Review of George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London"

[The above video is mostly a reading of the text below, with an occasional aside thrown in for good measure as they strike me as relevant.  I welcome questions, comments, or concerns about the material contained in this video.]

The title isn't pretentious; it doesn't claim to be something it isn't. This book is, quite literally, about being down and out in Paris and London. Having been published in 1933 it is, as far as I know, the first full-length book that Orwell published. However early it comes in his career, you can sense some of the nascent ideas and concerns that would haunt his work for the rest of his life: the virtues of democratic socialism and the plight of the working poor. 

In Paris, Orwell takes a job as a plongeur in an anonymous hotel. He trenchantly describes the "caste system" that exists within all of the finest hotels in Paris, from the manager to the lowest of the low, the dishwashers. His work is grueling, lasting up to fourteen or sixteen hours a day, only to go home, get almost no sleep, and have to do the same thing the next day, six days a week. While in Paris, he befriends an ex-military Russian by the name of Boris who is much the same predicament. Eager to find a job that allowed more than a few hours of sleep every night, he eventually quits his job and heads to London. 

When he arrives in London, he is without a job and is forced to live in hostels and lodging houses. Because of British law which says that you can't stay in the same one for more than a few days, he is forced into becoming a transient. In London, he meets several people, including the Irishman Paddy and Bozo, a street artist. His ability to relate to them as more than simply "homeless" people is extraordinarily honest and sincere. He openly admits that these people are every bit as interesting (sometimes more so) than the middle-class Parisians and Londoners who walk the city streets and look down on Orwell and his friends. 

The details of his day-to-day life can be debilitating to anyone with even a soupcon of optimism, but the book isn't without its gems. There are a handful of times when Orwell interrupts the action of the novel and interjects his critical social commentary. Even though they only last a couple of pages a piece, this constitutes some of the best writing in the book, reminiscent his greatest essays. This is a shining example, from Chapter XXXIV on "tramps":

"To take a fundamental question about vagrancy: Why do tramps exist at all? It is a curious thing, but very few people know what makes a tramp take to the road. And, because of the belief in the tramp-monster, the most fantastic reasons are suggested. It is said, for instance, that tramps tramp to avoid work, to beg more easily, to seek opportunities for crime, even - least probable of reasons - because they like tramping. I have even read in a book of criminology that the tramp in an atavism, a throwback to the nomadic stage of humanity. And meanwhile the quite obvious cause of vagrancy is staring one in the face. Of course a tramp is not a nomadic atavism - one might as well say that a commercial traveler is an atavism. A tramp tramps, not because he likes it, but for the same reason as a car keeps to the left; because there happens to be a law compelling him to do so. A destitute man, if he is not supported by the parish, can only get relief at the casual wards, and as each casual ward will only admit him for one night, he is automatically kept moving. He is a vagrant because, in the state of the law, it is that or starve. But people have been brought up to believe in the tramp-monster, and so they prefer to think that there must be some more of less villainous motive for tramping" (p. 201).