Mr Norris Changes Trains

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Isherwood sketches with the lightest of touches the last gasp of the decaying demi-monde and the vigorous world of Communists and Nazis, grappling with each other on the edge of the abyss.

By the way, popular culture betrayed Isherwood twice here. Just tell a female friend of yours what given name the surname "Bradshaw" (the main narrator of this novel) brings to her mind and there you are: Carrie.This is one of Isherwood’s Berlin novels; almost an historical novel of the last years of the Weimar Republic and was published in 1935. Isherwood was part of a group of young English writers and poets who found England repressive and sought a form of exile (this is also partly a novel of exile); the group included Auden and Spender as well. Berlin was the choice for Isherwood, mainly because an elderly relative had warned him against it, saying it was the vilest place since Sodom. Of course for gay men, such as Isherwood and Auden Berlin was much more liberal and less repressed than England. Isherwood 1976, Chapter 1: "To Christopher, Berlin meant Boys... Christopher was suffering from an inhibition, then not unusual among upper-class homosexuals; he couldn't relax sexually with a member of his own class or nation. He needed a working-class foreigner. He had become clearly aware of this when he went to Germany in May 1928." Mr Norris Changes Trains (published in the United States as The Last of Mr. Norris) is a 1935 novel by the British writer Christopher Isherwood. It is frequently included with Goodbye to Berlin, another Isherwood novel, in a single volume, The Berlin Stories. Inspiration for the novel was drawn from Isherwood's experiences as an expatriate living in Berlin during the early 1930s, [1] and the character of Mr Norris is based on Gerald Hamilton. [2] In 1985 the actor David March won a Radio Academy Award for Best Radio Actor for his performance in a dramatisation of the novel for BBC Radio 4. [3] Berlin had, by the late-1920s, become a byword for sexual, and especially homosexual, license, offering a freedom of lifestyle and sexuality which couldn’t scarcely be imagined in starchy, repressed, between-the-wars England, and which still hasn’t really arrived in Puritan England nearly a century later. Spender, Stephen (1966) [1951]. World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-679-64045-5– via Google Books.

First things first. For Friday night there was to be a rehearsal for my college Choral Society's production of Carmina Burana with the local Symphony Orchestra. I promised myself I would take along Mr. Norris to read at the pauses. William meets Mr Norris on the train to Berlin, and they become good friends. Mr Norris introduces William to a group of people who engage in drunken, sexual partying. He also involves William with the Communist party leaders in Berlin. This was a difficult economic time in Germany. The Nazis were gaining power with their efficient brutal organization. The political scene is viewed through the eyes of the young, politically naive William.

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As Berlin's daily scenes featured "poverty, unemployment, political demonstrations and street fighting between the forces of the extreme left and the extreme right," [32] Ross, Spender, and other foreigners realized that they must leave the country. [31] [33] "There was a sensation of doom to be felt in the Berlin streets," Spender recalled. [31] In contrast to Spender's feeling of impending doom, Isherwood complained "somewhat unpresciently to Spender that situation in Germany seemed 'very dull.'" [34] Fryer, Jonathan (1977). Isherwood: A Biography. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-12608-5– via Google Books. Isherwood, Christopher (1976). Christopher and His Kind: A Memoir, 1929–1939. New York City: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 978-0374-53522-3– via Google Books. The omnibus inspired the John Van Druten play I Am a Camera, which in turn inspired the film I Am a Camera as well as the famous stage musical and film versions of Cabaret. [3] Sally Bowles is the best-known character from The Berlin Stories, and she became the focus of the Cabaret musical and film, although she is merely the main character of a single short story in Goodbye to Berlin. [2] In later years, Ross regretted her public association with the naïve and apolitical character of Sally Bowles. [4]

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.

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Fryer, Jonathan (1977). Isherwood: A Biography. Garden City, NY, Doubleday & Company. ISBN 0-385-12608-5. Next morning Arthur liberally gives away those of his belongings he’s not taking with him, dispensing gifts to the porter, the porter’s wife and the porter’s son, and some of his wonderful silk underwear, incongruously, to Fraulein Schroeder.

Mr Norris, based on Isherwood's friend, Gerald Hamilton, is a charming, nervous, middle-aged man whose lifestyle is supported by conning people, selling secrets, and other criminal activities. He's a bit of a comical, prissy figure with a wig that has a tendency to sit off-center. He has regular appointments with Anni, a woman with tall boots and a whip.William Bradshaw, names that come from Isherwood’s middle names, comes to Berlin in search of adventure. He meets the enigmatic Arthur Norris on the train and despite the best efforts of the subject of his interest to warn him that all was not as it seemed, Bradshaw becomes fast friends with Norris. As Bradshaw learns more about Norris’s nefarious affairs, all revolving around Arthur’s frivolous use of money when he had some and a penchant for criminal behavior when he needed more, William expects to be kept abreast of the rise and fall of Norris’s fortunes. After all Norris and his peculiar behavior are a major form of entertainment for him. When Arthur is called away on “business” in Paris, or actually running away from a problem that has become...well...too problematic, William realizes that he has formed an unnatural attachment to his friend. William accompanies Arthur to the train station. There is a prolonged and excruciatingly embarrassing farewell during which Arthur pours out wishes and regrets which make William’s toes curl. ‘He was outrageous, grotesque, entirely without shame.’ Coda Isherwood 1976, p.63: "Jean moved into a room in the Nollendorfstrasse flat after she met Christopher, early in 1931." Lehmann 1987, p.18: "Jean Ross, whom [Isherwood] had met in Berlin as one of his fellow-lodgers in the Nollendorfstrasse for a time, when she was earning her living as a (not very remarkable) singer in a second-rate cabaret."