false 393199 35 What was a nice Eton boy like Eric Blair doing in scummy slums instead of being upwardly mobile at Oxford or Cambridge? Living <I>Down and Out in Paris and London</I>, repudiating respectable imperialist society, and reinventing himself as [author:George Orwell]. His 1933 debut book (ostensibly a novel, but overwhelmingly autobiographical) was rejected by that elitist publisher T. S. Eliot, perhaps because its close-up portrait of lowlife was too pungent for comfort. In Paris, Orwell lived in verminous rooms and washed dishes at the overpriced "Hotel X," in a remarkably filthy, 110-degree kitchen. He met "eccentric people &#8211; people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent." Though Orwell's tone is that of an outraged reformer, it's surprising how entertaining many of his adventures are: gnawing poverty only enlivens the imagination, and the wild characters he met often swindled each other and themselves. The wackiest tale involves a miser who ate cats, wore newspapers for underwear, invested 6,000 francs in cocaine, and hid it in a face-powder tin when the cops raided. They had to free him, because the apparently controlled substance turned out to be face powder instead of cocaine. In London, Orwell studied begging with a crippled expert named Bozo, a great storyteller and philosopher. Orwell devotes a chapter to the fine points of London guttersnipe slang. Years later, he would put his lexical bent to work by inventing Newspeak, and draw on his down-and-out experience to evoke the plight of the Proles in <I>1984</I>. Though marred by hints of unexamined anti-Semitism, Orwell's debut remains, as <I>The Nation</I> put it, "the most lucid portrait of poverty in the English language." <I>--Tim Appelo</I> 2374970 book 1933 Down and Out in Paris and London total:4114|5:1263|4:1820|3:848|2:158|1:24| 4114 16484 5742 459 5 26 false false Sun Jun 29 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Sep 29 08:25:23 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 29 14:33:27 -0700 2008
Do not read this book if you are homeless.

Do not read this book if you are worried about the tanking economy.

Do not read this book if you have no retirement savings.

Do not read this book if you don't like eat...more...]]> 4 3 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Apr 26 18:15:26 -0700 2007 Thu Apr 26 18:33:15 -0700 2007
Yes, I know that his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) is c...more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Nov 13 18:12:11 -0800 2008 Thu Nov 13 18:12:55 -0800 2008 more...]]> 3 2 false false Sun Sep 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 12 13:09:42 -0700 2008 Fri Sep 12 13:21:14 -0700 2008 1 more...]]> 4 1 false false Sat Aug 16 23:07:16 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 16 23:33:09 -0700 2008 Homage to Catalonia, and surveying the exploited working classes in the mining towns in the north and in Wales, in The Road to Wigan Pier. In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell ...more...]]> 4 1 false false Mon Feb 11 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Mar 30 13:04:06 -0700 2008 Sun Mar 30 13:05:10 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Wed Jan 23 05:31:03 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 23 05:51:26 -0800 2008 mean to me. Despite the inconsistent brilliance of books like Point, Counter Point, The Devils of Loudon, and of course Brave New World, in all these works Huxley has about as much compassion and warmth towards his characters as a ...more...]]> 4 2 false false Thu Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Sun Mar 25 18:23:34 -0700 2007 Sun Mar 25 18:37:46 -0700 2007 Down and Out in Paris and London is, in many ways, Orwell's version of On The Road by Jack Kerouac: a roman à clef of a proto-writer among society's impoverished and outcast, partly for experience and partly out of necessity.

But whereas Kerouac's account, being by Kerouac, was a very sp...more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Sep 14 04:52:13 -0700 2007 Fri Sep 14 04:52:13 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 true false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Mon Sep 24 02:42:48 -0700 2007 Thu Nov 29 14:04:18 -0800 2007 more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Sun Mar 01 10:51:15 -0800 2009 Sun Mar 01 10:53:06 -0800 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Dec 14 20:25:26 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 21:03:55 -0800 2008
In Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell considers a lack of medical care, shelter, and food in the slums of London. The poor were basically left out in the cold with no hope of ever finding a job or getting off the streets. Orwell basically examins the ...more...]]> 0 0 false false Fri Nov 28 15:03:02 -0800 2008 Fri Nov 28 15:03:02 -0800 2008 Down and Out in Paris and London - George Orwell
This is a very good read, both entertaining and thought provoking. Think the social class one below Nickel and Dimed by Ehrenreich, done by Orwell, with Paris and London as the milieu. London then sounded a far worse place than Paris.

...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jul 17 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 07:10:20 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 09:44:57 -0700 2009
If I hadn't read this, I would probably have gone on with ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Thu Jul 09 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 12 13:47:14 -0700 2009 Sun Jul 12 14:18:30 -0700 2009
While Eric Blair was firmly upper middle-cla...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jun 26 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jul 01 19:45:24 -0700 2009 Sat Jul 04 16:57:54 -0700 2009
Based on his own experiences as a starving you...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Jan 05 09:30:48 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 09 09:58:10 -0800 2009 more...]]> 2 1 false false Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Thu Sep 20 16:18:35 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 20 16:21:35 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Apr 02 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 14 15:45:10 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 21 14:30:39 -0700 2009 1 other Orwell book, I should read that . . ." but was largely forgotten during my fast living 20's.

I finally picked it up because Anthony Bourdain made a ref...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2002 Tue Apr 07 11:00:53 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 07 11:11:43 -0700 2009 more...]]>