Astral Codex Ten

Down and Out in Paris and London

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Down and Out in Paris and London

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Down and Out in Paris and London is a recurring book in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 4 times across 4 issues between June 10, 2021 and October 14, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London is at least three things”; “If nothing else, Down and Out in Paris and London should serve as inspiration”; “the finalists are: 15: Down And Out In Paris And London”. It most often appears alongside Addiction By Design, Double Fold, How Children Fail.

Metadata

  • Category: Books
  • Mention count: 4
  • Issue count: 4
  • First seen: June 10, 2021
  • Last seen: October 14, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Your Book Review: Down And Out In Paris And London
June 10, 2021 · Original source
George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London is at least three things; a highly entertaining, almost picaresque tale of rough-and-tumble living in Europe, a serious attempt to catalogue the numerous humiliations and injustices impoverished people were exposed to in Orwell’s time, and a stark comparison between life as a tramp who makes use of robust, if hellish and kafkaesque welfare resources, and as one who tries to get by working terrible jobs and living in disgusting places.
The notion that Orwell might be lying never occurs to the major. The fact that Orwell is now a tramp like all the others doesn’t matter either. What matters is that he was a gentleman, and therefore still is a gentleman, deep down in chakras. I suppose this is the cultural groundwork for the income-independent classism dicussed at length in Scott’s review of Fussell on Class. I imagine Orwell was laughing at himself on the inside, dissapointed in the knowledge that even months of starving and working as a scullion couldn’t change the fact that he was a upper middle class Etonian that served in the imperial police. But of course it’s that tension that makes this and all the rest of Orwell’s non-fiction so interesting. Whether he’s taking down a stampeding Burmese elephant in Shooting an Elephant or fighting Franco’s fascists alongside anarcho-syndicalists in Homage to Catalonia, there’s alway a sense that he’s somewhere he’s not supposed to be, bringing back forbidden knowledge from unexplored moral territory, so that it might sit comfortably on middle-class and public school library bookshelves. Orwell’s genius, as I see it, is in not being a genius. He was merely among the first to realize that ugly, uncouth, and unconscionable places and people might be worth a closer look, and that the lives of such people had much broader political and social significance than the reading public had yet dared to imagine. If nothing else, Down and Out in Paris and London should serve as inspiration to journalists and writers everywhere; it’s proof that if one wishes to write an important book, one need only write truthfully about the vaguely terrifying parts of society that the average person often sees, but never enters.
Inline links: Fussell on Class, Shooting an Elephant, Homage to Catalonia
Vote In The Book Review Contest!
June 18, 2021 · Original source
1: Order Without Law 2: On The Natural Faculties 3: Progress And Poverty 4: Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are? 5: Why Buddhism Is True 6: Double Fold 7: The Wizard And The Prophet 8: Through The Eye Of A Needle 9: The Years Of Lyndon Johnson 10: Addiction By Design 11: The Accidental Superpower 12: Humankind 13: The Collapse Of Complex Societies 14: Where’s My Flying Car? 15: Down And Out In Paris And London 16: How Children Fail 17: Plagues And Peoples
Inline links: Order Without Law, On The Natural Faculties, Progress And Poverty, Are We Smart Enough To Know How Smart Animals Are?, Why Buddhism Is True, Double Fold, The Wizard And The Prophet, Through The Eye Of A Needle, The Years Of Lyndon Johnson, Addiction By Design, The Accidental Superpower, Humankind, The Collapse Of Complex Societies, Where’s My Flying Car?, Down And Out In Paris And London, How Children Fail, Plagues And Peoples
Book Review Contest: Winners
July 10, 2021 · Original source
SECOND PLACE: Down And Out In Paris And London, reviewed by Whimsi
Inline links: Down And Out In Paris And London
Links For October
October 14, 2021 · Original source
14: Whimsi, author of the review of Down And Out In Paris And London that won second place in the book review contest here, reviews The Emperor, a book on the court of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.
Inline links: reviews