Down and Out in Paris and London from Madrid

General thoughts as a piece of writing: Down and Out in Paris and London, Orwell

A strange read: I’m not quite sure what genre it was, somewhere between travel writing (but instead of moving geographically, moving economic situation and social class), short story, autobiography, and anthropological study. Orwell dons the 'beggar's cloak' (there's something slightly uncomfortable ethically now I reflect - using people's lives as material before hopping back out of poverty) and spends some months living the life of someone at the bottom of the pile, economically and socially-speaking. It’s written in such a way, with a cast of characters that seem more literary than real that it’s hard to believe that it is (at least partly) non-fiction. There is ‘Charlie’, who discourses on his discovery of ‘love’ with a terrified prostitute, and ‘Bozo’ the astronomer-screever (street artist), among many, many others. Meanwhile the description of life as a plongeur (the bottom rung of employee in a Parisian hotel-restaurant), the colourful and slightly disorientating account of Saturday night at Orwell’s preferred Parisian tavern, and the Russian secret society operating out of a laundrette similarly test the suspension of disbelief. Which also made it incredibly readable and compelling; I gobbled it up in about 4 hours.

Poverty 'over here'

The cover of my own 1984 edition

Anyway, we’re all here to witness my journey of intellectual enlightenment on development matters. Or for The Thick of It lovers, in Phil’s words, “my quest to become the man I know I can be". And in that context, it’s a useful tonic as someone who spends a fair amount of their life reading about and acting on poverty located outside their own society. It’s a cliché but poverty is a massive problem in ‘developed’ countries too, perhaps even reaching levels of a 'humanitarian crisis', and though it was published in 1933 the number of homeless people I awkwardly avoid eye contact with on a daily basis in London or Madrid (especially) suggests it’s still unfortunately relevant. On top of that, not only does the whole story take place in my own geographical space, the language and style of the writing means that it’s coming from my own cultural and class world. It shouldn’t be this way, but inevitably as a card-carrying public schoolboy (sounds awful doesn’t it?), reading an account of extreme poverty as ‘discovered’ by an ‘Etonian’ about 90 years ago is even more potent for me in some ways than having lived among extremely poor people in a rural area of Uganda for two months. The fact that writing all that has made me feel uncomfortable is probably another credit to the book. Too many middle class white people with no idea what poverty is like in ‘development’. ANYWAY.

A simple representation of poverty

Leaving aside nights spent in a postcolonial-theory-induced cold sweat, Orwell is super eloquent at illustrating the daily hardships and impossible decisions that people without money have to go through. It’s kind of the literary counterpart to reading Poor Economics which similarly aims to get away from grand theories and down to the realities of poor people, whatever your opinion of RCTs. We see the reality of the people on the other side of the wall in the fancy restaurant, who are basically invisible in contemporary media or politics (though this is a good article if you read Spanish). Going without food for days at a time feels “as though all one’s blood had been pumped out and luke-warm water substituted”. Life moving from one lodging house to another is “a squalid, eventless life of crushing boredom.”

One especially relevant point for this blog is the indignity of poverty and the power relations charity hides: on more than one occasion Orwell and his homeless friend Paddy are forced to accept a religious service in exchange for food, which he describes as a humiliating experience. In development land, it kind of links into Hattori's idea on giving as a means of legitimating the ethical hegemony of capitalism if that isn't too pretentious to mention (if you can stomach it, gated paper is here). Money, and especially charity, gives power at a very basic level. Orwell notes,“[i]t 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”. The parallels with international development here are obvious. Structural adjustment imposed by the IMF and World Bank in the 1980s and 1990s would do nicely, or, playing devil’s advocate you might well draw parallels with some donors’ recent suspension of aid over Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill. Don’t quote me on that.

Though Orwell also describes little acts of resistance which are kind of brilliant. At one point a religious group spontaneously enters a hostel to give a service to the lodgers, presumably to ‘save their souls’. “No more notice was taken of them than f they had been earwigs”. Taking up the structural adjustment parallel again, you can kind of see this in the way that some developing-country governments made a complete mockery of the imposed conditionality. Easterly's great for this: in The Elusive Quest for Growth, he states that Pakistan was given no less than 22 adjustment loans conditional on reducing its budget deficit... which was steady at 7% of GDP throughout. Van der Walle also depicts this amazingly.

Anyway before I end up summarising the entire book, the message in general is (if there is one) that the poor are people like you and me. Orwell says it better: “the rich and poor are differentiated by their incomes and nothing else, and the average millionaire is only the average dishwasher dressed in a new suit”. There’s a really poignant illustration of this (can’t help myself) quite late in the book, when Orwell, clearly in low spirits, suggests to Bozo, a disabled homeless person that “[i]t seems to me that when you take a man’s money away he’s fit for nothing from that moment”. And Bozo replies with moving defiance, “You’ve just got to say to yourself, ‘I’m a free man in here’ – he tapped his forehead – and you’re all right”.

The broader picture

Oh and Orwell is humble. Self-deprecating (British) and humble. And that’s the beauty: that there is no stylised, trite narrative or direct attempt at mobilisation, just a plain presentation of experiences. The political implications are left for the reader to decide. It starts without back-story – “The rue du Coq d’Or, Paris, seven in the morning.” – and ends just as simply -“My story ends here. It is a fairly trivial story”. There’s definitely a moral to be drawn in the development world: the importance of decentring the role of ‘outsiders’ in defining the issues. Actually quite a nice illustration of this in this interview with Bill Easterly (about two-thirds of the way through I think).

Having said that, Orwell does venture some tentative opinions about the underlying dynamics of poverty and the injustice of the system. His explanation of the utter social uselessness of a plongeur and of fancy restaurants and hotels, for example, is persuasive (all that strife for a “cheap, shoddy imitiation [of luxury]”). In general the attack on the materialism and superficiality of society is probably even more relevant now than then, even if the politics then were different, as we now unfortunately don’t have any politics in the UK at least ("Q&A centred on people lamenting the state of the British Left or even whether such a thing still exists"). But the Marxist-inspired ‘keeping-the-mob-occupied-for-fear-of-revolution’ argument was probably more relevant in the 1930s, so I won’t dwell on the theorising too much, be cause neither does Orwell – just “a sample of the thoughts that are put into one’s head by working in a hotel”. Humble.

Much to think about, and development-related too, without there being a single line of argument. It’s a great read, and I’ll definitely be moving on to The Road to Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia. I’ll leave you with the man himself for a modest conclusion:

“I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.”

[note: I feel obliged to mention that Orwell is weirdly racist and anti-Semitic for someone I think of as progressive, but I choose not to dwell for the purposes of this blog]