The Road to Wigan Pier

New York, NY: Penguin Audiobooks. Very Good+. 1997. Audio Cassette. Very Good+ to Near Fine: Two Audio Cassette Tapes in excellent condition (they clearly have been played but show no wear or imperfections) housed in a crystal clear plastic case with all liner notes included and showing no discernible wear; the plastic case shows mild rubbing. Overall condition: Very Good+ to Near Fine. Abridged edition. Language: English. Running Time: 165 minutes. Weight: 5 ounces. Read by Alex Jennings. Pen 259. Audio Cassette. As a result of his experiences living with industrial workers in the North of England in the 1930s, Orwell created this searing study both for and against Socialism. "The road from Mandalay to Wigan is a long one...and the reasons for taking it are not immediately clear." Classic Orwell. He was an original among the literary giants of the first half of the 20th century, leaving us far too early, at the age of 46. His most famous novels are 'Animal Farm' and '1984' , Mandalay is in Burma (now known as Myanmar) where Orwell spent five years as a police officer in the 1920's; his experience inspired his novel 'Burmese Days' . In the late `30's, he demonstrated that his concerns about fascism were not all talk: he fought in the Spanish Civil War, and related that experience in 'Homage to Catalonia' . Between the latter two books, he experienced, and subsequently depicted the lives of the poor, working or not, during the Great Depression, in 'Down and Out in Paris and London' and this title, 'The Road to Wigan Pier.' Wigan is a small town in the Greater Manchester district located in northwestern England. It is part of what was "the industrial north," whose prosperity declined sharply after the First World War. Orwell, on an assignment for the "Left Book Club" visited Wigan, briefly shared the lives of the poor there, and wrote this account of his experience. The "Pier" in the title was a wharf on the Leeds and Liverpool canal that had been demolished even before Orwell arrived. He slept in a very sleazy boarding house, which he describes in detail. The vivid details include the dirty thumbprint of the owner, Mr. Brooker, on the slice of bread he would pass to Orwell as well as the fact that he slept, very crowded, four to a bedroom, and could not stretch his legs out fully in his bed until another roomer had left for work. The area around Wigan was coalmining country. He went down in the mine, a tall man in a short man's world. Just to get to work, that is, the coal face, once underground, a man would have to walk, at a crouch, between one and six miles! Miners were physically fit, they had to be, to get to work, and then shovel the coal onto the conveyor belts. Orwell then describes the miner's homes, and daily lives. There was a "housing shortage." None of the miner's homes had a bathroom. There was a communal one, which might involve a walk of 50 to 200 yards. Imagine that, with five children! He describes the problems of bathing, and the efforts required to obtain hot water. He lays out the finances of their lives; a constant struggle, with disaster only one accident away. Orwell does this with a reporter's flat affect; no purple prose, the facts themselves would convey the pathetic misery of their daily lives. In the second part of the book Orwell examines what should be done about this. He is frank about the class structure in England, describing how as a member of the "lower upper middle class" he was taught not to associate with the poor, and how he developed an attitude towards the "common" people: "And what is this attitude? An attitude of sniggering superiority punctuated by bursts of vicious hatred." As Orwell puts it, he studied Greek for 8-10 years in school, and cannot repeat the alphabet, "...but your snobbishness, unless you persistently root it out like the bindweed it is, sticks by you till your grave." An often overlooked Orwell classic. .