Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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40 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The bohemia of Berlin before the Nazi menace, May 29, 2004
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.
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17 of 17 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
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
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18 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A masterclass in the use of the english language, April 30, 1999
Together with Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Isherwood has to be regarded as one of the most proficient writers of english this century. His ability to capture a mood, a time and a place is remarkable, his efficiency in doing so is breath-taking.The Berlin Stories stand as a record of the seediness and more fundamental corruption of a city, a state and a people in the late 30s. Isherwood represents the impending shadow of nazism through the abdication of responsibility and self-protection of individual characters. Mr Norris, a Falstaff for the 20th Century, is half cartoon conman and half based on an actual person. His depravity and crookedness is admirable, he is technicolour amid the grey shabbiness of Isherwood's Berlin. We must also remember that this is Isherwood's Berlin and he has shaped and invented experiences to achieve an effect, the camera records, but it always lies. It is the technical brilliance of those lies that sets the Berlin Stories apart from any historical or social record that you'd care to mention.
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