Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell (2014-09-20)

The quality of the print could be a little better, but really i dint care of how i was reading it was a question of What. And this book is fantastic, there is just something on the way Orwell writes,. Truly one of the greatest authors of twentieth century.

This is a great work of Orwell, that was essentially "Lost", until recently. I really enjoyed reading about his experience fighting for the republic in the Spanish civil war. Orwell was a Socialist who really believed in equality. He lived among the working classes of England, and unlike modern Socialist elites who live like the "one percenters" that they say they loathe, Orwell actually practiced what he preached. "The Road to Wiggan Pier" is another great book written in the early 1930's for those Orwell fans who want to know more about his time living with coal miners.

Very interesting journal of an elighted man going through the poverity path. A crude portrait of an era not so far from today, but it is refreshing to know that even if we go lower than our nightmares, we can survive.

Orwell does a fantastic job describing the life of a pauper, first in Paris then in London. Orwell sheds light on the struggles being a low-lifer and dispels common misconceptions. His concise, simple approach to writing makes this book easy to digest. Highly recommended.

When I read tthis book the first time several years ago, I thought it was among the best I had ever read. Now, upon re-reading this quasi-journalistic account of Orwell's trysts with poverty and destitution, I still feel that it is quite up there as one of my most memorable reads, but I was slightly uncomfortable with the anti semitic messaging. Nevertheless - I am assuming that Orwell must have reflected upon this during the war that followed not long after he wrote the book - it contains some very memorable lines, such as the one noting that one has gone to the dogs and one can stand it, and that there is a relief in knowing oneself genuinely down and out.

I think the second part on tramping was a bit of a drag compared to the first. Overall, a great read.

If you think that without leaders...fascist or socialist the state will fall to anarchy and chaos, you need to read this. Written by Orwell between 1936 to 38 during the Spain's civil war while he is in the trenches, a vivid account of how people really worked together. Rather than the chaos the the propaganda spoke of, you'll start to see the the lies of the main stream media in America today.

If you think that without leaders...fascist or socialist the state will fall to anarchy and chaos, you need to read this. Written by Orwell between 1936 to 38 during the Spain's civil war while he is in the trenches, a vivid account of how people really worked together. Rather than the chaos the the propaganda spoke of, you'll start to see the the lies of the main stream media in America today.

Something my fellow reviewers do NOT seem to have noticed is that this is a work of FICTION. Look for the word on the binding of your copy of the book. I have no doubt that Eric Blair, who changed his name to George Orwell when he wrote this book in order not to be discovered by his parents and friends, did have some brushes with the sort of life he describes. But how much of this are we to believe actually happened?
The problem with Mr. Blair's work is that it is tendentious. There are any number of novels out there that include heart-rending accounts of the life of the poor during this era, try Somerset Maugham's Of Human bondage, for instance. But the polemic chapters at the end on word usage and societal change reveal the raison d'etre for this book. I wish Mr. Blair could have written a straightforward essay instead of this not very gripping account of slumming it around Dickens' two cities. In doing so, he exhibits the trait that he censures other writers for so severely in his later years, pretentious rot.

I should have checked the reviews. The Harcourt version, selling for USD 8.03 had a review by D. Escott, I should have read it. Unfortunately, I did not.
Here is my review that supports his:
Orwell is a great writer and Down and Out is very interesting.
Unfortunately, this edition is ruined by replacing every 'bad' word with -- -- two hyphens. If I had known this I would not have bought this edition. There is a chapter where Orwell is talking about profanity and the reader has no idea what words he is talking about. I just finished the book and today was in a bookstore and looked at a Penguin edition. The 'bad' words were in the book.
So I would recommend that anyone looking for Down and Out in London and Paris check that the book has not been sanitized.
I'm going to write to the publisher about this. I think it is deceptive to be selling a book without clear upfront warnings that it has been 'cleaned up'.
Sorry, at this point I can't recommend another edition since the 'samples' are all at the beginning of the book and the expunged parts are toward the back of the book.

I want to thank the store, they very graciously gave me a refund which I will use to buy a different version of the book. Orwell is certainly worth a re-read.
-chas.t

This was a surprisingly rich read, for me.

The book is, first, well written and easy to read, with a straightforward, intelligent narrative that fits the quasi-fictional material. It doesn't come off as dated, or with obsolete language, either; even Mr. Orwell's sly wit remains intact for the modern reader. That said, this is not your typical work of fiction, neither in nature nor in style, for much of the text is dictated in an explanatory, lecturing manner, with the narrator's story taking a backseat to the none-too-subtle accounts of the author's real-world experiences. But, know how to read it, and the book is rich and enjoyable, all the same.

As for content, 'Down' has much going for it, however irregular its presentation. The overt, literary story is satisfying enough (if a bit perfunctory and one-dimensional), but the real substance lies in the book's value as a human study. Through its depictions of various "down and out" niches of early-20th-century urban life, the book explores a broad expanse of the human experience, from keen sociological- and psychological observations, to trademark Orwellian metaphysical musings, to a biographical diorama of timelessly unique individuals, all posed in the gentle tones of quasi-fiction (and with no small amount of humor, too). If nothing else, the text stands as an excellent, informed inquiry into the very phenomenon of vagrancy and its motives, as seen through the prism of two cities in the grip of post-Victorian residue. In short, there is much true, practical knowledge to be found here, even if its anecdotal nature falls short of academic standards (or, perhaps _because_ of this very fact; subjective viewpoint can be the difference between actual wisdom and mere data, as it were).

My sincere, posthumous thanks goes out to this book's author and publisher. I am grateful for, and have benefited from, your work and service.

* * *
Some notable quotes from 'Down and Out in Paris and London':

"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 behaviour, just as money frees people from work." -- p.7

"And there is another feeling that is a great consolation in poverty. [...] It is a feeling of relief, almost 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. It takes off a lot of anxiety." -- p.20-21

"Roughly speaking, the more one pays for food, the more sweat and spittle one is obliged to eat with it. [...] The hotel employee is too busy getting food ready to remember that it is meant to be eaten." -- p.80

"Work in the hotel taught me the true value of sleep, just as being hungry had taught me the true value of food. Sleep had ceased to be a mere physical necessity; it was something voluptuous, a debauch more than a relief." -- p.92

"'It seems to me that when you take a man's money away he's fit for nothing from that moment.' 'No, not necessarily. [...] You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in _here_"' -- he tapped his forehead -- 'and you're all right.'" -- p.165

"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." -- p.181

Obviously more famous for his two seminal works, so well-known they need not be identified here, Orwell’s other work remained a bit of a mystery to me. I approached DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON with some trepidation. Was Orwell a two-hit wonder, or were there signs of brilliance right from the get go?

I need not have worried. DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON was an excellent read, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. His first book, Orwell takes us into the world of poverty in the two cities, in the back alleys, the rooms rented for a pittance, and the restaurant jobs that barely kept him going.

The most striking thing about the book is the unbelievably blunt harshness of poverty in the day and age it was written. Here in the States at the beginning of 2018, in which large numbers of those classified as poor have cars, microwave ovens, and television sets, the book jars the reader over and over again with its descriptions of people truly on the edge of survival, literally on the brink of starvation. This is paralleled with sleeping accommodations consistently unwashed and filled with bugs, bathing facilities of dirty water, food of the most meager and non-nutritious. The entire world of these poor souls is almost filled with nothing but misery.

Also striking for its inconsistency with present times is the extraordinary lengths people will go to get any job, no matter how lowly or demeaning. The mere possibility of working on the lowest rung of the ladder at a vermin infested hotel is enough to fill Orwell, and we may presume others in his position, with the happiness of hope. This happiness is tightened by the fragility of such jobs, which may disappear in a moment, with no Plan B for back up.

The one thing that prevents Orwell’s book from devolving into a psychologically hopeless ruin is the companionship of others. Yes, they had to watch their belongings at every moment for the companion who turns out to be a thief. But other than that, there is much to be said of the companionship of one’s fellow man (though, as Orwell noted near the end, not of a woman) to make it through hard times.

Like a photograph from a bygone era, DOWN AND OUT IN PARIS AND LONDON is useful, it would seem, more for historical understanding than to glean any insight into our modern day and age. Still, for that photograph, or better yet, travelogue, into yesteryear, it is an exceptional work of art.

Barbara Ehrenreich wrote the subject titled classic, with the subtitle of “Not getting by in America.” For a year, she attempted to join the subclass of working Americans, mainly women, who are the waitresses and maids that are barely scratching out an existence in America. She admitted though, that she truly did not join the class, maintaining, for example, health insurance in case the need arose; something the subclass did not have as a backup. George Orwell, of 1984 (Signet Classics),[ [ASIN:0451526341 Animal Farm: Anniversary Edition]], ,Burmese Days: A Novel) fame, as well as others, truly was in the ranks of an even lower class, who would routinely go without food for periods of time, living on the very fringes of society, in the early 1930’s. He never mentions the phrase “The Great Depression.” It was simply the life of the time. He provides a graphic, realistic portrait of that existence, without any backup “safety nets.”

The first half relates his time in Paris. He links up with Russian exiles, like Boris, who were obviously on the “White” side in the Russian civil war, which followed the Revolution. Orwell must pawn most of his clothes, as well as all other items of any value, always hoping to score some sort of menial job. Boris and he do succeed in becoming “plongeurs” (literally dishwashers, but also including all the other lowly duties of a “bus boy.”) It is a scathing portrait of life in the cellars of the “grand” hotels, and should make anyone who plunks down the big francs to stay there take pause at the descriptions of the filth out of which those fancy meals arrive at their tables. It is a life of constant work, 18 or so hours a day. The hotel staff is extremely hierarchical, with rituals and demarcations that define one’s “level.” Orwell also describes their “recreation,” the getting drunk on Saturday nights. Without any economic clot, they are the “prey” of virtually all others, being cheated this way and that, in the fashion of the “Pay Day” loan sharks of today.

The author provides an excellent final chapter on his Parisian section which compares the “plongeurs” life with slavery. A couple incisive observations: “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. If the nonsense were cut out of hotels and restaurants, and the work done with simple efficiency, “plongeurs” might work six to eight hours a day instead of ten or fifteen.” And: “I believe that this instinct to perpetuate useless work is, at bottom, simply fear of the mob.”

Orwell decides to go back to England, and obtains a “patient caregiver” job… but it turns out it is 30 days in the future. He must survive that month, and adopts the life of a “tramp,” moving from “spike” to “spike” which are homeless shelters, each with its unique rules and “character,” but generally only offering one night accommodation, which cannot be repeated… thus, enforcing constant movement on the destitute class, hence “tramp.” Many tramps are scouring the pavements for cigarette butts, and subsist on a diet of bread and margarine. Tens of thousands are in constant movement. Orwell provides sketches of a few fellow tramps, who are all men, and without any “prospects” for female companionship.
As he did with his Paris section, he provides an objective, analytical summation of the overall meaning of having such a class of people in society, and how they are regulated. The most haunting assessment, after reading two hundred pages on the life of the down and out, is: “At present I do not feel I have seen more than the fringe of poverty.” For those summation sections, Orwell deserves a “plus” onto the 5-stars.

This book makes for spectacular reading, and it provides both entertainment and insight about what it was like for a young writer-to be to live at the bottom of society in 1920s Paris and London. Orwell wrote this book when he was still undiscovered country, publishing wise; he was legally still Eric Blair, and his byline for personal identification on the title page of the book was "X". Yet his narrative of what it was like to labor in Paris kitchens as a plongeur (dishwasher) and his reminiscences of what it was like to spend nights in a doss house outside London and beg for sustenance on the cold streets are indeed memorable. Read this book once and you will never forget its characters. You will never again turn your back on a homeless man or woman, camping out on a hot air vent. You will become human again. You will remember what and who you are, and your connection to the much-less fortunate around you.

I agree with Corinna; the proofreading is slapdash and repetitive, depending on the intended words. Example: "Us" is substituted for either "his" or "the," take your pick. I admit I've seen worse proofreading of other editions of different titles. Still, it is annoying. Fortunately the copy I read was purchased by our local library so it only cost me time and patience.
It's a shame that Will Jonson makes reading 'Down and Out in Paris and London' so frustrating, as it is an important and engaging work by Orwell, and anyone who wants to learn intimate details of Orwell's earlier, desperate years in the man's own words should read 'Down and Out n Paris and London,' only treat yourself to a different edition! You will be glad you did.
DO NOT WASTE MONEY ON WILL JONSON's EDITION.

Unrelentingly grim yet oddly comic, if sarcastically so, “Down and Out in Paris and London” was a great read. Orwell penned his memoirs about the days working in the restaurant business and tramping about in Paris and London, and it’s a stark and oft-depressing revelation. For all who have ever washed a dish, waited a table, or worked a line, these truths about restaurant life will ring loud and true. For anyone who is or has ever lived hand-to-mouth, it’s a powerful essay on the sheer volume of people living life on the barest fringes, and one that echoes with that same veracity almost a century later.

At a little over two hundred pages, it reads easily, a succession of events strung together with Orwell’s terse commentary and fearless writing. He brings the world of the homeless beggar into your comfortable living room and offers a rare, behind- the-scenes glimpse into the restaurant industry long before Anthony Bourdain did so. In fact, Bourdain admits that this book was an inspiration to his book Kitchen Confidential.

Orwell’s observations about life in the lowest parts of human society and the manner in which he humanizes and brings empathy to these people make this a vital read in our current age of income disparity and scapegoating of the poor. Indeed, only the coarsest soul would read this and come away from it with their cynicism and disgust for the poor intact. Helpfully, he also offers some marginal suggestions in the last pages.

I’ve thought often that everyone should work for at least a short period in the restaurant or even service industry, just to see how hard the work is, how rude the clientele are, and to discover the lengths a person will go in order to put food in their stomach and keep a roof over the head. To that end, a period of living with the daily fear that a missed paycheck can put one (and their family) quite literally on the street is an important education, as well. Either way, I can think of no better starting point than this amazing work for arousing a call to action as well as nurturing sympathy for the countless masses sleeping from exhaustion and malnutrition atop a steel ventilation grate on a cold day, or trying to find food in the garbage bins behind a restaurant.

- One note about the edition I read (the one with the b & w photo of the London bridge): this book is edited, with all the swear words omitted. This is particularly problematic in the chapter wherein Orwell expounds on the history of the words. A bit silly to omit the words, but it wasn't enough to detract a star. Simply check your versions if this is a huge issue.

George Orwell is such a strong writer that I would gladly read 200 pages of him describing paint drying. His observations about life amidst the poor and working poor in the interwar years is a wonderful evocation of a world already utterly marginal at its time. Only Celine is able to capture the absurdity and degradation, the psychological and literal filth of being down and out, with such acuity.

Whether hes describing working 18 hour shifts in a nightmarish restaurant, or what it's like to pawn your clothes for food money, or to live in a public assistance house and share a room with 50 other men, this is a ground eye view of poverty at a time before its study would become formalized and structured to the extent that it is now.

That also means that its far less analytic (not to mention far less politically correct), than what we are used to hearing on the subject now. But Orwell by the standards of 1933 still sounds vastly more humane and modern than many people do in 2015.

His writing is, as seemingly ever, poised without being flowery, direct without being pedantic, and sardonic without succumbing to cheap ironies. This book is almost 90 years old, and like so much of his work, it can still feel like a breath of fresh air to read him.

Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell

I was happy with this find: first because I came across it in a lovely bookstore, the kind of shop I want to own someday, a little storefront with ten-foot-high shelves, with only enough space between for one person to pass, and yet a bright and sunny atmosphere, warm and welcoming -- the proprietor had read both books I bought, and praised them both, so I felt both accompanied and intelligent; second because it is an old copy, with genuine cover art and a 35-cent price printed at the top, and a sweet, soft smell to the pages; third because everything I read by George Orwell makes me admire the man more, and fills me with the desire both to read and to write.

It was an excellent read. Orwell has a journalist's eye and a journalist's pen; the prose is clear and straightforward, the detail precise and thorough and fascinating. He creates characters among his acquaintances mostly through simple description of their appearance and actions and words; within the first ten pages you meet one of the more appalling people Orwell knew in Paris, and you know why, based merely on the drunken speech Orwell relates from the man. He makes himself a character, as well, though he creates his own character similarly, through speech and action and description; there is never any explanation given for how he ended up in Paris, so close to destitute, but he quickly joins the ranks of the poorest, being forced to sell his clothing in order to buy food, and spending days at a time starving before he finds employment again.

Orwell also creates a graphic picture of the two great cities at the time, in the 1930's, between the World Wars when the greatest threat to Western society was socialism; there is a constant theme of intolerance running through his interactions with authorities, and though he is frequently harassed for his poverty and the corresponding assumption of lawlessness, he comments that it would be much worse were he suspected of being a Socialist -- which, of course, he was, though not a politically active one at the time. He tells of the slums of Paris and the workhouses of London, and creates an expose of Paris restaurants and hotels worthy of Upton Sinclair.

There are some moments I would change: Orwell reveals his own prejudices, against some races and nationalities and particularly against Jews; there is a presumption that the reader knows French, which I do not; and in this edition, at least, the curse words were blanked out -- which wasn't a problem when Orwell wrote things like "Shut yer ______ mouth and get on with yer bath!" because even if I don't know what he meant (almost certainly "damn"), I can fill it in with my own imagination and be no worse off for it. But then there was a passage when Orwell was expounding on why curse words become curse words, and how they lose their original meaning as soon as they reach common use; and it read like "But ________ is no worse than _______, which was once used less often than _________." Which was obnoxious.

It was also quite disgusting at times, and quite sad; but then, so is the subject. It's a short and largely simple read, and Orwell's insights, offered at the end, are sharp and precise, and leave one with some very interesting thoughts.

Highly recommended.

In the early 1930s, Eton-educated George Orwell decided to do a stint of serious slumming in the greatest of European capitals in order to capture and comment on the lives of the poor, and, by extension, the rich. As the title suggests, the author begins in Paris where he scrounges to come up with the few francs necessary to put an ant-infested roof over his head. He doesn't wash (he can't afford soap), he survives on gulps of vin ordinaire and crusts of stale bread. At one point, he goes without eating for four days. Every morning, he meets Boris, an eccentric, crippled, former Russian soldier, and the two put their heads together to figure out a way to survive. For a long time, they are unsuccessful and things begin to look bleak, though Orwell takes it all in stride. "It is a feeling of relief," he writes, "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. It takes off a lot of anxiety."

Broke, Orwell manages a job as a plongeur [dishwasher] in the kitchen of a ritzy hotel. This section of the book is fascinating: the trench-warfare-like conditions accorded the staff juxtaposed against the opulence and excesses of the inn's aristocratic patrons. There are not many writers who could describe, essentially, labour for page after page and have you wanting more, but then there are not many writers like Eric Arthur Blair.

After Paris, it's back across the channel to London, and this segment is also extremely engaging, if not as bang-in-your-face as the France section. Particularly interesting are the comparisons and contrasts drawn between England and France, as Down and Out is now a historical document. In the heart of England, Orwell mingles with the homeless as he wanders from one spike (charitable shelter) to the next and survives (barely) on his wits and a diet of "tea and two slices."

The characters he meets and comes to know are absorbing, and the attitudes accorded them by society unfeeling. Orwell concludes that the difference between a beggar and a member of the landed gentry is money, and money only. Rather than the sort of spiritual guidance dished up by the likes of the Salvation Army, or a single night's stay at a spike (the hobos are turned out in the morning), what the destitute really require is a purpose, one Orwell believes the state ought to supply. Tramps' lives are meaningless, though they needn't be, Orwell argues, and goes on to outline proposals, both socialistic and humane. Orwell has become known almost exclusively for his Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, a shame, in a way, because Down and Out in Paris and London is nearly as good and surely as relevant. It is, in short, a classic.

Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World.

I read this upon the recommendation of Anthony Bourdain, and he was right. This, Orwell's first book, is a great read.

The first half, set in Paris in 1927, is better than the second half, set in London a year or two later, but one must understand that the first half was rejected for publication because it was too short. The Parisian characters are more vivid and unique and Orwell, being English, didn't seem to find the English tramps who populate the latter half to be worthy of deep background stories.

The book will help you appreciate true poverty, in a modern European sense. He experienced hunger, cold, and viewed hopelessness, although he was never hopeless himself. For him the poverty was voluntary and an opportunity for education which he always knew was temporary.

If one major benefit of reading is the expansion of one's horizon and extension of one's empathy, then this book's yield is immense. Lots of books familiarize their readers with imaginary characters in nonexistent places and times, so much out of touch with reality and fantastical are they that it almost could be said that one can't learn anything from them other than the entertainment value at the time of holding them. On the other extreme end of the spectrum is this book, it penetrates and exposes the misery of the truly poor. You can't help but feel more empathy for the beggars and homeless creatures, despite so many deep-held dread and prejudices against these unlucky fellows. I guess, in this regard, this is truly a helpful book.