Down and Out in Paris and London

by George Orwell

Paperback, 1989

Status

Available

Call number

914.436

Genres

Biography & Memoir

Biography

Collection

Your library

Publication

Penguin Books (1989), Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 240 pages

Description

Orwell's own experiences inspire this semi-autobiographical novel about a man living in Paris in the early 1930s without a penny. The narrator's poverty brings him into contact with strange incidents and characters, which he manages to chronicle with great sensitivity and graphic power. The latter half of the book takes the English narrator to his home city, London, where the world of poverty is different in externals only. A socialist who believed that the lower classes were the wellspring of world reform, Orwell actually went to live among them in England and on the continent. His novel draws on his experiences of this world, from the bottom of the echelon in the kitchens of posh French restaurants to the free lodging houses, tramps, and street people of London. In the tales of both cities, we learn some sobering Orwellian truths about poverty and society.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member kant1066

The title isn't pretentious; it doesn't claim to be something it isn't. This book is, quite literally, about being down and out in Paris and London. Having been published in 1933 it is, as far as I know, the first full-length book that Orwell published. However early it comes in his career, you can

sense some of the nascent ideas and concerns that would haunt his work for the rest of his life: the virtues of democratic socialism and the plight of the working poor.

In Paris, Orwell takes a job as a plongeur in an anonymous hotel. He trenchantly describes the "caste system" that exists within all of the finest hotels in Paris, from the manager to the lowest of the low, the dishwashers. His work is grueling, lasting up to fourteen or sixteen hours a day, only to go home, get almost no sleep, and have to do the same thing the next day, six days a week. While in Paris, he befriends an ex-military Russian by the name of Boris who is much the same predicament. Eager to find a job that allowed more than a few hours of sleep every night, he eventually quits his job and heads to London.

When he arrives in London, he is without a job and is forced to live in hostels and lodging houses. Because of British law which says that you can't stay in the same one for more than a few days, he is forced into becoming a transient. In London, he meets several people, including the Irishman Paddy and Bozo, a street artist. His ability to relate to them as more than simply "homeless" people is extraordinarily honest and sincere. He openly admits that these people are every bit as interesting (sometimes more so) than the middle-class Parisians and Londoners who walk the city streets and look down on Orwell and his friends.

The details of his day-to-day life can be debilitating to anyone with even a soupcon of optimism, but the book isn't without its gems. There are a handful of times when Orwell interrupts the action of the novel and interjects his critical social commentary. Even though they only last a couple of pages a piece, this constitutes some of the best writing in the book, reminiscent his greatest essays. This is a shining example, from Chapter XXXIV on "tramps":

"To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do tramps exist at all? It is a curious thing, but very few people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And, because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most fantastic reasons are suggested. It is said, for instance, that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to seek opportunities for crime, even - least probable of reasons - because they like tramping. I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp in an atavism, a throwback to the nomadic stage of humanity. And meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is staring one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic atavism - one might as well say that a commercial traveler is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it, but for the same reason as a car keeps to the left; because there happens to be a law compelling him to do so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish, can only get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual ward will only admit him for one night, he is automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in the state of the law, it is that or starve. But people have been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and so they prefer to think that there must be some more of less villainous motive for tramping" (p. 201).

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LibraryThing member edgeworth

I read both 1984 and Animal Farm in high school and found the first to be quite tedious while the second was quite good, and I read a number of Orwell's essays in university which led me to believe that he's one of those writers who is better at producing non-fiction than fiction. This belief was

confirmed in Down And Out In Paris And London, which is both "an excellent book and a valuable social document," as one 1930s reviewer put it.

Obviously Orwell was no slouch when it came to writing fiction, either, but his non-fiction is such a rare and beautiful thing: articulate, readable, intelligent and witty. He writes about his time spent as a dishwasher in Paris and his time as a homeless tramp in London. Neither of these experiences sounds particularly interesting, yet Orwell makes them so, drawing them in clear and precise terms with his remarkable command of English and sprinkling the text with his comments on the injustice, cruelty and pointlessness of the things he witnesses. In England, for example, the state provides what tramps call 'spikes' - free but prison-like boarding houses - but tramps are not provided with any useful work there, and are not permitted to stay in the same one each night, which sends them trekking across the countryside to the next spike like "so many Wandering Jews." In Paris, he marvels at the fact that kitchen workers essentially live a life of slavery: they work sixteen or seventeen hours a day, and barely have enough time to sleep, let alone find another job or educate themselves, so they are forced to work as kitchen hands for the rest of their lives. It's easy to see Orwell's socialist beliefs in their crucible, and it's a fascinating glimpse into a world that no longer exists (although I suppose the extent to which our society has improved is up for debate).

Down And Out In Paris And London is a brilliant piece of writing, and I now intend to seek out the rest of Orwell's other non-fiction works.

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LibraryThing member Crazymamie

"And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. I believe everyone who has been hard up has experienced it. It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the

dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it."

This is the first book in my quest to read the works of George Orwell this year. Well, my first book of his this year - I have previously read Animal Farm and Burmese Days. I do have a system in place for reading these books - I am doing it in chronological order and reading his corresponding diary entries alongside of the work. I am also reading Why Orwell Matters, which is a series of essays written by Christopher Hitchens about why what Orwell had to say is still relevant today.

I did not realize that after giving up his post with the British Imperial Police, Orwell lived in poverty while he worked on his writing. He published some essays during this time, but his next major work after Burmese Days was this non-fiction account of his time spent in first Paris and then London. This book is a very enjoyable read, and I was surprised at how quickly the pages flew by. The Paris portion of the book is the more enjoyable, and reads more like a novel. The London portion is less about the quirks and antics, and more about the observations that Orwell made about poverty and society. Both parts are fascinating and very interesting.

First published in 1933, this is an inside look at what living from day to day truly means. Highly recommended.

"It is altogether curious, your first contact with 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. It is the peculiar lowness of poverty that you discover first; the shifts that it puts you to, the complicated meanness, the crust-wiping."

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LibraryThing member brenzi

"You discover what it is like to be hungry. With bread and margarine in your belly, you go out and look into the shop windows. Everywhere there is food insulting you in huge, wasteful piles; whole dead pigs, baskets of hot loaves, great yellow blocks of butter, strings of sausages, mountains of

potatoes, vast Gruyere cheeses like grindstones. A snivelling self-pity comes over you at the sight of so much food. You plan to grab a loaf and run, swallowing it before they catch you; and you refrain, from pure funk." (page 12)

Written in 1931, Orwell kept us guessing as to whether this was fiction based on his experiences or memoir. Although dated and riddled with racist epithets that were quite disturbing to my liberal intelligence, I found the descriptions of living in the throes of poverty, quite descriptive and heart wrenching.

While in Paris, Orwell worked as a plongeur, the very lowest job in a restaurant or hotel. Don't think dishwasher, although that was part of it, but think more about doing all the lowliest chores in the kitchen of a restaurant. The filth was incredible and made me gag. He was paid just enough to pay for a room and worked from seven in the morning until midnight almost every day of the week. He was one of the lucky ones in Paris because he had a job and he knew he would eat everyday. The descriptions of life in the restaurant were fascinating and I really liked this part of the book.

When he was finally able to leave Paris with the promise of a lowly job in England he jumped at the chance and arrived in London thinking he had a job. He did but couldn't start for two weeks and since he arrived with a very small amount of money in his pocket he was forced to live among the other "tramps" and move from day to day to various government provided housing that was quite inadequate and very antiquated in both function and appearance to the general population. This part of the book was not as compelling but was certainly important.

All in all I found this book, one of Orwell's earliest, an interesting look at what poverty looked like in 1931. Sadly, when you consider the homeless problem in this country today, I'm not sure how much progress we've made in the last ninety years.

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LibraryThing member melmore

Among its other strengths, this book contains the best description I've ever encountered of what it's like to work as a dishwasher.

LibraryThing member atheist_goat

Fun, but oh heavens did it make me want to shower.

LibraryThing member acheekymonkey

Two essays on Orwell's experience with poverty in Paris, working in a kitchen, and in Britain. Astute and sympathetic to those who happen to be down and out. Great, quick read.

LibraryThing member theabolitionist

Orwell is the original Gonzo journalist. Honestly written, Orwell exposes the real underbelly of Paris and London by putting himself directly in the flow of filth produced by the wealthy. Highly recommended, fantastic work.

LibraryThing member Coobeastie

The details of poverty may change, but the broad picture remains the same. This is notable not just for its social commentary, but for its readability - you feel that you know the people he meets and the places he goes from simple short descriptions.

LibraryThing member unclebob53703

Fascinating look at the author's transitory experience as a poor person in two countries, very pointed social commentary, and a very absorbing story as well.

LibraryThing member getupkid10

A story that follows a poor brit journalist through his time working at various restaurants in Paris as a grunt laboring kitchen hand, and through his tramp days in London. In both places, the character is penniless, barely surviving for dinner, and sharing the stories of the people that surround

him in his daily life.

Though the anecdotes and vignettes are interesting and compelling (though not as stomach wrenching as some have stated), the books weight lays in Orwell statements n the plights of plongeurs in Paris and the tramps in London (which occur on page 115 and 200 respectively in the Harvest edition). In these he angrily opines on how the state and the bourgeoisie are at worst starving the poor while making them nomads and at best making them slaves. These are the most powerful portions of this short novel.

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LibraryThing member dbsovereign

Orwell sees it all, and and we see through his impoverished eyes. We wash his dishes and tramp around in his clothing [with lots of holes]. We meet the people in his world and wish we could help them all...

LibraryThing member MeditationesMartini

Oh, George. You tried so hard. And in the first few chapters you did show the pain of being abroad and truly skint, separated by a few layers of snail mail and wire transfer from the posh pretense that you can ever write a book called down and Out and have it be okay. (Although to give him his due,

he did want to call it Memoirs of a Dishwasher.)

And there is interest even after he goes from “down and out” to “Dishwasher,” which lest we forget is a legitimate fucking job, pricks—anyway, there’s the perruque of the boulot, the attitude that working is not so much getting a job done as fostering the impression that it is done; the picaresque and dangerous drinking culture of the French workmen and also the Arab navvies in an age before the fundamentalist revival among the Muslims of the West; all this yo-hoery, and when he gets back to London (I’m going to note right here up top that I wrote most of this review as I went along, as a saving-time and remembering-things experiment, and so London, the far better of the two sections, may get short shrift) and settles back into his own milieu, he seems far more comfortable about assuming an anthropological attitude to experiences like his Irish friend Paddy’s mind-boggle at the idea of even a pouch’s worth of fresh tobacco as opposed to fag-ends, or the discomfort and humiliation at taking church charity because it demeans, because they think that if they help a tramp they have a claim on him, can hold him prisoner to proselytize at him.

And I like the time he spends on people’s boring stories and their predictable punchlines—one imagines, although Orwell doesn’t say it, that they are greeted with great gusts of laughter, or at the very least some degree of tolerance on hundredth telling, because the people need to feel magnificence in their ordinary lives, need to feel that in their little anecdotes they have something of value—at least they can do so when drunk. (Oh, but not all the stories are old and threadbare or without interest—I liked the one in Paris about Roucolle and the doublecross and the cocaine that turned out to be face-powder, and also the testimony in London about the old man whose expenses consist of a bed, food, a shave once a week and a haircut once a month—I cut my hair less than that, and I’m notoriously vain, but I guess in the thirties even the poorest had to truckle under the iron law of short-back-and-sides. And as Orwell says in one of his generous moments, “with an income of ten shillings a week, to spend money on a shave—it is awesome.” But those moments that we look to him for, as one of the great mythic truthspeakers, the humane humanistic humanitarians, of our culture, like Einstein or Springsteen or Viktor Frankl too often fizzle or never emerge at all, overcome by a strange selfconsciousness. He’s young.)

And he’s off on his big young trip abroad—it’d be much too vicious to call it his Grand Tour, but certainly a journey of self-discovery, a gap-year cliché kinda thing—and as such he is required to exoticize the characters he meets—certainly you are not encountering Boris or even the faux-propre Valenti at Eton—and can’t hide that in a sense he sees it as a grand adventure, the cut and thurst of trying to turn up enough cashes to eat another day. He doesn’t pretend he can’t go home, but he relishes the frisson of hitting rock bottom a little too much for someone who’s not actually there—but nevertheless he feels able to criticize—like when he says “lazy” for “tired.” Ah, but I guess he could have been John Glassco or something, chasing Hemingway and hoors and lying about it. I’m too hard on this great man, but he doesn’t make it easy. This is like squirming as you read your friend’s article about his trip to Myanmar for the school paper. (Orwell did a better job in Myanmar, it must be acknowledged.)

And there’s something noblesse oblige in his description of the vulgar american millionaires—like, it’s okay for the poor to suck, but when it’s a man of means it requires snide British comment. In that light, and in the light of the exoticizing thing mentioned above, it's fitting that when he goes back to England from Paris, the poverty turns from picturesque and full of colourful characters to just grimy and miserable—although there does seem also more solidarity, with the men sharing their pails of “winkles” with one another. It goes without saying, of course, that the London tramps are all with negligible exceptions working-class British and Irish, in contrast to the way exiles and no-hopers from all over Europe wash up in Paris.

But context and baseline attitudes must be kept in mind—like, in his brain Orwell (and this is when he adopted the pseudonym, but I think in his inner eye he’s still Blair) is writing for his class peers and humanizing the working classes (he is not good, incidentally, at distinguishing between the working poor or even people who we would consider “middle-class,” which of course now means people with decent salaries as opposed to independent incomes); he is making them something more, one imagines, than an amorphous and livid threat, and it’s interesting to see how Communism sits semi-obscured, flashed occasionally like a shiv. He is showing that he becomes ugly under strain, and calls the cook a whore (an Eton boy!) that is a kind of solidarity. Blair professes sympathy, but it would be instructive to get inside his head at this point and see exactly where his thinking was at—one feels that the sympathy is intellectual, fashionable, rebellious, but not, even surrounded by the common peeps and their travails, not yet based in spontaneous and powerful outrage. And perhaps I’m wrong on that, but if so, isn't that at least partly a failure of Blair’s art?

And he is sometimes very winning, as when he discusses the joys of sleep or scouring the coper saucepans with sand and chains and “Brasso,” the bane of the plongeur’s life at the auberge he’s working at. Or when he stands up and states the facts of the plongeur’s plight in simple sentences: They work till collapse. They can’t afford to get married. And then transitions masterfully into the greater social critique, looking like Orwell in fighting trim at last: “Essentially, a ‘smart’ hotel is a place where a hundred people toil like devils in order that two hundred may pay through the nose for things they do not really want … I believe that the instinct to perpetuate such useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob.” After the revolution he would worm open the hearts of his bloodthirsty comrades by dropping certain morsels of their language, while still maintaining his upper middle class mien and drawing out their deference despite themselves.

Hey, do you think Eric Blair is related to Tony Blair? I can see the case for it. But he is young here, as mentioned and not as crafty as Tony in his heyday, and slips up a bit too much, talking about how “nearly all intelligent people” are conservative and afraid of the poor (who, if I need to spell it out, are thus nearly all unintelligent). So close, yet so far, from a truly inspiring revolutionary clarion.* And it’s too bad because with the exception of those little tin-eared gaffes, which betray him as much as the posh accent he says everyone ignores as soon as he’s in hobo clothes doesn’t, what he’s saying is basically right.

Aw, that’s not fair. He really means well. But just writing about working people doesn’t really earn you a trophy, unless it’s for participation, which in this case I guess means “diffident fellowtravellership.”

*the most distressing implication of this fantasia is the idea that Tony Bliar could have grown up to be our gen’s George Orwell had things gone somehow different.

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LibraryThing member Lord_Boris

An investigation into the what and the why of the poor based on Orwell's own experiences in Paris and London during the 1920s / early 30s. How much is memoir and how much is fiction is hard to tell, but I expect a lot of the detail is based on fact. The first section deals with Paris. Here Orwell

(or the narrator who we presume is Orwell) describes the lives of the destitute. He meets a Russian called Boris that leads him into a job as a plongeur, the lowest rung on the hotel kitchen staff ladder. This entails very long hours of hard work in dirty and hot conditions. A host of characters and anecdotes pass by until Orwell gets a job in London, except he has to wait a month for it to begin, during which time he lives on the road with a tramp called Paddy. This was much different to Paris. Tramps, because of the law, could not spend more than one night a month in the same 'spike' hence they wandered (still wander?) the countryside moving from one hostel to another. As in Paris we learn something of what it is like to be hungry and treated with little respect.

Following each half of the book Orwell gives a chapter over to some more considered thoughts on the lives of plongeurs and tramps. He likens the life of a plongeur to a slave, but a slave doing work that is not even necessary but down to fear of the mob. Tramps he finds are often victims of vagrancy laws that keep them moving and when the are not moving they are effectively held in cells. This to no real end other than to appease the perception that they are all thieves and blackguards.

"Then the question arises, Why are beggars despised?- for they are despised universally. I believe it is for the simple reason that they fail to earn a decent living. In practice nobody cares whether work is useful or useless, productive or parasitic; the sole thing demanded is that it shall be profitable. In all the modern talk about energy, efficiency, social service and the rest of it, what meaning is there except 'Get money, get it legally, and get a lot of it'? money has become the grand test of virtue. "

"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."

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LibraryThing member CynthiaRD

This memoir, the first book published by George Orwell, is a fascinating look at the different manners in which the British and French society dealt with poverty in the late 1920s.

LibraryThing member overthemoon

My first FS collectable and I am very impressed with the quality. What's more, it has a ribbon marker.

LibraryThing member cakecop

Well written, engaging, informative and compassionate.

LibraryThing member SallyApollon

I like reality and the reality of being hand-to-maout, cold & hungry was something new to George Orwell. It's a true story that he tells well.

LibraryThing member souloftherose

A brief and alternately amusing and horrifying account of George Orwell's time almost penniless and almost always hungry in Paris and London in the 1920s**. In Paris he manages to pay for his apartment up front but has no money for food until he manages to get a job working incredibly long hours

(by modern standards) as a plongeur (washer up) in a restaurant, In London he has nowhere to live and almost no money so is forced to join the tramps moving on daily from one lodging house or 'spike' (parish provided accommodation for tramps) - but only allowed to stay one night a month at each of the latter - hence the need to tramp from spike to spike. (I hadn't known this but it suddenly explained to me why there used to be tramps and aren't really anymore - homeless people can now be homeless in the same location - hooray for progress!)

It's an insider's view of poverty at the time but also in many ways still an outsider's/observer's view. Perhaps because of his class/upbringing or simply from the effect of being the recorder of the experiences but I didn't have the sense Orwell was completely part of this world. However, there is a lot of insight into what it must have been like to live in those circumstances at that time and Orwell has a lot of sympathy for those in that position.

One of the highlights of the book for me was a chapter towards the end with some notes on swearing and slang. Due to strict censorship at the time the swear words couldn't be printed, but rather than (as might seem more sensible) removing the entire chapter the publishers just blanked all the swear words which has the (presumably unintended effect) of causing the reader to spend more thought and energy trying to guess the swear words than if they had just printed them. Even recent publications of the book have the swear words blanked because there are no notes to show which swear words Orwell was actually writing about. Interestingly, they were allowed to print the French swear words.

**Having read some bits on wikipedia it seems there is some debate regarding the extent to which this is a factual account - some of the events may not have happened in the order given in Down and Out or may not have happened to Orwell himself.

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LibraryThing member cestovatela

A book that pleasantly exceeded my expectations. George Orwell spent most of his young life poor and as you can guess from the title, this book charts his descent from poor-but-getting-by to genuine poverty. He spends days trolling the streets of Paris for jobs with no food in his belly and not a

spare coin for the metro. Landing a job as a kitchen scullion in a fancy hotel ends his economic woes but it's backbreaking labor that leaves most of his colleagues unable to marry, support a family, or have any sort of personal life. This section of the book reminded me a lot of Nickle and Dimed and The Working Poor, more recent non-fiction about poverty in America. If you enjoyed those books, you'll probably enjoy Orwell's as well. The second half the book, Orwell's days as a tramp in London, are slightly less relevant today but still qutie fascinating. Orwell's prose is much more lively here than in his other autobiographical piece Homage to Catalonia, which makes this a quick and interesting read all the way through.

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LibraryThing member audramelissa

I love that Anthony Bourdain loves this book too. This book is a must for anyone who works or has worked in a kitchen. This is one I can re-read and never tire of it. Much of the book reveals the tragedies of the poor but Orwell is also a master at tragi-comedy.

LibraryThing member Clurb

Really lively and entertaining. I think I marginally enjoyed Orwell's tales of Paris more than his London stories but the writing throughout is evocative and wonderful, and the anecdotes superb. An eye-opener.

LibraryThing member Doubler

To return and view the cheerful skies, in this the task and mighty labour lies. Brilliant.

LibraryThing member blackbelt.librarian

Great book about Orwell's experiences being "down & out" in Paris and London. Love the description of his working in a restaurant & all the things that happen behind the scenes.

LibraryThing member alv

Interesting short introduction by Dervla Murphy.

Lucid, well-meaning critical chapters summing up the lessons learned in Paris and London: the life of plongeurs and of tramps.

Hilarious anecdotes on the tramps' attitude towards religious charities.

Colorful slang in English censored out, short chapter

on slang and swearing and its evolution.

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