Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
My rating: 4/5 cats
this book isn’t going to cause anyone to have the huge revelation that “poverty is hard!” or anything, because – duh – but it also doesn’t piss me off the way morgan spurlock pisses me off, because orwell makes his story come alive and there is so much local color, so many individual life stories in here that this book, despite being horribly depressing, is also full of the resourcefulness of man and the resilience of people that have been left by the wayside. it is triumphant, not manipulative.
i liked the part when he was down and out in paris better than the part he was down and out in england. even though he had a handy exit strategy in england, in the form of someone who was willing to lend him money when he was truly and completely broke, and even though he only had to live the tramp’s life for a month in england before his job started, the english parts were just so much more dismal, so horrifyingly bleak.
in paris, poverty is almost a lark. the accommodations are better, the homeless are allowed to congregate beneath bridges and these is almost a romantic tinge to being penniless.
england is just grim. flat-out grim.
big ups to orwell for his details – the smells and the disease and the horror of unwashed men being forced into cramped quarters are unfortunately very well-rendered and can be quite sickening at times. and the conditions of fine parisian restaurants at the time… shudder. don’t read this while you are eating.
but this book will make you want to eat, truly. the days without food, the dizziness, the suffering. i ate like a hog on sunday, and felt very guilty for doing so while reading this, but it left such a hollow in me, i had to fill it somehow.
and – yes, this book was somewhat fabricated, and is like thoreau “in the wilderness,” but that doesn’t make orwell’s observations any less legitimate or powerful.
thank you for writing such a fine book, george orwell…
