Down and Out in Paris and London

Down and Out in Paris and London
by George Orwell

Down and Out in Paris and London
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Book Summary Information

Author: George Orwell
Edition: Audio Cassette
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 1997-08
ISBN: 0786103027
Number of pages: 5
Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks

Book Reviews of Down and Out in Paris and London

Book Review: Orwellian
Summary: 5 Stars

Genius. Very rich, passionate writing. The other reviewers have said it all about this classic.

Many of his observations hit home today, a forward thinker. Animal Farm, another one to put on your list if you haven't read it yet.Animal Farm

Summary of Down and Out in Paris and London

What was a nice Eton boy like Eric Blair doing in scummy slums instead of being upwardly mobile at Oxford or Cambridge? Living Down and Out in Paris and London, repudiating respectable imperialist society, and reinventing himself as George Orwell. His 1933 debut book (ostensibly a novel, but overwhelmingly autobiographical) was rejected by that elitist publisher T.S. Eliot, perhaps because its close-up portrait of lowlife was too pungent for comfort.

In Paris, Orwell lived in verminous rooms and washed dishes at the overpriced "Hotel X," in a remarkably filthy, 110-degree kitchen. He met "eccentric people--people who have fallen into solitary, half-mad grooves of life and given up trying to be normal or decent." Though Orwell's tone is that of an outraged reformer, it's surprising how entertaining many of his adventures are: gnawing poverty only enlivens the imagination, and the wild characters he met often swindled each other and themselves. The wackiest tale involves a miser who ate cats, wore newspapers for underwear, invested 6,000 francs in cocaine, and hid it in a face-powder tin when the cops raided. They had to free him, because the apparently controlled substance turned out to be face powder instead of cocaine.

In London, Orwell studied begging with a crippled expert named Bozo, a great storyteller and philosopher. Orwell devotes a chapter to the fine points of London guttersnipe slang. Years later, he would put his lexical bent to work by inventing Newspeak, and draw on his down-and-out experience to evoke the plight of the Proles in 1984. Though marred by hints of unexamined anti-Semitism, Orwell's debut remains, as The Nation put it, "the most lucid portrait of poverty in the English language." --Tim Appelo

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