Broke is boring, is the conclusion and point of this book. No shit George. Good on you though for putting yourself through grinding poverty to undergo a social experiment and then write an insightful book about it. I have neglected Orwell throughout my reading years, only to finally pick up my dusty copy of 1984 last year. It was like everyone told me it was – pretty good (and now I keep hearing references to ‘thought crime’ in songs; it’s always nice when you get the literary pop culture reference). I wish I had read this when I first arrived in London, because there are so many parallels between mine and Orwell’s (and I’m guessing pretty much all antipodeans that turn up to Old Blighty poor as possums) experience, just to varying degrees. Working as dishpig? Check. Walking to work because you can’t afford public transport? Check. Washing yourself at work because there was no hot water at home? Check (the place I was housesitting, the thermostat broke while the homeowner was away – it was March and freezing). So I felt I could relate to the Paris chapter, and especially the chaos of working in restaurants, with the hierarchy of chefs and waiters. Oh the heady days.
So it seems that being broke in Paris is a whole lot more exciting than being a tramp in London, because that is where the action ground to a halt, and I trudged through the pages to get to the end. I even picked it up one Saturday morning around 9am, read about 3 pages and then fell back asleep, book crushed under me, which never happens unless I’m completely bored, which I was by that stage. I kept waiting for his luck to change, but as he explains towards the end, poverty is an ongoing, relentless cycle, and once you’re there, it’s very hard to get a foot hold back amongst the middle classes, which sadly rings as true now as it did back then.
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HILARIOUS. I thought the same thing when I read this: Good job George. Being poor sucks.
ReplyDeleteI fucking loved this book. That said, I did read read it during my first, utterly impoverished week in London. And then I started working in hospitality. And then, briefly, I thought I was George, but that's only because I couldn't afford to eat and had begun hallucinating...
ReplyDeleteSo you might be right: this book may in fact detail every migrant's experience in London. But George was from here. I guess that is the sticking point of the book though, isn't it? You know that at any point, George could have pulled the pin. I know it looks like he didn't, but his whole premise is, as you said Nik, that poverty is a completely relentless, unbreakable cycle. But, for him, poverty wasn't an unending cycle: it had a very definite end. Which may have just coloured his whole experience.
Then again: Whatever, he wasn't out doing empirical research, was he? Just catching some stories and entertaining the peeps. Check.
I kind of liked the trampy bits, but mostly because of the characters. Who were, well, characters in that other sense of the word, and they kind of really bring his point home.
As for the rest of Orwell, good luck. I tried another one, with a picture of booze on the cover, that made me want to scratch my eyes out. I'll be interested to see how you get on.