, but funny at times.
Review: Much lighter in tone than 1984 and Animal Farm, the book mainly consists of the unnamed protagonist scrounging for money in Paris and London. For awhile he worked as a dishwasher in a Parisian restaurant, 17 hours a day, and he wrote of the extraordinary filth in the serving quarters. It didn't matter whether or not the food was sanitary, as long as it looked good. He mentioned, for instance, a waiter who dropped a roast chicken down the shaft and it landed three floors below in a pile of rubbish, then was wiped and sent up again. And that was a GOOD restaurant. Wait till he started working in a bad one! The protagonist went on a rather preachy tangent toward the end about British tramps. He knew what he was talking about, seeing as he lived on the streets for a couple of weeks in London awaiting a job. All in all, a very good book. It will make you laugh a few times, which is more than can be said about 1984.

Rating:
Summary: The Mona Lisa of the literature world
Review: A modest book void of foul language sex and violence, yet a masterpiece all the same.
Anyone who has been through adversity or poverty would find the book almost too honest to accept. Anyone who hasnt should be glad that one man can take you this close without having to leave the life youve been accustomed to.
A true literary genius.