"Down and Out in Paris and London" by George Orwell

[Sugar Smack]

I picked this book up after having read it 10 years ago last week. This is one of the greatest books about poverty I've ever read. A person who can describe acute hunger with such detail is someone I consider GREAT. He describes hunger and humiliation to the point where you can actually feel it.

I'm lucky enough to have actually felt hunger only a few times in my life.

I haven't read "Nickeled & Dimed" yet, nor have I read "The Broke Diaries". Can anyone tell me what you thought of them?

[Sugar Smack]

1. kick

for poverty. Woo-hoo!

[PassingFair]

2. Loved this book too!

But for my money, "Keep the Aspidistra Flying" is the more painful book. My middle class gut CHURNED reading it.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

3. "Nickel & Dimed" is really good

especially as it looks at the US. There's also a British imitation called "Below the Breadline" by Fran Abrams. I'll have to check out 'The Broke Diaries'.

Re Orwell - this may never make the leap to the States, but keen an eye out for a program called "George Orwell: A Life in Pictures":

George Orwell – A Life in Pictures uses a bold and original approach to put him on the screen. Chris Langham plays the writer and every word he speaks is as written by Orwell himself. But the pictures are all ‘invented’ – a specially created ‘archive’ because there’s not a single frame of archive footage of Orwell in existence. Not even one word or one of his trademark hacking coughs on recorded audio. All that is left is one oil painting and a couple of hundred photographs. By bringing to life his extraordinary treasure trove of writing - nine books and some eight thousand pages of journalism, essays, diaries and letters – the film creates a unique dramatised biography of Orwell.

Written essays become authored documentary films shot in the style of the day; events described in diaries are ‘captured’ on home movies; and Movietone footage is manipulated to reveal Orwell in the trenches of the Spanish Civil War. From Eton and Burma to London and Paris, Orwell’s writing – poignant and polemical, scathing and sometimes just funny – is at last caught on film.

http://www.walltowall.co.uk/projects/project.asp?ProjectID=214

Chris Langham - a brilliant comic actor (who was also the British writer for 'The Muppet Show') - plays Orwell.

An interesting fictional companion piece to 'Down & Out' & 'Nickel & Dimed' may be 'Hunger' by Knut Hamsun. Although he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in the 20's, he's fallen out of favour somewhat, because of his support for the Nazis.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0374525285/

(It is available online, but I have no idea of the quality of translation.)

[Elidor]

4. I've been meaning to read that and never have

One of those on my list. I'll have to make a point of ordering it.

[no name no slogan]

5. "Nickeled and Dimed" is EXCELLENT

particularly because Ehrenreich chose Minneapolis/St. Paul as one of her cities. Unfortunately for her, she hit town right as we had an affordable housing crisis (less than 1% vacancy rate here in the late 90s).

I'd also recommend "Hommage to Catalonia" by Orwell. If you think the infighting in GD is bad, read this. The picture he paints of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War is harrowing, to say the least.

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. i recently read that book and loved it