Shows promise, for a plongeur
Down and Out in Paris and London, by George Orwell
£5.99, Penguin (2003)
“Orwellian” is an adjective much overused. On the basis of 1984 and Animal Farm, arguably his most famous works, Orwell’s name has become adjectival for the machinations of sinister, privacy-stealing organizations, especially the state in its most nannying moments. Like “Kafkaesque”, however, it’s possible the word has been misapplied by the majority, acquainted only with the great works of the man.
What should something be, then, if it is Orwellian? Concise, certainly. Journalistic, if that too is not a loaded qualifier, intimations of the middle- or lowbrow. Readable and companionable, like a long conversation with someone who always thinks right, even if they do not always conclude right. Not necessarily well written (whatever that means), but written with clarity and care.
Hints of all of these skills are evident in Orwell’s first novel(la), Down and Out in Paris and London. Clearly the rock on which such better formed works as Keep the Aspidistra Flying were built, Down and Out… provides an account of Orwell’s penury in the two great cities. Reportage to its core, in writing it Orwell has ditched thesaurus and ornamental language to provide a flawed—count how many times something is described as “queer”—but engaging commentary.
Not in itself a classic, then, but nonetheless unputdownable. Reading the whole book takes less than a few hours and leaves the reader with enormous insight into poverty, hunger, debasement: big topics dealt with by a tiny book, rich in grimy, dirty facts about the lifestyle that Orwell longed to understand, and knew in his middle-class heart that he never truly would. Perhaps, ultimately, this is the description of an Orwellian text: an economy of prose that nobody before or since has attained.
posted at: 17:22 |
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The Ruffian in the Bed
The Orton Diaries, by Joe Orton
£7.99, Canongate (2003)
Joe Orton blazed a trail across the skies of the London thespian scene in the 1960s. His plays, specifically Entertaining Mr. Sloane, Loot, The Ruffian on the Stair and What the Butler Saw, were blistering, amoral commentaries on contemporary society, yet still have a vicious, gleeful sting to them. He was as overtly homosexual as one could be at the time, indulging in cottaging and trips abroad for sex. Margaret Ramsay, his agent, persuaded him to begin writing a memoir for posterity’s sake; eight months later his long-suffering partner Kenneth Halliwell, having been prescribed drugs for depression, bludgeoned Joe to death and then committed suicide. The diaries, Halliwell wrote in his suicide note, would explain all.
What we learn primarily from these diaries is that Joe Orton had more than his fair share of bumsex, and a lot of it in Tangier. There’s more bumsex than you can shake a stick at, and Orton shakes his a great deal. Bumsex bumsex bumsex… you hopefully get the idea, but it’s a shame that Orton’s cock and arse eclipse such witty observational comedy. Every bus or train journey, Orton overhears and dutifully reports some ridiculous conversation snippet. He can be vicious about the middle class, and the lack of respect for literary peers and ancestors shown by both Orton and Halliwell landed them in jail for defacing library books.
To be fair, along with his tempestuous relationship with Halliwell (both emotional and professional, as Halliwell suggests changes and new ideas) the diaries reveal almost in passing so much about Orton. Reading between the lines of dirty talk, it’s clear that he was so angry that he had passed through inarticulation. He had honed a sharp, Swiftian knifeblade of comment that he then used to hack away at modern morality. He wrote quickly and keenly, revised just as quickly, and in the absence of the awful violence which did for him he’d probably still be writing now. I wonder what about. Bumsex, probably.
posted at: 15:51 |
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