Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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Isherwood, Christopher (1945). "Preface", The Berlin Stories. New Directions Publishing Corporation. In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965). Bradshaw decides to have some fun with this awkward fellow Englishman to help pass the time on his journey and as a result becomes embroiled in his life and mysterious mercantile machinations. Isherwood’s The Berlin Novels explore the chaotic and troubling world of pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany. The vignettes read like a collection of photographic snap-shots, illuminating the various characters Isherwood knew in 1930’s Berlin, as it has a strong autobiographical connection, Isherwood’s prose is simple and straightforward, his characters are a collection of various misfits and miscreants who populate the Berlin in which Isherwood lurched from one sordid adventure to another. From the unforgettable Sally Bowles to the lachrymose Bernhard Landauer, Isherwood has a gift for creating well-rounded and memorable characters within short spaces of time; that is his gift as a writer, his characters are often symbolised by their physical features or their odd quirks and eccentricities which Isherwood so cleverly conveys;

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

Isherwood even has the oblivious Norris deliver a moment of ironic awareness of the situation in Germany. Fryer, Jonathan (1977). Isherwood: A Biography. Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-12608-5. And Goodbye to Berlin is an account of fellow tenants and all kinds of wretches abiding in Berlin. The most picturesque piece of it is Sally Bowles which pleasantly reminded me of Breakfast at Tiffany’s… 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. This made me ponder the history of New York, and in particular the Lower East Side, which I learned on my tour of The Tenement Museum was the area of NYC where German, Prussian and Bohemian immigrants made their home in the 19th century. It made me wonder whether NYC’s Germanic past was a reason for the present day culture having similarities to that of interwar Berlin.

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Proof, finally, that time is nonlinear! Liza Minelli's 'Sally Bowles' must have walked right off a 1973 screening of that great musical, 'Cabaret' and into Isherwood's Berlin of the early 1930s. Isherwood need not have even mentioned her name and we'd know Liza/Sally anywhere, anytime, any place when Isherwood writes:

MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS

A Berlin Diary - 1930- tells of his land lady & the people who boarded with Chris, one being a prostitute.Sally Bowles- this is based on his friendship with a loose woman who wants to be an actress & has almost zero morals. The abortion section of this story had me very depressed. Cabaret was based on this short story. Isherwood began work on a much larger work he called The Lost before paring down its story and characters to focus on Norris. The book was critically and popularly acclaimed but years after its publication Isherwood denounced it as shallow and dishonest. It's not as dark as so much pre-WWII writing is. That's because most pre-WWII writing was written post-WWII and takes a look at the oncoming darkness head-on. With Isherwood it really seeps in so slowly you don't notice. Isherwood, Christopher (1976). Christopher and His Kind. Avon Books, a division of The Hearst Corporation. ISBN 0-380-01795-4 (Discus edition). It is somewhat more political than Mr Norris, given that it was written later and Hitler's power and influence was more pervasive.

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Nie Wieder Krieg! he shouted, holding up one of them by the corner of the cover, disgustedly, as though it were a nasty kind of reptile. Everybody roared with laughter. It was also interesting to read this book, knowing what was to happen in Germany and the world in the years following its publication. When published in 1935, although the Nazis were in power, the war was yet to start, the world was unaware of the atrocities that were to occur. While many of the characters in both books doubt war will ever happen, the narrator is less certain, predicting not only war, but ethnic mass murder. If only Neville Chamberlain had thought that way, things might have turned out very differently. Yes, I’d write about it a great deal. It is an exceedingly interesting subject, and I couldn’t, or I thought I couldn’t, go into it. It’s interesting because it’s so much more than just “homosexuality”; it’s very precious in a way, however inconvenient it may be. You see things from a different angle, and you see how everything is changed thereby. The Laundauers- a Jewish family well to do store owners' family who Chris starts to be friendly with especially the daughter Natalia & the nephew Bernhard.