Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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Sally, Otto, Peter, Bernhard…does Christopher seek out neurotic, wayward people because he “likes” them or because as a writer he finds them fascinating? I wonder,’ she was fond of remarking, ‘what they’d say if they knew that we two old tramps were going to be the most marvelous novelist and the greatest actress in the world.’

Mr Norris Changes Trains - Penguin Books UK

Sospirò. “Sono troppo vecchio per questo genere di storie. Questi continui viaggi … mi fanno molto male”. It is indeed tragic to see how, even in these days, a clever and unscrupulous liar can deceive millions. His glance, now vacant for a moment, was clouded again. An unpleasant thought seemed to tease him like a wasp; he moved his head slightly to avoid it."For "Mr Norris Changes Trains" is set in a very well-defined place and moment of recent history: Berlin in the mid-thirties. That is precisely when Hitler seized power tightening his grip on a whole nation and - quite soon - changing for worse Europe as we knew it. Isherwood wrote the above quote in the forward to a book by Gerald Hamilton aptly called Mr. Norris and I that was published in 1956. Isherwood based the character of Mr. Norris on his friend Gerald Hamilton. Isherwood was being hard on himself. He originally went to Berlin in the 1930s to experience the deviant sexual lifestyle that was available to a young Englishman in search of expressing his sexual preferences, preferences that may have been considered deviant in the community he grew up in. In 1935 when this book was published very few people knew just how horrible things would become and those that could imagine some of it could not imagine the worst of it. It was no good; we had returned to our verbal card-playing. The moment of frankness, which might have redeemed so much, had been elegantly avoided. Arthur’s orientally sensitive spirit shrank from the rough, healthy, modern catch-as-catch-can of home-truths and confessions; he offered me a compliment instead. Here we were, as so often before, at the edge of that delicate, almost visible line which divided our two worlds. We should never cross it now. I wasn’t old or subtle enough to find the approach.

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

PDF / EPUB File Name: Mr_Norris_Changes_Trains_-_Christopher_Isherwood.pdf, Mr_Norris_Changes_Trains_-_Christopher_Isherwood.epub Goodbye to Berlin is a 1939 novel by Christopher Isherwood set in Weimar Germany. It is written as a connected series of six short stories and novellas. These are: "A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)", "Sally Bowles", "On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931)", "The Nowaks", "The Landauers" and "A Berlin Diary (Winter 1932-3)". And yes, reading it drew a complete blank in my virginal dreamspace about any possibility of Isherwood coming from what we - who may number among his ideological descendants - now call LGBTQ Land. This novel begins with William Bradshaw, a young English tutor, meeting the slightly ridiculous Mr Arthur Norris on a train to Berlin. Mr Norris is nervous at having to present his passport, elusive about what he does and, with his rather obvious wig and odd habits, does not seem as though he is a character to take seriously at first. However, this chance meeting results in a firm friendship and, fairly soon, William is visiting his new friend frequently and becomes involved in his disreputable life and associates; including his bullying secretary Herr Schmidt.British-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist. William Bradshaw, an English teacher in Berlin, has a chance encounter on a train with the slightly sinister Arthur Norris. On the surface Norris is a charming, if highly strung and down at heel, English gentleman. As the reader realises, and well before Bradshaw, Norris's charm masks a morally bankrupt personality. The character of Arthur Norris was based on a real life character, who Christopher Isherwood befriended in Berlin, called Gerald Hamilton. The rise of Hitler is starting to intrude on their lives, and one of Christopher’s friends makes an observation that could apply to politics today. ”The political moral is certainly depressing: these people could be made to believe in anybody or anything.”

MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS MR NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS

Norris has a predilection to being dominated and beaten. A severe young lady named Anni with long boots and an assortment of whips provides him with the equivalent of sexual release in the form of controlled torture. To Norris, Anni is a beauty beyond earthly compare. I liked this book a lot but maybe I’m wrong to like it. Isherwood himself ended up hating it saying it was dishonest and shallow. I think he is being too hard on himself. Literally on himself, because the narrator, William Bradshaw, is more than just an alter-ego; it’s the author himself. Isherwood came to the conclusion that it was William who was the villain of the novel, insensitive to the misery and horror that was surrounding him in the prewar Germany. William and Mr Norris succeed in crossing the frontier. Afterward, Mr Norris invites William to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin they see each other frequently (including eating ham and eggs at the first class restaurant of Berlin Friedrichstraße railway station). Several oddities of Mr Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Mr Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt, who tyrannises him. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin. Or - horrors - was I the reason for their manic antics? Or my book about which I still knew nothing, not being able to see where it was coming from? He had an animal innocence," Isherwood sums up Mr Norris -- no, I mean Gerald Hamilton (1890-1970), the flamboyant and flabby rogue who inspired Mr Norris. The 2 met, presumably, in Berlin where Issyvoo lived fr 1929-33. This may be the coolest and finest book Isherwood wrote. If he groused about it years later, it's because he was probably ashamed of his own political naivete.The two main characters are thinly disguised. The narrator is a young man called William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names) who is travelling to Berlin to be a private tutor. Because Isherwood wanted to put the main focus on Norris, he makes Bradshaw a voyeur who watches what goes on and provides commentary. This makes Bradshaw seem morally neutral (and sexually neutral). Isherwood later thought this might have been a mistake, making it seem as though he was lying about himself. Bradshaw’s moral neutrality also gives the impression that he does not care about what is going on around him.