The Berlin Stories

Christopher Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 as an English teacher. This book fictionalizes his diaries. He calls himself William Bradshaw, which seem to be his middle names, and in the other half of the book he is Isherwood, or Mr. Issyvoo or Chris or Darling. He says in his 1954 foreword that he had planned to write a Balzaquian novel, but found himself not up to it. What he did instead has been published as The Berlin Stories. The result is charming and mostly satisfactory. I just wish this edition were on par with CI's writing: it abounds with printing errors (worst being the repetition of two pages instead of the new pages that should be there), and it provides no list of contents, which is annoying.Here I give you a list of contents, without page numbers:Half of the book is called: The Last of Mr.Norris. This part has 16 chapters and could be seen as a separate novel.The other half is called: Goodbye to Berlin. This consists of the following parts:A Berlin Diary (1930)Sally BowlesOn Ruegen IslandThe NowaksThe LandauersA Berlin Diary (1932-33)Friends of the film Cabaret will recognize the story `Sally Bowles' as the core of the Broadway play, which became a musical and the basis for the film (which is lovable). (Or was it a musical from the start? Not sure.) The initial stage Sally was, by the way, Julie Harris. Isherwood gives her highest praise in the foreword. (How could you stay the same, Sally, when I aged 20 years? Which, come to think of it, is not all that much of a compliment for Julie Harris, considering the description of Sally that we get in the book.)Don't think that the book Sally is Liza Minelli. She is much less of an accomplished performer than in the film.If you watched the movie before reading the book, you will find that characters and themes have been re-combined, and that the story has been changed quite a lot. I think it has been improved.This edition has an introduction which claims that the book is something like a landmark for gay writing. That may be so, but it would be wrong to expect a political manifest for gay rights. Berlin was and is a center of all kinds of things. Many gays did and do move there, like Isherwood did. His allusions to his gayness are not exactly hidden, but also not written large. Several times he mentions the presence of `boys', leaving little doubt, but explaining nothing. He ridicules a `fairy', the baron, but is mum about his own tendencies. Fair enough. He is much more explicit about the SM habits of eccentric Mr. Norris, probably because that is a) ridiculous, and b) not his own problem.As for the structure of the combined book, I would have kept the Norris part much shorter. The man is a curious freak, but his domination of half of the book gives him more weight than he deserves.CI's main theme is people on the fringe: freaks and eccentrics from various subcultures, or outsiders in another sense, like the wealthy Jewish family. He is politically aware, and describes the troubles times, with poverty and street fighting between communists and Nazis, though they don't seem to concern him personally. Norris, essentially a con man, has some opportunistic involvements with communists, which are narrated like all the other exotic events: observations from outer space. That makes much sense, as Isherwood/Bradshaw is from England.There is one communist event in 1931 where Norris turns up as a speaker about British imperialism in East Asia, while most of the other speakers are addressing Japanese atrocities in China. As far as I know, those started only in the mid 30s, not earlier, so we have an anachronism of the kind that annoys me. Unless something happened in 1930 that I am not aware of, possibly related to the former German colony in Qingdao, now Shandong province, which the Versailles Contract, in the smartness of the allied victors, awarded to Japan rather than returning it to China.All in all I liked the film better. At 400 pages in total, the book has some lengths that the film never has. The explicitly bi-sexual orientation of the Michael York character is more convincing than the strangely neutral narrator Bradshaw/Issyvoo.I would give 3.5 stars, deducting for the flaws in the edition and the weaknesses of the book itself.

First, take note that in the New Directions Publications version of "The Berlin Stories" by Christopher Isherwood, there are a number of type-setting and editing errors which mix up pages and actually delete portions of these stories. This is unforgivable in the 21st Century.That said, Isherwood, of course was a first-rate wordsmith and a total master of the English (British in this case) language. But 400 pages of Isherwood is a lot to absorb! It took me quite a few days to work my way through this book.If these stories are at least in part - if not wholly - autobiographical, then we learn more about Isherwood than we do Germany of the time, but far less of him than of his bizarre and fascinating friends and colleagues. The characters in these stories (Isherwood aside) are beautifully and fully drawn, leaving very few details to wish more of. Isherwood himself, as self-portrayed, is mostly an observer and chronicler of the odd behavior of his friends and acquaintances. He's almost too neutral to like, yet (ego considerations aside) people seem drawn to him as moths to a flame.Make no mistake, however, if you think or imagine that you'll read about tons of scandalous sexual exploits, you'll be 100% disappointed. All "that" is left to your imagination, with only vague hints at actual dalliances, let alone specific contacts. But, truth be known, Isherwood does not shy away from his own (and others') sexuality; he merely stops short of giving you any details, especially of he himself.Some of his characters (Frl. Schroeder, for instance) become almost "too much, too weird, and too German" to stomach for 400 pages. I, for one, got often bored with and less and less entertained by these characters as the stories wore on.Isherwood is a 20th Century master of dialogue. An aspiring writer would read him solely for lessons in how to write dialogue. Thus, these stories tell you more about how people in the early 1930s in Berlin talked with each other than about their actual lives. He is very good, also, however, at soaring, perfect description. You really get the flavor of the moment - not the life, mind you, but the moment in which the characters live.During these times Germany's fate balanced precariously between fascism and communism, in part as a reaction to the horrors of the Treaty of Versailles. Mr. Norris, the main character in the primary story here, lives and breathes and works behind the turbulent political scenes - always mysteriously - and on the fringe. Norris wasn't very good at the spying thing, and eventually paid the price for incompetence. Of course, the Nazis won out, and the terrible era of Hitler ensued.One thing missing almost entirely in these stories is humor. Yes, there are funny moments, a cute line or two here and there, and little humorous episodes now and then, but, perhaps on purpose to show the ominous period it really was, these characters and these stories are not at all funny or charming. When I finished the book, I just sat there, more-or-less glad I was done with it.For the writing these stories are 5+. For the stories themselves, it's a 3. On average, then, the book is a 4.

Isnherwood, con rara sensibilità, ritrae e delinea personaggi border line, bohemien, scapigliati, nella BAbilonia che era la Berlino immediatamente precedente all'avvento del Nazismo, mostrando uno spaccato della società in cui Hitler lentamente si insinuò a partire dalle fasce più deboli e disagiate della popolazione. Food for thought.

Very interesting novels, both from the perspective of the author as a gay man and the historical aspect of his having lived in German/Berlin at such a crucial time in its history.

Perfect timing , Item as purchased. Pleased

Tudo de bom.

I gave this to a friend and have not read it so cannot comment.