The Berlin Stories [Paperback]

Christopher Isherwood (Author), Armistead Maupin (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 17, 2008

A classic of 20th-century fiction, The Berlin Stories inspired the Broadway musical and Oscar-winning film Cabaret.

First published in the 1930s, The Berlin Stories contains two astonishing related novels, The Last of Mr. Norris and Goodbye to Berlin, which are recognized today as classics of modern fiction. Isherwood magnificently captures 1931 Berlin: charming, with its avenues and cafés; marvelously grotesque, with its nightlife and dreamers; dangerous, with its vice and intrigue; powerful and seedy, with its mobs and millionaires—this is the period when Hitler was beginning his move to power. The Berlin Stories is inhabited by a wealth of characters: the unforgettable Sally Bowles, whose misadventures in the demimonde were popularized on the American stage and screen by Julie Harris in I Am A Camera and Liza Minnelli in Cabaret; Mr. Norris, the improbable old debauchee mysteriously caught between the Nazis and the Communists; plump Fräulein Schroeder, who thinks an operation to reduce the scale of her Büste might relieve her heart palpitations; and the distinguished and doomed Jewish family, the Landauers.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Christopher Isherwood was a diverse writer whose accomplishments included The Mortmere Stories (Edward Upward Series), A Single Man and a translation of The Song of God (Bhagavad Gita). But many critics hailed The Berlin Stories, the reissue of two of his best novels, as his finest. In the book, a man named Christopher Isherwood, who is and is not the author, writes a story of exile, combining the best of Isherwood's real life with the best of the life he imagined. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

He writes his language--it is not always our language--with the tonal exactitude and humorous economy of a man who can be conventional, so distinct is his verbal inheritance. Isherwood's writing has the music of the old English fineness in it. It never presses or stammers ... he is a man who touches his language with affectionate brush strokes in exile. -- The New York Times Book Review, Alfred Kazin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: New Directions; Reissue edition (September 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081121804X
• ISBN-13: 978-0811218047
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.1 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,386 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Isherwood (1902-86) lived in Berlin from 1928 to 1933 and immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in 20th-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than 20 books including the novels Prater Violet and a series of short stories that inspired the musical Cabaret.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The bohemia of Berlin before the Nazi menace May 29, 2004

By D. Cloyce Smith TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

Between 1929 and 1933 Isherwood lived in Berlin and, after returning in London, he wrote the novel and the autobiographical sketches that make up this volume. Just how autobiographical these stories might be is left to the reader's imagination, of course, but they seemed to be based on German eccentrics whom the author knew and whom the reader will be unable to forget.

The novel that opens the book, "The Last of Mr. Norris" (published in 1935 in England as "Mr. Norris Changes Trains"), is a somewhat comic portrayal of a bumbling, vain double agent who wears an ill-fitting wig and operates in the sleazy underworld contested by Communist idealists and Nazi thugs. The narrator, William Bradshaw, is a British expatriate tutoring English to young Germans in Berlin--someone, in other words, a lot like Isherwood himself. He encounters Norris on a train, and they initiate an often bizarre, always uneasy, on-again, off-again friendship that propels them through drunken nights in sleazy pubs and dangerous rendezvous at Swiss ski resorts.

In the second half of the book, "Goodbye to Berlin" (published in 1939), Isherwood drops the alter-ego and presents himself as the narrator. Character sketches alternate with "diary entries" and feature an overlapping cast, and some of the minor figures from "Mr. Norris" make important cameos. The most famous story is "Sally Bowles," which later became John Van Druten's play "I Am a Camera" and inspired the musical "Cabaret."

Equally notable, however, is the homoerotic "On Ruegen Island (Summer 1931)," which recounts Isherwood living in a lakeside cabin with the effete, insecure Peter and the athletic, sexually ambivalent Otto, whose Nordic beauty seems transmigrated from an Aryan Youth poster. Otto appears again in a subsequent section called "The Nowaks," about Isherwood's schizophrenic life while sharing a crowded attic apartment with Otto's dysfunctional family. The final sketch, "The Landauers," concerns Bernhard, the presumed heir of a wealthy Jewish family who operate a Berlin department store. Bernhard's airy cynicism and adopted Eastern spiritualism thwart his business sense and ill-prepare him for the political dangers overtaking the country.

Both "Mr. Norris" and "Goodbye to Berlin" share a comic esprit eventually overwhelmed by the gravity of the Nazi menace. Together, these stories are an ode to the carefree bohemians, flappers, intellectuals, and misfits who enlivened Berlin before they were swept away by Hitler and his bullying monsters.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Truly Memorable Look At Berlin of the 1930s: A Classic of Its Kind August 26, 2005

By Gary F. Taylor HALL OF FAMETOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Originally published as a separate volume in 1939, GOODBYE TO BERLIN includes SALLY BOWLES, which was itself first published as a separate volume in 1937. Frankly autobiographical in nature (the narrator is here given as Christopher Isherwood himself), the collection at first seems little more than a series of character portraits and random events--but as the work progresses it gathers into a dark, often disturbing portrait of Berlin as Germany drifts into the control of the Nazi party, a riot of personalities and swirl of events laced with references to national anti-Semitism and cultural xenophobia, all of it combining to invite the horrors that will cumulate in the cataclysm of World War II.

This is the heart of the book and easily it's greatest part, but it is accompanied by THE LAST OF MR. NORRIS, originally published as a separate work in 1935 as MR. NORRIS CHANGES TRAINS, a work that opens THE BERLIN STORIES. Substantial in and of itself, the short novel presents the relationship between the narrator (here given as Bradshaw) and an elderly and not quite likeable Mr. Norris--a man seemingly engaged in the import-export business but whose covert dealings will ultimate move him to betray even his closest friends. In terms of character and events the novel pales beside GOODBYE TO BERLIN, but in tone and scope it heightens the sense of a society in which anything, no matter how improbable, can happen, and it is very fine indeed.

Readers who come to THE BERLIN STORIES with the idea that they will encounter the plot of CABARET are in for a rude awakening; although the characters are similar, the stories involved are not. In the 1950s Isherwood authorized John Van Druten to dramatize GOODBYE TO BERLIN for the stage, and the result was a critically and commercially popular play titled I AM A CAMERA. Isherwood approved of the final result--but he was considerably less fond of CABARET, which presented a love affair between Isherwood and Sally Bowles as the backbone story. Isherwood, unapologetically homosexual, was outraged, telling friends that he had never had any romantic or sexual relationship with that or any other woman. Consequently, it is best to regard CABARET as a grandchild of THE BERLIN STORIES and to read Isherwood's work for its own merits rather than this connection.

And those merits are many. Throughout the entire collection, Isherwood shows a talent for creating characters that leap from the page, with the legendary Sally Bowles a case in point; his prose is also quite remarkable, an unexpected mix of the flatly direct and perceptively poetic. He writes in a style quite unlike any other author I have encountered. Many consider THE BERLIN STORIES his finest work; in any case, Isherwood's style and perspective makes it a commanding, fascinating read. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Terrible Publication Error!!! June 29, 2010

By Kevin Chard

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This review has nothing to do with wonderful written parts of the book. Instead it has all to do with the printed book itself. I have received two different copies of the same edition printed by New Directions Publications Corp. in 2008 and sold here at Amazon. Both of these copies, which I have since returned, have pages 176 and 177 from the first story, The Last of Mr. Norris, duplicated in the second story, A Goodbye to Berlin. I tried to contact the publisher about the problem but received no answer from the two emails I sent to them. So if you don't mind missing the information on these two pages, which I believe would actually have explained something that isn't to be found out later on, go ahead and order this missprinted copy of the book. But remember you've been WARNED!