Monday 27 February 2012

Down and Out in Paris and London – George Orwell.


A couple of weeks ago my sister and I visited Paris and I thought I’d do some literary recreation and picked, Down and Out as my holiday read. I’ve liked Orwell since I read 1984 and so I suspected I’d also like Down and Out.

Tramps in Metropolis

Down and Out follows the docu-drama of Orwell’s life.  I call it docu-drama because rather like the recent fad for scripted reality tv, the book is based on real experiences but not a series of events in factual order and without embellishment. After quitting the Indian Imperial Police Orwell moved to Paris, wanting to become a writer and imagining he would eke out his living from journalism. This didn’t really work out and he was soon so poor he was working the tramping track and long hours as a plongeur or scullery maid. At the promise of a job he moves back to London but life is hard here too. The persistent poverty forms a suitable background for Orwell to tell a number of funny tales and to sermonise on the plight of the poor.

First of many

Down and Out is Orwell’s first published work. Reading it I was reminded of several themes I recognised from other novels written by Orwell. The reactions (scornful) of the tramps towards clergymen was reminiscent of the attitudes towards religious subjects in 1984. Similarly the diatribes at the close of the book on the lives of the poor and how they might be improved reminded me of other Orwellian essays (like How the Poor Die and Why I Write) I read as a teenager. The keen awareness of inequality found in Animal Farm has its nascence in Down and Out. When you think about it, it is quite remarkable, here was a man educated at Eton and the descendent of gentry, quite au fait with Henley who recognised there was a great divide to be crossed, and eventually crossed it for several years.

Intellectual Snobbery

I am a great fan of Orwell’s. During my teenage years his works offered a mirror in which I could see myself reflected. That is not to say that I went to Eton and was related to gentry but rather here was another person with a brain that worked well, faced with the dilemma of inequality  and trying to solve the problem.
I did feel, however, that Orwell could be accused of intellectual wankery. In the copy I was reading there were several times when words were not translated. Boris’ floosie can get food by pretending to be enceinte; Orwell gets jobs in grotty hotels as a plongeur and the majority of men in the lodgings were stevedores. Reading this book has been really good for my acquaintance with Wikipedia and the stevedore word has a really interesting borrowing from Portuguese that rewards investigation. This habit, of throwing foreign nouns in as if your reader will understand, reminded me of reading T.S. Eliot in 6th form. When you read The Wasteland for the first time it can feel bland and uninteresting; but when you are given the keys to all the cultural references suddenly a whole world is opened up and you declare the man a genius! The same, I would say is true of reading Down and Out, at first it might just seem like prohibitive intellectual wankery but further reading adds to the narrative.

Down and Out in Paris and London

Literary Comments

I imagine the literary amongst you think this is all very fine but are wondering whether it is worth reading the book! I thought it was funny, in places, and it made me do a lot of thinking, about dirt in hotels, the tyrannies of urban landscapes and the commonality of human kind. He draws some very endearing characters and on occasion is capable of brilliant description. But generally, the book is quite raw and lacks the comprehensive brilliance of his later fiction.

A lively read which complemented my travels across Paris and London very well but not his best work 3/5.

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Construction

Opposite the house which is being demolished (see last post), where only a poetic lampstand amongst the rubble remains, a building at the opposite end of its life cycle is being built, with a purpose, as a health centre. (not sure why image on its side, not artistic!)



This has got me thinking about what we build and why we build it. Much as I'd love to claim this was an architectural post it is, as ever, a social anthropological one.

The Sun
My office is in Wapping. It is normally a very bland, grey place full of middle-class nothingness. No drama, just Waitrose and a couple of flats built in old docks, used by commuters as part-time homes. But this week the Dock has been awash with film cameras, photographers and TV presenters, one of my colleagues even claims they saw Reggie Yates! All this hubbub in my usually grey environment is in response to one man and his workers. And it got me thinking about the story the Paparazzi would tell? How would they embellish or alter events? What version of the truth would they tell? How much is constructed?

Syrian Sunsets
This got me thinking about the ongoing conflict in Syria. Now I am not for a minute trying to suggest that what has happened in Syria is anything but terrible, nor that Assad is not some kind of tyrant. However, isn't the truth always more complicated than the headline? One of my friends is a Syrian national living out his life in Syria and you know, he does the same things now as he ever did before, he takes his kid to school, he meets friends for coffee. He is not in fear of his life. Yes, he feels sad that his country is not one, but he does not live life in fear. What do we lose by simplifying a narrative? This is something I've been considering in my work, thinking about PR and how we have to simplify a story to fit it in a word-count, what is lost in the edit? How does that change what we create, construct or build?

The Sun rises, it will also set.
Two buildings, on opposite sides of a street. One demolished because the ground below it proved unstable, one built to heal the sick. And I wonder have either ever read the story about the man who built his house upon the sand? Unless they've got lorries full of ballast they're in for a rough time of it!

What are you building? Where are its foundations? Do you trust the building won't fall down? And is all that you see merely a construction?

Wednesday 15 February 2012

Exposure

In light of the increasing concern of individuals and corporates about privacy, exposure and vulnerability I thought I'd write a little post.

Facebook-face

The internet world got significantly rocked when facebook launched its 'timeline' layout because it seemed to leave more of our histories exposed to a wider range of people. Employers, especially but not exclusively in the digital world, have made it quite clear that they are using facebook to get a background history on applicants and the number of people caught out moaning about jobs, then facing the sack grows everyday.

Whilst posting about our teenage crushes at the time seemed cool, now it just seems embarrassing.

This poses some interesting questions about social media and exposure. We willingly post photographs, declarations and videos on the internet, we use it as a place to share lives with friends and family who might not be close enough to experience them first-hand. We willingly expose ourselves to those we trust. But what about the other people viewing the content, the public, the perverse, the political or just the unknown? When it is posted on the internet it is exposed in a way that may be impossible to reverse. Does that cause us to re-evaluate what goes online and why? Does it affect our ability to be vulnerable with those we love? And knowing your private internet world is, in fact, quite public might cause us to look on our pasts and what we choose to keep from them in a different light.

Undocumented Dancing

Last weekend I went clubbing. It was really fun. It was in Shoreditch and was a good night out. They do great cocktails. OK you want to know where it was, The Book Club. I went out with colleagues from work and it was good fun. About 11.30 we were dancing to some reggae (I know I'm thinking of this video too) and I suddenly noticed no-one in our group had a camera and you know, I was relieved. Its not that I was behaving badly but there was something liberating in knowing that all my silly dance-moves wouldn't be coming back to haunt me I was free to be vulnerable because I would not be exposed.

Amongst a generation of instant-documenters it was refreshing to think the only store of the evening was my own memory. And its a good memory.

Inside my living room




These photos are of a house on my commute to work. It is being demolished due to subsidence.

 It grabbed my attention immediately.

Don't you find it interesting how we can look directly into someone's living room. The initial shots reminded me of Blitz photos I've seen, a whole house sort of ripped in half.

We can see into all the rooms as if it were a doll's house, there is no privacy.
All is exposed.
This is particularly poignant from a social anthropology perspective, given as the Englishman's home is his castle, and the gate his drawbridge (good old Foxy!).

What makes you feel exposed? How much vulnerability is too much vulnerability? And what does knowledge have to do with exposure?