Down and Out in Paris and London, a review

         

        Editor's note: George Orwell is known primarily for two novels: 1984 and Animal Farm. But Orwell was a prolific writer, one who deservedly has a cult following. Other novels include Coming Up for Air, Burmese Days, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, and The Road to Wigan Pier. Orwell wrote many essays, including How the Poor Die and Killing an Elephant. Your author has penned a review of his favorite Orwell novel, Down and Out in London and Paris.

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        George Orwell was more than just a novelist and an essayist. He was also a skilled reporter and observer who, through his experiences, crafted several books that reveal styles of life distinct from most 1930s readers. In “Homage to Catalonia,” he brings the failed Spanish revolution to readers. The hard life of coal miners is the subject of “The Road to Wigan Pier.”

        Orwell’s finest piece of reportage, however, is captured in “Down and Out in Paris and London.” Inspired by “People of the Abyss,” Jack London’s melodramatic tale of turn-of-the-century London slums, Orwell entered the life of the poor in Paris and London. “Down and Out...” is likely a blend of Orwell’s experiences, observances, and literary license. In Paris, he was a penniless writer who worked 17-hour days as a dishwasher to afford rent, drinks and food. In London, while waiting for a job, he existed as a tramp, walking miles a day with other unfortunates, sleeping on the public dole, or when he had a few cents, in lodging houses that were semi-flop houses.

        Orwell’s tales in the different cities are a fascinating mix of narrative and social commentary. In Paris, the first-hand reports of a high-class restaurant in an expensive hotel is great reading. The employees, horribly overworked and underpaid, exist in a frenzy of organized chaos. The appearance of great service -- rather than great service -- is the goal of these workers. As a result, a smart looking, six-course turkey dinner may look great on a waiter’s tray, but its origins were more dirty. It was produced in a filthy subterranean portion of the hotel infested with cockroaches and rats. As Orwell puts it, “Everywhere in the service quarters dirt festered -- a secret vein of dirt, running through the great garish hotel like the intestines through a man’s body.”

        Life in the Paris slums is described in great detail. From the bug-infested rentals, to small, dark bistros, to Saturday night drinking “blowouts” and desperate visits to officious pawnbrokers to sell shabby clothes for food. Sprinkled throughout the narratives are great life anecdotes of the characters the young Orwell meets. Charlie, a shiftless youth, recalls a visit to a high-priced brothel. An old miser dies of regret and misery after he discovers that cocaine he purchased to sell is face powder.

         There is a funny scene where two Mormon missionaries try to deal with a rowdy crowd while preaching in Tower Hill. Orwell’s writing style is calm, sometimes with amused skepticism. After enduring a religious service in a lodging house in London, Orwell writes, “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.”

        A Paris scene has Orwell and a buddy, Boris, go to see about becoming circus hands. The job involves allowing lions to jump through your legs. When they arrive, there is a long line of applicants already waiting. “There is some attraction in lions, evidently,” Orwell dryly observes.

        The London scenes are memorable for the reports of the dirty conditions of the “shilling” lodging houses in London of that time. Also, Orwell brings readers into the lives of the unfortunate men who were forced -- through unemployment and lack of funds -- to tramp the English countryside for miles each day just to sleep in a charitable “spike” -- free lodging in a workhouse. Their many depredations are calmly described: forced religious services in return for a free meal; the petty shortchanging done by clerks at tea shops when they used a “food ticket”; the impersonal, bullying treatment at a “spike”; and the refusal of London police to allow a homeless person to sit down or sleep on the ground or the bench while outside.

    Orwell writes, “A beggar, looked at realistically, is simply a business man, getting his living like other business man, in the way that comes to hand. He has not, more than most modern people, sold his honor; he has merely made the mistake of choosing a trade at which it is impossible to get rich.”

    As mentioned, Orwell detours from his narrative at different times to offer his theories on why hotel workers are underpaid and why thousands of homeless men are forced to tramp the countryside. He also offers some solutions to the problems. His solutions are a blend of socialism and common sense. “Down and Out in Paris and London” is great reporting and one envies readers who get the opportunity to explore this a first time.

- Doug Gibson

Originally published a generation plus ago in the now-defunct Salt Lake City alternative weekly, The Event.

THE TRAGIC LIVES OF TWO TRAGIC GENIUSES: Ed Wood & Vincent Van Gogh

Written by Steve D. Stones

I have a strange theory. Some of my colleagues in the academic world of art  may scoff me for this theory, especially when comparing the two men that I’m  about to compare. My theory is this: Could the current interest in director  Ed Wood and the tragedy surrounding his life have come about for many of the  same reasons as the Dutch Impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh? Okay, laugh  all you want, but I see many similarities in these two interesting men.

Van Gogh only sold one painting in his lifetime and no one really  paid much attention to his work while he was alive. Not until long after  his death did the public begin to see the real genius in his life’s  work. His paintings now sell for more money than most famous artists who  have ever lived.

Ed Wood suffered a similar fate. His movies never did  much business, and not many people took him very seriously during his  lifetime. Not long after his death, Wood became a tragic star of the movie  industry. He is often written about and discussed more than any famous movie  director, living or dead. There are many books dedicated to the life and art  of Ed Wood, and hundreds of articles that have been written about him. Ed  Wood film festivals and retrospectives are held every year around the world.  Wood has become a cottage industry.

Director Tim Burton even made a  big budget Hollywood movie in 1993 about Ed Wood starring Johnny Depp in the  role of Wood. Many documentaries have also come out about the life of Wood. A  big budget Hollywood film was also made about Van Gogh in 1956 entitled Lust  For Life, written by Irving Stone and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Kirk  Douglas played the role of Vincent Van Gogh.

Over the last thirty  years or so since his death, it has become “hip” and sophisticated to say  you’re a fan of Ed Wood and his movies, even though most reputable film  critics still regard his films as amateurish and terrible. Could it be that  Ed Wood was just a misunderstood genius? That is the question that many of  his devoted fans often ask themselves, including my good friend Doug Gibson  and myself.

Why is it that Pop-Artist Andy Warhol can make a boring  eight-hour film of a man sleeping and we call it “art,” yet Ed Wood makes a  bold and entertaining political statement about aliens invading the earth in  Plan 9 From Outer Space and we call it “trash?” Wood’s Glen Or Glenda is  also regarded as “trash,” yet it too makes a very bold statement about  the need for tolerance of cross-dressing males and men who want a  sex change. Pretty bold stuff for 1953.

Van Gogh was said to suffer  from frequent hallucinations. We see this expressed in many of his paintings,  including his famous Starry Night painting. The swirling, thick impasto  strokes of paint in The Starry Night give the viewer a hallucinogenic state  of mind. Ed Wood also expressed a dizzying, hallucinogenic state of mind in  many sequences found in Glen Or Glenda.

Could it be that Van Gogh was  also misunderstood? Both Ed Wood and Vincent Van Gogh were heavy drinkers.  Both men were also womanizers. Wood’s mother dressed him up in little girl’s  clothing when he was a boy because she wanted a girl. Van Gogh’s mother often  rejected him because she was never fully able to get over the death of her  first-born son, also named Vincent. Both men also surrounded themselves with  artists who were rapidly declining in their careers, or had yet to be  discovered. Wood dabbled in pornography later in his career, and Van Gogh  slept with prostitutes.

Ed Wood may have never slashed off any part  of his body, as Van Gogh did with his ear, but I say the similarities of  these two men are too uncanny to overlook. I stand by my theory. The world  loves the tragic story of the tragic life of a creative genius.