Status Updates From Down and Out in Paris and L...

This is fucking hilarious I miss reading Orwell

Enjoying very much easy read and informative but engaging

Wow London in the 1920s really do be a shitty place to live if you're broke

I never thought I'd be so hooked reading about someone trying to find a job whilst living in poverty in the slums of 1920s Paris.

"It is curious how people take it for granted that they have a right to preach at you and pray over you as soon as your income falls below a certain level."

"As a social type a begger seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him."

"Mustus on suur isiksuste austaja: kui oled hästi riides, jätab ta su rahule, kuid niipea, kui on läinud su krae, lendab ta igast küljest su poole."

"Teisel päeval mõtlesin pantida mantli, kuid pandimaja näis käimiseks liiga kaugel olevat ja ma veetsin päeva voodis, lugedes "Sherlock Holmesi mälestusi"."

Molt honesta i crua la idea que l'estructura: Ha arribat el moment en que viu la temuda i desesperada misèria que és no tenir-ne ni cinc. Això, d'alguna manera, l'allibera.

ellende

There’s a caveat, warning on the book’s front cover for a reason... the protagonist, I have to go back to find his name, has a virulently anti-Semitic, communist-sympathizing, misogynist, cheat of a ‘friend’ in Paris

‘I can at least say, Here is the world that awaits you if you are ever penniless.’

‘The ‘Serves them damned well right’ attitude that is normally taken towards tramps is no fairer than it would be towards cripples or invalids. When one has realised that, one begins to put oneself in a tramp’s place and understand what his life is like. It is an extraordinarily futile, acutely unpleasant life.’

‘He simply hurried down the line of men, thrusting a ticket on each, and not waiting to be thanked. The consequence was that, for once, there was genuine gratitude, and everyone said that the clergyman was a —— good feller. Someone (in his hearing, I believe) called out: ‘Well, he’ll never be a f—- bishop!’ - this, of course, was intended as a warm compliment.’

‘A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a businessman, getting his living, like other business men, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most rich people, sold his honour; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to grow rich.’

70

Enjoying this one much more now

‘’... The present state of affairs suits us, and we are not going to take the risk of setting you free, even by an extra hour a day. So, dear brothers, since evidently you must sweat to pay for our trips to Italy, sweat and be damned to you.’’

‘A rich man who happens to be intellectually honest, if he is questioned about the improvement of working conditions, usually says something like this: ‘We know that poverty is unpleasant... but don’t expect us to do anything about it... we will fight like devils against any improvement of your condition. We feel that you are much safer as you are...’

‘Smartness, as it is called, means, in effect, merely that the staff work more and the customers pay more; no one benefits except the proprietor, who will presently buy himself a striped villa at Deauville.’

‘Hotel work is not particularly hard, but by its nature it comes in rushes and cannot be economised. You cannot, for instance, grill a steak two hours before it is wanted; you have to wait till the last moment, by which time a mass of other work has accumulated, and then do it all together, in frantic haste. The result is that at mealtimes everyone is doing two men’s work...’

‘I wish I could be Zola for a little while, just to describe that dinner hour.’

‘All day you are telling lies, and expensive lies.’

‘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...’

Chapter 8 was especially brilliant

I honestly love how this man writers

zufalo dobieham knizky na tohtorocny challenge. Ako jednu na prelozenie som si dal po rokoch Down and out...
V kombinacii s podcastami o bezdomovcoch to nabera nove dimenzie :)

maybe I'm just uneducated, but this seems like the worst fucking book i've ever opened. I do not care about 2 men and the jobs they have, am i missing something?

reading a violent sexual assault in a french accent from a rapists point of view is not fun

Čas čitam, čas ne čitam ovo... :S