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

（Starting Chapter 26）

”It is safer to keep them too busy to think."

(Chapter 14) "Caste system in Parisian restaurants" Hmm. Interesting.

(16%) Interesting read so far. I particularly enjoy the French atmosphere; and how it is being compared to the protagonist's experiences of Britain concurrently (having read Aspidistra, which provides a similar impoverished portrait in Britain)

Orwell’s writing is so Hemingway-esque (or the other way around - whichever is the case)

Like a precursor odyssey to many of the current kitchen-life books of Bourdain and the like.

Just reminding myself why I love Orwell so much

For in reality- car en realite, what is the duration of the supreme moment of love? It is nothing, an instant, a second perhaps. A second of ecstasy, and after that - dust, ahses, nothingness

"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 behavior, just as money frees people from work."

Orwell is now in London, having left Paris and into a dirty hostel with ragged clothes and lesser change than a schoolboy might have.

Good book so far, glad I wasn’t going into eateries in France in those days!

The life of a plongeur(dishwasher) is quite simple. Work, sleep, metro, and drinks, he became satisfied in the simplicity although demanding work schedule, yet with food in the belly and rest in a dirty room, he was content. Even to the point of a murder outside of his window, he checked on the man, found he indeed was dead, and went back to sleep before work the next day!

Mario told a story of when he had gone 5 days without eating, prayed to a picture he thought was Saint Eloise, but turned out to be the one the Hotel is named after, Suzanne May, the prostitute of the empire!😂😂

Here we see beyond the restaurant and into the abyss of the guests, the kitchen, the ranks and duties of each member, the food chain, if you will. The harshness that each individual type of employee goes through along with what race where.

"..وهكذا عجز أي شيء عن جعله يستسلم للبؤس. قد يرتدي الأسمال، ويشعر بوطأة البرد، ويتضور جوعًا، غير أنه كما قال لي، يظل حرًا، ما دام يستطيع القراءة والتفكير ومراقبة النجوم... لقد كان شخصًا جدّ استثنائي."

"Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry."

Blair in Russia. Now, it is becoming more interesting!

Life in the Hotel X is pretty horrendous, working 14 hour days @ 6 days a week, getting drunk on the 7th and doing it all over again, employees were assholes to dishwashers and scrubbers, and wine was quite often stolen

OK, so now I’ve heard about being Down and Out in Paris - London coming up.

إن كان عليكم أن تعرقوا لدفع رحلاتنا الى ايطاليا ، فلتعرقوا ، ولتحل عليكم اللعنة

Fascinating

The communist Russians swindled 5 francs from the two and disappeared, and then Boris landed a job at hotel x, 3 days later someone quit and he no longer had to smuggle food for Orwell because he got a job there as well

The communist Russians had swindled 5 francs from the two and disappeared, and then Boris landed a job at Hotel X, and 3 days later got Orwell a job there

Orwell went 2 days without food and then was able to sell Boris’ and his overcoat for 50 francs, after struggling to sneak them past the clerk of Boris’ room, & being denied multiple times by other shop owners. They feasted, and Boris got into an altercation & then drinking war with another man & spent his money. Orwell went home with 8 francs, plenty of cigarettes, and stuffed to the eyes with food and drink

It took Orwell and Boris 3 weeks to land work, and this chapter(6) talks about the trials and tribulations of that forthcoming. I love this old school style of writing, and the beautiful old English that is in some of these letters to people and the French phrases to each other. I want to learn to speak in older proper English and learn French as well.

Boris may have been fat with a bum leg, but he sure knew how to stretch what he had to make his tattered appearance into that of a rich man. He was cunning, and had brains- he told a story of his friend who would pawn a gold ring and add to the ticket that it had diamonds, thus borrowing 10x what it was actually worth. The two went to look for a job, but were out of luck, and spent the night back in Orwells room

Orwell reached out to an old friend Boris, who lived through the German revolutionary war. He loved war, and told him the life of a waiter is one he should consider. “The only way to make money at writing is to marry a publisher’s daughter.” Boris’ look on life was very simple, he loved women money and war.

Orwell is describing the life living on 6 francs a day, after not having work or luck going his way, trying to scrape by with a loaf of bread. The boredom that comes with it, but also the fact that you can’t see past what you’ll eat tomorrow, and you worry about nothing else, thus it is a slightly blissful experience. I’m curious to how he gets out of this situation later!

How poverty could be established sarcastically this way! Orwell will remain one of my best minds ever!

“We never argue. Controversy is a bourgeois pastime. Deeds are our arguments.”

Need more of that in my evangelism. If a communist atheist narrator can do it…

"There is only one way to make money at writing, and that is to marry a publisher’s daughter."