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Summary: Hand To Mouth
Review: Who'd have thought an author of such distinction would have spent a portion of his life in such abject poverty--and then turned the episode into such a fine little book?This is a more direct explanation of Orwell's thoughts on class and economics than anything to be found in his fiction.
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Summary: a review from an austrian student
Review: I had to read five books for our English lessions. One of these books was George Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London". I already read his book "1984" and saw the play of "Animal Farm". I really liked "1984" and "Animal Farm". "Down and out in Paris and London" couldn't reach the expectations I had after knowing the plot of the two other books. But the story was okay and the book was easy to read. The book became more interesting when I heard that Orwell shall have written about himself in it.
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Summary: more meaning than simply a neutral social history account
Review: A neutral, 'lived-through' account by Orwell in London and Paris of the late 1930s. Orwell writes succinctly, openly, and without any emotive fluff. Orwell lets the situations, and the descriptions of poverty and the terrible workplace conditions speak for themselves. A perfect, lively account of the events Orwell lived through, and for that has more meaning than simply a neutral social history account.
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Summary: Very direct writing
Review: The language employed by Orwell in this fictionalized memoir of his rough times on the street is both informative and extremely witty. The book is very entertaining and the characters that Orwell encounters and befriends in both cities are engaging and very well described in both their virtues and their foibles. I have recently read Ode to Catalonia and enjoyed this much more.
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Summary: Poverty Taken To Task
Review: Ostensibly a novel, this book is Orwell's thinly fictional account of a time he spent "slumming it" in Paris and London. Orwell had read and greatly admired Jack London's book, "People of the Abyss" (1902), which chronicled his time spent among the wretched poor of London at the turn of the century. In the prewar '30s Orwell followed London's journalistic example, and voluntarily entered the ranks of the barely surviving in Paris. His account is rich in it's evocation of sights, sounds, and characters of this day-to-day existence. When he isn't unemployed and pawning his clothes, he works 12-18 hour days as a "plongeur" (dishwasher/gopher) at various hotels and restaurants. It's a pretty awful never-ending cycle of poverty to be caught in, as Orwell's books amply demonstrates. He ends his Paris section by speaking directly to the reader about the reasons for such poverty. Rather than claim any kind of nobility in poverty, he points out that the terrible jobs he and his friends perform are largely useless work and can be easily made obsolete. Later he moves over to London and joins the ranks of the homeless tramps. This section is less vivid and strong, and is better as a simple sociological study of homelessness in Edwardian England. He somewhat awkwardly inserts a lot of info about slang which is interesting, but somewhat tangential. The extreme policies he decries here have been replaced by the modern welfare state economy. Altogether, it's an interesting journalistic/sociological exercise with some strong statements.
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Summary: Engaging, but Inconsistent Narrative Journalism
Review: George Orwell, though a scholarship student at Eton, was not born of means. His father was a petty civil servant in Burma and India. After Eton, Orwell (real name Eric Arthur Blair), decided not to go on to university, but instead to see some of the world, particularly its social fringes. Thus, the time he spent as an impoverished writer scrounging for a living in Paris, then London, was a conscious choice. Unlike the subjects of his writing, he had the resources to escape his predicament. This should be borne in mind as one reads his account, and of his identification with the people whom he encounters. Though there is some question as to how much Orwell fictionalized his account to craft a more compelling narrative, the book can be regarded, safely I think, as immersion journalism. Orwell escorts the reader into an alien social milieu and introduces him to a true rogue's gallery. The portraits of other laborers and tramps are among the most compelling aspects of the book. Orwell's descriptions of the punishing labor in the kitchens of Parisian hotels are sharp, vivid, and acutely observed. The book's narrative energy drops off when Orwell shifts to London, and near the end of the book he seems to run out of gas, inserting several chapters that read like summaries of notes that he hadn't used for his narrative chapters but couldn't bring himself to omit. The book sputters to a halt. As one might expect from Orwell, the language is direct, free of euphemism, and unornamented. A flawed, yet interesting volume of social history.
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Summary: Background to the writer and the age
Review: What happens when you are living in a foreign city and your money runs out? It seems obvious that George Orwell the writer and George Orwell the down-and-out are two different people. After all, one had considerably more resources than the other, including a somewhat wider knowledge of society than your average clochard. However, regardless of whether it was for the sake of a writer's experience, George Orwell did survive the gruelling experience of working near the bottom of the Parisian hotel/restaurant trade as a plongeur. Most of us would have caught the first train home with funds stolen or otherwise procured in a jiffy. Naturally, working down in the airless depths of a hotel meant meeting many odd bods that were otherwise out of Orwell's orbit and this is part of the delight of this excursion into the subterranean world of the servant classes. The book was written in the 30s, at a time when European society was about to undergo the transformations caused by its second bloodletting in three decades. Orwell takes us back to a period when men sweated freely at their work, in almost impossible conditions, and considered themselves to be among those who were better off! It makes one wonder today that road gangs (the workers were called "navvies" in Britain) used to do all the work by hand, which is now done by enormous machines with a little group of workers standing around looking, waiting to tidy up. Backbreaking work is a thing of the past for most of us, but it lingers on in the memory of our grandfathers and comes to life in Orwell's fine text about a forgotten lifestyle of yesteryear. His further excursion into the shelters for the homeless in England is also of interest. There was a way of life, of people always on the move, occasionally finding seasonal work, (represented by the hobo in America and the swaggy in Australia), which was well known to many people but was, even then, coming to an end. Interesting portraits of an age from a writer who led a far from sheltered life himself.
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Summary: ORWELL IS ALWAYS VERY READABLE!
Review: I am a high school teacher who is quite fond of using Orwell's books in class. I do think that this book is rarely talked about but is very readable. I have always loved Orwell's dry wit and knack for keen observations about human nature. I would recommend this book highly to anyone with an interest of Europe in the 1930's or with an appreciation of wit and dry humor.
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Summary: extremely absorbing
Review: The best part of this book is the first half- the down-n-out in Paris half. Orwell creates an amazing window into Paris of this time. The immigrant neighborhoods, the jobs, the swindlers, all excellent material. The last half, homeless in England, is far less optimistic in tone, but is powerful reading. You may not agree with his conclusions, but the descriptions of these experiences are clear and perceptive
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Summary: Orwell's a keen observer...
Review: ...of the human condition. He paints the tramps he meets as neither heroes nor villains, but as individuals with the same qualities and faults as everyone else. This realistic, as opposed to idealized, approach radiates freshness 75 years later. Down and Out is neither an anti-capitalist screed nor an homage to socialism, but that rarest of objects, a true book.
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