Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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A supreme example of a radiant prose rhythm married to the most delicious dialogue – a portrait of the subtly ruinous Mr Norris. Sebastian Barry, Week How does the author's use of introspection versus action contribute to the overall tone and message of the novel? First published in 1935 and 1939, the two related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which make up The Berlin Stories are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Goodbye To Berlin, which is the inspiration for the stage and film musical, Cabaret, is a series of six vignettes documenting aspects of life in 1930s Berlin.

Mr. Norris Changes Trains | The Modern Novel Isherwood: Mr. Norris Changes Trains | The Modern Novel

This same detached observer is present in GOODBYE TO BERLIN. Indeed, Isherwood tells us as much in the opening paragraph of the novel: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." This is misleading, as Isherwood's narrator actually thinks quite a lot throughout the novel (and of course there is no such thing as narrative objectivity), leveling incisive judgments across the book's six chapters as he introduces us to Berlin's 1930s red-light district and a cast of alternately quirky and doomed characters, including the infamous Sally Bowles, who would go on to be immortalized in the film Cabaret. As with THE LAST OF MR. NORRIS, the hysteria-tinged nightclubs, underground bars, and restaurants of Berlin are the main characters of GOODBYE TO BERLIN, and there is a permeating sense of nostalgic melancholy that lends the novel a poignancy in light of what the reader knows -- and the narrator suspects -- will happen to everyone. Mr Norris Changes Trains isn’t much more than a lukewarm and meandering character study that only ever dances round the themes of betrayal and political intrigue. Whilst the 'friendship' (wink wink) between the hapless Bradshaw and urbane Norris is entertaining, it always felt superficial. Throughout the entire novel, the relationship remains an ongoing enigma. Norris was potentially a very interesting character: he is himself a conundrum, a man of contradictions - why on earth would he even befriend Bradshaw in the first place?!! But the mystery that surrounds Norris is never entirely fruitful; his motives aren't clarified and Isherwood never gets to the crux of the Norris/Schmidt hoo-ha. In essence, the teasing intrigue doesn't mature into anything truly gripping - or satisfying. With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows. Not all of the diary is riveting material. I could have done without the 1931 summer with Peter and Otto. However, it does serve as an introduction to the Nowak family Isherwood later lodges with. It also allows us to glimpse the ferrety doctor on the island who offers the unsolicited observation that Peter has a “criminal head.” His remedy is discipline. “These boys ought to be put into labour-camps.” (89). So much for the voice of “respectability.” While I enjoyed the first novella (Mr. Norris Changes Trains) for its characterization and rather unexpected ending, it is the second novella I love.

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While I enjoy Mr. Norris Changes Trains for its characterization and rather unexpected ending, it is the second novel—Goodbye to Berlin-- I love.

Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood | Goodreads Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood | Goodreads

Isherwood originally intended to call this novel The Lost, a title he conceived in German, Die Verlorenen. The title The Lost would have encompassed three different meanings: "those who have lost their way", by which he meant Germans who were being misled by Adolf Hitler; "the doomed", those like the character Bernard Landauer whom Hitler had already marked for destruction; and "those whom respectable Society regards as moral outcasts", like the characters Sally Bowles, Otto Nowak and Mr Norris himself. [5] Isherwood began writing the book in 1934, while he and his companion Heinz Neddermayer were living in the Canary Islands. The Lost was initially planned as a much more comprehensive work, but Isherwood jettisoned much of the material and many of the characters, including Sally Bowles, the Nowaks and the Landauers, to focus on Mr Norris. This process he likened to the surgery performed to separate Siamese twins, "freeing Norris from the stranglehold of his brothers and sisters". [6] The excised material formed the basis for the rest of his Berlin Stories. He completed work on the novel on 12 August of that year. [7] He'd gone to Berlin in 1929 for one reason: the boys. He couldn't say this in the 1930s, when the stories were first published, or even in the 1950s, when a new edition came out. He said it in Christopher and His Kind. He was determined, finally, to be honest, to out himself fully. A Single Man marks the beginning of this process. "I think it’s the only book of mine where I did more or less what I wanted to do," he said in a 1972 interview in Paris Review.

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Miles, Jonathan (2010). The Nine Lives of Otto Katz. The Remarkable Story of a Communist Super-Spy. London, Bantam Books. ISBN 978-0-553-82018-8. He immortalised Berlin in two short, brilliant novels both published in the Thirties, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye To Berlin, inventing a new form for future generations - intimate, stylised reportage in loosely connected episodes Daily Express The other chapters cover Sally Bowles (the star of Cabaret, played by Liza Minelli), the Nowak family of poor, lower class Germans, the Landauer family of wealthy Jewish businessmen, increasingly under pressure and on a downward spiral, and another chapter which documents a summer holiday Isherwood (narrator) spent with two other young men, which has strong homosexual overtones. (Isherwood was openly homosexual, in a relationship with poet W H Auden). Thanks! She's such a great writer, so it's been a pleasure to delve into her stories in more detail. Peninsula… Isherwood evokes the Berlin of the early 1930s as the Nazis are on the rise but are opposed by others, particularly the Communists. He clearly does not have a great deal of faith in the Communists, who are almost as much schemers as the Nazis. However, his portrait of Norris is superb. Here is a man, oily, dishonest, deceitful, of not particularly pleasant appearance, always out to make some money, even if at the expense of others, including his friends, yet we cannot help but have a soft spot for him. This is partially because there are those worse than him (the Nazis and Schmidt) and partially because we see him through Bradshaw’s eyes who, despite Norris’ behaviour, clearly also has a soft spot for him. Publishing history

Mr Norris Changes Trains - Penguin Books Australia Mr Norris Changes Trains - Penguin Books Australia

Isherwood shows Berlin on edge. It is a world of rented rooms, where the land lady may provide breakfast and draw the baths for those who scrape to pay a marginal rent. Former gentlemen, beautiful women and unemployed laborers have become grifters. There is gravitation to some philosophy which could be communism, nazism, nihilism, etc. The idea was not mine, William. Rather a graceful tribute, don’t you think, to the Iron Chancellor?”There are things about the story and its setting that made me think of Sex And The City and also Girls. Isherwood’s Berlin is full of bright young things and grifters who are living beyond their means in an effort to be somebody. It’s a shallow existence, and the only people who actually make something of it are the rich, because they don’t need to think about where the next pfennig is coming from. A good example of this is Fritz Wendel, who could be Charlotte in SATC or Marnie in Girls.