The Berlin Stories
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Manufacturer: New Directions
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.912
EAN: 9780811218047
ISBN: 081121804X
Label: New Directions
Manufacturer: New Directions
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 256
Publication Date: 2008-10-29
Publisher: New Directions
Studio: New Directions
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Editorial Reviews:
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A classic of 20th-century fiction, 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.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Style--and plenty of it
Comment: I feel as if the contents of this novel have been thoroughly addressed. Therefore I will address one thing and one thing alone: style. Mr. Isherwood is a man with style. The numerous new authors and avant-garde emerging today rarely care about sentence crafting; they merely create sentences as short as possible and with minimal punctuation. Their best friends are the comma and the period. Mr. Isherwood is what Bukowski would have called a man with style. Both tales from The Berlin Stories are beautifully written. Read it, please. If not for the content, please read Mr. Isherwood for his beautifully crafted sentences. I apologize to anyone who finds this review incomplete. I merely aim at reviewing one element of Mr. Isherwood's writing. I could, certainly, discuss gender, plot, themes, historical analysis, symbolism, etc., in his writings, but I'll leave the 20+ five star reviews to do that.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Early 1930's Revelation of Nazi Growth [T]
Comment: "The Berlin Stories" is Isherwood's division of two projects he apparently made while living and employed in the entitled city during the early 1930's.
The first book gracefully creates a platonic British formal relationship between Arthur Norris and protagonist William Bradshaw - whose character's vocation, age and background basically match the author's.
The first novel could have been published by itself. It has enough length - about 200 pages - and story to satisfy the reader without any reference to or accommodation with the second half entitled "Goodbye to Berlin." And, the writing may be better, more thorough, more elusive, and more thought out. I marveled at his creating of a normally unobserved or usually unimportant characteristic: laughter . "His laugh was a curiosity, an heirloom, something handed down from the dinner-tables of the last century; aristocratic, manly and sham, scarcely to be heard nowadays except on the legitimate stage."
This book involves espionage, British aristocracy transcending to proletariat weakness, and ends in a gallop about Arthur's escapades around the world with his manservant Schmidt at tow (or in chase?). Full of rich dialogue between the cordial British gentlemen, the book reads more like Waugh or Forster than Fleming or mystery writers of this generation. It is great fun - most particularly in the dialogue.
The second book is more Hemingwayesque. Almost a journal account of Berlin while communists and Nazis fought to obtain power over the economically disenfranchised German union which was still suffering from the tomfoolery of the Prussian state of 1914-1918. There are about 6 stories - the most richly written being entitled "Sally Bowles." She is the character from which Hollywood's "Cabaret" created stardom for Lisa Minelli - whose role is of same name. She is sexually free, cavalier, and extremely outspoken. The protagonist is Christopher Isherwood who is smitten by her -as are many other men - in a manner similar to Stingo to Sophie Zawistowski of "Sophie's Choice."
But, their relationship is platonic. They are best buddies. But, their friendship could go further, if there was money. As Sally says ". . . if only I could get a really rich man as my lover . . . I shouldn't want more than three thousand a year . . . I'd be absolutely faithful to the man." And, she says "I expect we shall look back on this time and . . . think this wasn't such bad fun. . . " And, they talked about his book being a hit and she rich - resoundingly like Holly Golightly speaking to her unnamed unmarried neighbor in "Breakfast at Tiffany's"
Other books involve the a summer at Ruegen Island with fellow Brit Peter Wilkinson and his male companion Otto Nowak. That relationship is awkward and tumultuous. And, thankfully the story is not long. The following story is about Christopher's living in Berlin with the Nowaks - observing Otto fall into disrepute among his parents and peers while his otherwise doomed-for-poverty-uneducated brother may ascend as his allegiance to the Nazi party increases. After departing from the impoverished Nowaks, we meet the Landauers - wealthy department store owning Jews who give Christopher more introspection of what is happening about them as the Nazis are becoming more known, but are (at this time) unknown. In the end, chaos runs amok in the streets. People idly watch Nazi agents commit battery on the streets, shaking in fear that their protests will warrant their personal demise. And, Christopher leaves the city - knowing it will never be the same.
The best offering of these stories is the depiction of Nazis in that time, during their rise. At first, they are not all pathologically perverse Aryan lauders who step on weak people's toes on all occasions. But, passages throughout the book show the writer's involvement in the communist party - so as to lead us to believe he was ignorant of what transpired at the Nazi gatherings - and how the quiet suddenly grew to a loud thunder when Hitler moved into Berlin. The antisemitism of course also grew, but not near its well known full maturity at the time of these stories. That is what makes the passages so valuable, so unique and so important.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Needed a break between the two stories
Comment: It took me several days to grind through "The Last of Mr. Norris." After taking a break to read another novel, I came back to Isherwood's "Goodbye to Berlin." And it, too, took me several days to finish. My interest waned mainly because these two stories, which make up the book "The Berlin Stories," read very much like a diary -- no real suspenseful build-up, no climax. The various characters in "The Berlin Stories" are much the same -- secretive, manipulative, shallow and, in many respects, nothing more than low life. I expected more insight into the character's views of Hitler, or why Jews threatened so many people -- something to give me a better feel as to why the German people felt the way they did and what their hopes were for their country. "The Berlin Stories" does complement other books which have been written about this period.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book, Unacceptably Shoddy Printing
Comment: Needless to say the story is great. It's unfortunate that the publisher, New Directions/James Laughlin, couldn't be bothered to reset the type to fit the size of the page. Also, A SECTION OF THE TEXT IS MISSING. Page 95 ends mid-sentence and page 96 picks up mid-sentence at another point in the story. Try to find another edition than ISBN 978-0-8112-0070-7
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Even now I can't altogether believe that any of this has really happened."
Comment: Christopher Isherwood's "Berlin Stories" is perhaps most famous for having inspired the stage and screen masterpiece Cabaret, but those who are looking for an exact match between the two will be disappointed. The divine Sally Bowles does make an appearance (her charisma and verve are the book's high point), but only briefly, and her story only contains only seeds of what would become Cabaret's plotline. The primary similarities between the musical and its source material lie in the characterization of the aforementioned wannabe diva (who is every bit as vibrant on the page as she is in performance), as well as in the central themes and setting.
Berlin, 1930 - 1933: a city caught helplessly in an inexorable rush toward history as warring political factions fight for control and the Nazi party begins its rise to power. Violence and danger lurk in every street, and yet life goes on for the citizens of Berlin - who struggle to keep a degree of normalcy in their lives and food on their tables. They desperately cling to their traditional way of life as Germany's bloodthirsty future in WWII becomes more and more a nightmarish present. They are utterly unprepared for what lies ahead for them and their beloved nation. Could they have stopped Hitler? Almost certainly, if only they had taken the threat seriously. And therein lies the tragedy at the heart of Isherwood's masterpiece: that while it may be human nature to bury your head in the sand and hope for the best when trouble comes knocking, doing so will make you a passive co-conspirator and only allow the worst-case-scenario become a fully realized reality.
"The Berlin Stories" consists of two novellas that have been published together. "The Last of Mr. Norris" delves into the failure of Germany's communist party and, through the character of Mr. Norris, shows us the war profiteer at its worst. Norris doesn't care who ends up in power or what they do to Germany so long as he can use them to turn a profit and maintain his lavish lifestyle. The one complaint I have about it is that William Bradshaw's immediate friendship with the shifty Mr. Norris requires a suspension of disbelief on the reader's part. Why would he so readily trust Norris when his every instinct reveals him to be a charlatan and a swindler? Perhaps we are meant to see in William's willingness to trust Norris the larger concept that Germans eventually embraced Hitler despite their better instincts, but if that was Isherwood's intention it is a little too vague. "Goodbye to Berlin" is a series of vignettes with a writer named Isherwood (!) as its central character. The vignettes begin when it was still possible to hope for the best, and end in a cloud of violence as Isherwood is forced to leave Berlin, his once-and-still beloved city, in 1933.
"The Berlin Stories" is, ultimately, an elegy for the lost Germany that Isherwood had once fallen in love with, and the reader will be hard pressed not to mourn with him as the once vibrant city of Berlin descends into chaos and bloodshed. What is truly terrifying is that it actually happened, and it is incumbent upon us to make sure that it never happens again.
Grade: A
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