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Aug. 21st, 2019 08:54 pmRecently, in the process of trying to fit all of my books and ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genarti's into one place, I at last remembered that gramarye1971 had lent me two volumes of collected Orwell after I read Homage to Catalonia, which had been sitting on my shelf ever since.
Relatedly, last weekend, we had the very great pleasure of hostinggramarye1971 as our first houseguest since Gen moved in! The path before me had been prepared; I determined to finish at least one Orwell volume before she left, thus triumphantly diminishing the household stock of books by one.
Orwell and the Dispossessed contains the full text of Down and Out in Paris and London, as well as various essays, diaries, and correspondences that the editor deemed relevant to Orwell's Feelings About Class. Down and Out in Paris and London is the one where Orwell talks about being broke and starving and washing dishes sixteen hours a day in Paris, and the working conditions of the poor, also, incidentally, does a mini-Upton Sinclair expose on the backstage habits of fancy French hotels and restaurants, just because he's there and might as well; and then comes back to London and lives as a hobo for a while and also, incidentally, does a mini-expose on the poor arrangements of tramp hostels.
The thing that stuck with me the most is the amount of time Orwell spends on just how difficult it is to get enough sleep when you're living in conditions of extreme poverty. The way in which public spaces are inimical to the homeless does not seem to have changed significantly between 1933 and 2019, and the tramp hostels and shelters he encounters are unsafe, unclean, and overcrowded, as well as insulting to human dignity. And, of course, a consistent and terrible sleep debt poisons everything else; he's shocked, three quarters of the way through the book, to meet a pavement artist who does amateur astronomy, because he himself cannot muster any energy at all for intellectual pursuits while struggling just to find something to eat and a place to catch a few hours of sleep each night. (Though of course he did obviously take enough notes to go on to write the book, so, you know.)
That said - Down and Out is very good, and very worth reading, but the most entertaining part of the collection is a set of Orwell's literary essays that were determined to be Class Relevant Enough to fold into the volume. This includes, among other things:
Orwell on Kipling - a kindly patronizing assessment that Kipling, earnestly wrong-headed on the topic of Empire though he may be, was a good bad poet and should be appreciated accordingly
Orwell on Wodehouse - a kindly patronizing assessment that we should all stop ostracizing Wodehouse for that unfortunate incident with the Nazi broadcasts because there are much worse crimes than being an idiot who hasn't yet figured out that it's not 1905 anymore (apparently Orwell bought Wodehouse dinner sometime after this essay came out as a method of demonstrating his sincerity; what one wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall during that meal!)
Orwell on Boy's and Girl's Fiction - an honestly fascinating exploration of British assumptions and expectations about life as expressed through the bad writing in long-running children's magazines
Orwell on Donald McGill - an honestly fascinating exploration of British assumptions and expectations about life as expressed through the bad jokes on seaside postcards
Orwell on Detective Fiction - I don't agree with Orwell about Dorothy Sayers, but I think it's really funny how he seems to have decided that Dorothy Sayers Does Weird Things To Dead Bodies And He Doesn't Like It. (I have to assume he read "The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers", got very uncomfortable, and read no further.) I do agree with him that it's weird and a bit bloodthirsty how detective fiction used to be fine with relatively low-stakes plots about missing jewels and now it's got to be a body a week or everyone yawns and goes home.
Orwell on the Home Guard - this is not a literary essay but I really enjoy Orwell's patient explanation that "look I KNOW joining the Home Guard is uncool but if ALL the Socialists join the Home Guard we can MAKE it a Socialist army, did you think about that?"
genarti's into one place, I at last remembered that gramarye1971 had lent me two volumes of collected Orwell after I read Homage to Catalonia, which had been sitting on my shelf ever since.Relatedly, last weekend, we had the very great pleasure of hosting
gramarye1971 as our first houseguest since Gen moved in! The path before me had been prepared; I determined to finish at least one Orwell volume before she left, thus triumphantly diminishing the household stock of books by one.Orwell and the Dispossessed contains the full text of Down and Out in Paris and London, as well as various essays, diaries, and correspondences that the editor deemed relevant to Orwell's Feelings About Class. Down and Out in Paris and London is the one where Orwell talks about being broke and starving and washing dishes sixteen hours a day in Paris, and the working conditions of the poor, also, incidentally, does a mini-Upton Sinclair expose on the backstage habits of fancy French hotels and restaurants, just because he's there and might as well; and then comes back to London and lives as a hobo for a while and also, incidentally, does a mini-expose on the poor arrangements of tramp hostels.
The thing that stuck with me the most is the amount of time Orwell spends on just how difficult it is to get enough sleep when you're living in conditions of extreme poverty. The way in which public spaces are inimical to the homeless does not seem to have changed significantly between 1933 and 2019, and the tramp hostels and shelters he encounters are unsafe, unclean, and overcrowded, as well as insulting to human dignity. And, of course, a consistent and terrible sleep debt poisons everything else; he's shocked, three quarters of the way through the book, to meet a pavement artist who does amateur astronomy, because he himself cannot muster any energy at all for intellectual pursuits while struggling just to find something to eat and a place to catch a few hours of sleep each night. (Though of course he did obviously take enough notes to go on to write the book, so, you know.)
That said - Down and Out is very good, and very worth reading, but the most entertaining part of the collection is a set of Orwell's literary essays that were determined to be Class Relevant Enough to fold into the volume. This includes, among other things:
Orwell on Kipling - a kindly patronizing assessment that Kipling, earnestly wrong-headed on the topic of Empire though he may be, was a good bad poet and should be appreciated accordingly
Orwell on Wodehouse - a kindly patronizing assessment that we should all stop ostracizing Wodehouse for that unfortunate incident with the Nazi broadcasts because there are much worse crimes than being an idiot who hasn't yet figured out that it's not 1905 anymore (apparently Orwell bought Wodehouse dinner sometime after this essay came out as a method of demonstrating his sincerity; what one wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall during that meal!)
Orwell on Boy's and Girl's Fiction - an honestly fascinating exploration of British assumptions and expectations about life as expressed through the bad writing in long-running children's magazines
Orwell on Donald McGill - an honestly fascinating exploration of British assumptions and expectations about life as expressed through the bad jokes on seaside postcards
Orwell on Detective Fiction - I don't agree with Orwell about Dorothy Sayers, but I think it's really funny how he seems to have decided that Dorothy Sayers Does Weird Things To Dead Bodies And He Doesn't Like It. (I have to assume he read "The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers", got very uncomfortable, and read no further.) I do agree with him that it's weird and a bit bloodthirsty how detective fiction used to be fine with relatively low-stakes plots about missing jewels and now it's got to be a body a week or everyone yawns and goes home.
Orwell on the Home Guard - this is not a literary essay but I really enjoy Orwell's patient explanation that "look I KNOW joining the Home Guard is uncool but if ALL the Socialists join the Home Guard we can MAKE it a Socialist army, did you think about that?"
