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 6^th 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.

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.