Paris and Orwell

There are so many restaurants and cafes in Paris. I know people who read various magazines and guides to deduce the best places to eat and drink while staying in the City of Lights, and I have benefited often from their research. Inevitably, the highly rated establishment are chock full of tourists clamoring to try the best of Parisian culinary cuisine. But for me, I am struck by the sheer volume of cafes, restaurants, and bars in the city. There are so many that how they manage to be viable is mysterious. Each arrondissement has its own set of little places, often wedged into a confined place, or hidden down a winding passage. Some cafes are more expensive than others, but each offers a different experience.

It is difficult to walk through Paris and not think about George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London. His description of Paris of the 1920s not only give us an insight to the Paris that he found fascinating, but also about crushing poverty and deprivation. Intermixed with the fascinating stories of individuals and circumstances, the book explains why poverty and deprivation rob people of the identification and dignity.

A late spring evening in Paris

At first, this seems to set up a depressing narrative, and to be sure, there are depressing and horrifying incidents recounted in the book. Yet, Orwell’s account of a local cafe on a Saturday evening, when people gather for friendship and fun, continues to be repeated across the city today. The cafes in the 11th Arrondissement are a place of conversation and conviviality. Of course, there is overindulgence by some, but it is generally good natured.

Many people in developed parts of the world today will have started their working careers in the service sector, as a server, bartender, or kitchen help often. Orwell survived in Paris as working as a plongeur (dishwasher) in a famous hotel that catered to American tourists. Later, he moved to a newly opened restaurant that attracted a certain clientele. The key to a successful Parisian restaurant, according to Orwell, was “very sharp table knives” to easily cut through tough meat and give the illusion that the meat was high quality. He noted that understanding this destroyed his illusion that the French were appreciative of great food. Yet, today, Paris and France are generally known for the perpetuation of an excellent cuisine. I sometimes wonder if the excitement of travel, our belief that the food must be good, that we become inattentive to the actual quality. 

The narrator takes up with the Irishman Paddy when he makes his way to London. Paddy habitually scans the sidewalks for discarded cigarette butts with trace amounts of tobacco. He gathers tobacco together to fashion his own cigarettes for consumption. Orwell often laments the lack of tobacco in his life when he is desperately poor. Smoking, while still common in Europe, has declined dramatically since the 1920s. Yet, while walking early one morning on Rue du Faubourg du Temple, I observed a similar practice. It was very early in the morning of Ascension Thursday, a national holiday in many European countries. Morning revelers continued their party at half past eight in the morning; I watched a group of young people order another round of beers at an hour when most people would normally be fight traffic on the way to work. An older man was scanning window ledges and posts for discarded cups to see if any had any remaining beer. He would pick up the discarded beer, and after a brief inspection, would marry the newly discovered cup with his own. He celebrated by taking a bug swig of the newly created concoction for himself.

Towards the end of his stay in Paris, the narrator was working so many hours, and was so broke, that he slept on a park bench rather than spending money on a Metro ticket and facing his landlord without his rent. While we think that life has gotten better, societies are still confronted with the reality of poverty and mental health remain problems today. During my walk in the Place de la République and surrounding area one morning, I saw a person sleeping on a bench, their sleeping bag completely concealing their body and using a canvas grocery tote as a pillow. I thought of Orwell doing the same, perhaps just a few kilometers away, some ninety years ago.

Baltimore in January

US Route 1 winds its way through some of the most depressed areas of Baltimore; it is a route heavy with boarded up buildings and general urban decay. The overcast day in mid-January, when I traversed the road, was an appropriate backdrop for this trip through the center of the city. Although the temperature was in the med-30s, several elderly people sat in the front of the ubiquitous row houses, seeming companionship and distraction. One man was feeding pigeons outside his house; two women sat on a stoop, speaking animatedly to one another.

Row houses along Monroe Street in central Baltimore

There were several handmade signs along the route that pointed to a general feeling of despair. In an abandoned lot, painted in purple, one sign read, “Enough is Enough.” At a liquor store, closed during my mid-morning excursion or perhaps permanently, the word “pray” was painted below the store’s damaged sign. A little further on, in another abandoned lot, trash, almost ankle deep, strewn around a hand-painted sign, optimistically proclaimed, “Every problem has a solution.”

Yet, it must not seem so to many of the residents I imagine. Orwell observed: “It is fatal to look hungry. It makes people want to kick you.” A drug addled or mentally ill, perhaps both, man was soliciting money from cars waiting at a light near the intersection of Monroe and Mulberry, where two of the country’s most important routes, US 1 and US 40 meet. He was wearing a grey sweatshirt with a hood and dark pants, insufficient for the windy cold day that it was. Even though he was relatively young, perhaps in his thirties, he had difficulty navigating around the cars; he looked as if he was going to fall several times and placed a hand on several of the cars waiting at the light to steady himself. An ambulance, on an emergency run, came through the intersection. The cars moved to one side to allow it to pass; the man gazed at the ambulance from the middle of road with a look of incomprehension darting across his face.

It is stunning that these scenes occur along these two great highways: one that navigates the east coast, the other runs from New Jersey to Utah down the center of the country. Despite being right along the major thoroughfares, places like Baltimore are a part of the country that many of the powerful have forgotten or, perhaps, they choose to avert their gaze. Structural poverty creates a never ending cycle of misery and despair. Often it is hidden in plain sight.