Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell is ranked 1213th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the author has Nineteen Eighty Four in sixth place, Animal Farm in 54th, Homage to Catalonia in 431st, The Essays in 917th, we can see clearly that we have here one of the greatest writers, there will be more notes in this space about his magnum opera – just as I have more than five thousand reviews of books from the GOAT and other sites, along with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies of All Time and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell is ranked 1213th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, where the author has Nineteen Eighty Four in sixth place, Animal Farm in 54th, Homage to Catalonia in 431st, The Essays in 917th, we can see clearly that we have here one of the greatest writers, there will be more notes in this space about his magnum opera – just as I have more than five thousand reviews of books from the GOAT and other sites, along with notes on films from The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies of All Time and other lists on my blog and YouTube channel https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

9 out of 10

 

After reading The Essays https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/10/reflections-on-gandhi-by-george-orwell.html of Geroge Orwell I felt so exhilarated that I had to find some other works to continue this joy ride, ergo Down and Out in Paris was finished today, and then there was The Real Geroge Orwell, a play that I listened to yesterday

 

Down and Out in Paris and London makes the reader feel so many things, including gratitude, which is the key according to Sonja Lyubomirsky  https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html and other experts on positive psychology, in this case, I see that I have been so lucky

Geroge Orwell has had a lot of excruciating experiences – from the Shooting of An Elephant, there is an essay on that – to his life in Paris and London, where he worked as a ‘plongeur’ aka dish washer, and suffered from hunger, cold, disease – he would contract tuberculosis in a French hospital, which would lead to his early death

 

The working conditions are appalling, he has to prepare the food and serve it for the ‘higher employees’, enduring the insults, indeed, he was employed because the head waiter likes to curse an English man, the place is filthy, they take food dropped on the floor and serve it, cheat on the bills, but then the rich Americans know no better

Actually, writing the above I look at their precious, orange leader and what an enormous ghoul, eejit he is – briefly, for the latest: he wants to give himself 230 million of tax payers money, on top of the corruption that made him a billionaire in the last months, kills people in boats in the Caribbean, raised tariffs on Canada because of an ad promoted by Ontario, with quotes from Reagan, he is about to start a war with Venezuela, but the bigger problem is that nearly half of Americans support this monster, a disgusting thing

 

When Orwell aka Eric Arthur Blair writes about the poor, tramps, the lower classes so to say, he knows their life intimately, he has been through this ordeal described in the essay The Spike https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/the-spike-by-george-orwell-is-second.html and How The Poor Die

The people he has met are no different from the ‘rich’, and my own experience seems to confirm this, first of all, we have been poor under Ceausescu – with exceptions I sometimes meet at the gym, fat cats who regret the dictator – though there are things we have not had to go through, the dirtiness of the workhouses for instance

 

The tramps get into one of those establishments, they have to use the water from the others, only two tabs for tens of them, in fact, most of them wash only their faces and feet – there is a smell of dirtiness that the essayist will never forget he says – but the worst thing seems to be the knowledge that their lives are futile

Orwell has some suggestions, such as creating gardens near these spikes, so that the poor have something to do, a sense of meaning – PERMA is the formula proposed by the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman, and the M stands for meaning, which lacks – or did – in the existence of those unfortunate people

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

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