I really enjoyed this book. The prose is flowing and easy to read. It’s really impressive given that Orwell must have only been in his mid to late twenties when he wrote it. The characteristic clarity and economy is already there in abundance. One aspect of this book, which isn’t evident in the other Orwell books I’ve read, are the occasional justifications he offers for his writing. It’s as if he lacks confidence that what he is writing is sufficiently interesting or is worried that the purpose of his observations will be misunderstood; ‘for what they are worth...’, ‘I do this to...’, ‘These are only my own ideas...’, ‘I present them as a sample...’ etc. It’s unnecessary and a bit clunky. This is one of the weaker part of the book.
The characters are brilliant; Charlie, the shirker, rapist and bistro philosopher, Mario, the Italian expert cafetiere, Boris, the enthusiastic and overweight former Russian soldier, Paddy, the loquacious Irish moocher, Bozo, the stoic Screever. They are so well drawn I felt like I had an intimate knowledge of them. But Orwell never hammers out lengthy, self-conscious passages of description to achieve this. Rather, the idiosyncrasies are finely crafted into the general flow of the writing so I hardly noticed them as distinct. The book also contains street stories about more minor characters he has met or heard about. These too have an authentic feel. The swindles are probably my favourites. The couple selling pornographic postcards that turn out to be normal. The Serb who only takes day work, works hard and then tries to get sacked as soon after noon as possible so as to receive his day’s pay for the minimum amount of effort. The miser who buys fake cocaine didn’t quite ring true as, if he were the incorrigible miser he’s made out to be, then surely he would have inspected the goods he was purchasing more thoroughly.
The physical scenes that Orwell draws are excellent too. The chaos of the Hotel X, the squalor of the Russian restaurant and the filth of his various accommodations are all highly memorable. Like the characters, Orwell achieves this without too much laborious prose and it’s pleasurable reading throughout. The scene of drinking in the bistro in Paris during his day off was amusing and vivid. I did find myself incredulous at the extent of the dirt and the hardship that employed people suffered in the late 1920s. I thought perhaps that things had been exaggerated for dramatic effect. Even in a cheap hotel, the filthiness of the bedclothes and the magnitude of the insect infestation in Paris seem outrageous. It also seems astonishing that someone can work so many hours and be so abjectly poor. Later on, the hardships of ‘the spike’ and the dormitories in London seem equally unfathomable for a modern reader.
The book also contains interesting philosophical or sociological observations about poverty and different classes from Orwell, who’s experiences probably made him more informed on this subject than most. The freedom and relief of poverty is one counterintuitive aspect of this. He writes, ‘poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees people from work.’ And later on, ‘within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry….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.’ Orwell also writes about the unwarranted fear rich people have of the poor. Perhaps this is because the rich know that the situation is so unfair! He writes, ‘Fear of the mob is a superstitious fear. It is based on the idea that there is some mysterious, fundamental difference between rich and poor, as though they were two different races, like negroes and white men. But in reality there is no such difference. The mass of the rich and the poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit. Change places, and handy dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief?’ This passage is obviously also racist and there are several other examples of it in the book. It’s unpleasant to read but I suppose these sort of views were common for the time even among educated people like Orwell.
Orwell also offers an interesting justification of begging as a profession, ‘Yet if one looks closely one sees that there is no essential difference between a beggar’s livelihood and that of numberless respectable people. Beggars do not work, it is said; but, then, what is work? A navvy works by swinging a pick. An accountant works by adding up figures. A beggar works by standing out of doors in all weathers and getting varicose veins, chronic bronchitis, etc. It is a trade like any other; quite useless, of course–but, then, many reputable trades are quite useless. And as a social type a beggar compares well with scores of others. He is honest compared with the sellers of most patent medicines, high-minded compared with a Sunday newspaper proprietor, amiable compared with a hire-purchase tout–in short, a parasite, but a fairly harmless parasite. He seldom extracts more than a bare living from the community, and, what should justify him according to our ethical ideas, he pays for it over and over in suffering. I do not think there is anything about a beggar that sets him in a different class from other people, or gives most modern men the right to despise him.’ Here it seems to me that Orwell is fundamentally correct. He is also insightful about the reasons people despise beggars, ‘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.’ If anything, money may have become an even more universal test of virtue today that it was then.
Chapter 22 is quite an interesting, if somewhat incomplete, reflection on the nature of employment. He asks why hard, unskilled work exists and why it must continue. He likens it to ‘slavery’ and asks if the ‘luxury’ it provides, or the end of ‘civilisation’ that it purportedly serves, are really so worthy after all. I would broadly agree with him on these points except for the fact that while Orwell seems to think there is something like ‘civilisation’ I see only people who want to do things and people who are willing to supply these desires. I don’t see an overarching aim or purpose to society’s various occupations save, perhaps, some broad species of self-interest. Equally, Orwell tell us ‘smartness’ simply means that the customer pays more and the staff work more and the only person who benefits is the proprietor. This also struck me as a slightly facile and naive understanding of the situation. A large hotel will employ many more staff than a cheap one and not simply make the same number of staff work harder. Equally, the staff there will earn more as Orwell himself describes when detailing the tips of the waiter. He also says nothing of the role of capital in the provision of a smart hotel experience. The hotel must operate in a building and in a capitalist system that cannot be had for nothing. He concludes that the system exists to keep the working class tired and servile. He goes on to speculate that most rich people would know this but want the status quo to remain for their own safety. This all struck me as a rather immature conspiracy theory without much genuine support or evidence. For me, he’s right to point out that lots of jobs are more or less pointless but to conclude that this indicates a grand, systematic subjugation of the poor by the rich is incorrect. The rich do benefit from many privileges the poor will never enjoy and this could be seen as unethical. However, to see the whole labour market as rigged is a step too far for me. This chapter was superficial and a bit naive.
The fact that being poor attracts the attention of many worthy types who wish to ‘help’ those less fortunate than themselves is well drawn in the book. 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.’ This strikes me as true and it easy to see examples of poor people been made the object of middle class people’s worthiness in many instances of charity. This may be a contributing factor in the scene described by Orwell in London where 100 or so homeless people jeer and mock a church service they have been forced to attend in exchange for some food. Orwell thinks that it may be a deeper human instinct, which I’m not totally convinced about. He writes, ‘a man receiving charity practically always hates his benefactor–it is a fixed characteristic of human nature’.
I thoroughly enjoyed the prose, characters and scenes depicted in this book even though some of them may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect. If none of them have been hyperbolised then I am glad that things have come so far in the last 80-odd years! Some of the reflections on how society operates struck me as grandiose, naive and superficial but even these sections contained valid points too. It’s not the best book I’ve read by Orwell but it is impressive to see how good his prose was even as a young writer and some of the characters and scenes are fantastic.
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