Mr Norris Changes Trains: Christopher Isherwood (Vintage classics)

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As a thank you for the provision of some much-needed moral support, Norris invites Bradshaw to join him for lunch, and by the time the train pulls into the city station the two men have struck up a rather unlikely friendship, agreeing to meet for tea at Norris’ flat the following Saturday. Setting off with two suitcases and a one-way ticket, Isherwood began his embrace of “the mystery-magic of foreignness.

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood - Waterstones

The sort of place where you can imagine Bernie Gunther propping up the bar at the Adlon, his eye on a pretty blonde and a nice, cool drink in his hand.It is indeed tragic to see how, even in these days, a clever and unscrupulous liar can deceive millions. Mr Norris Changes Trains isn’t much more than a lukewarm and meandering character study that only ever dances round the themes of betrayal and political intrigue. This isn't to say that there weren't dark elements in the movie, but they're not quite the same dark elements that Isherwood was working with in the 1930s, when he wrote The Berlin Stories. The Berlin Novels are comprised of two separate novels: Mr Norris Changes Trains (or, in the US, published as The Last of Mr Norris) and Goodbye to Berlin. They drew back -- harmless, after all, as mere ghosts-- into the darkness, while our bus, with a great churning of its wheels, lurched forward towards the city, through the deep unseen snow.

Mr Norris Changes Trains - Wikipedia

He describes these incidents, and the reactions of bystanders who muttered about the Nazis going too far this time without actually doing anything to stop them.

Here we were, as so often before, at the edge of that delicate, almost visible line which divided our two worlds. On New Year’s Eve, Norris introduces Bradshaw to the mysterious Kuno, the nickname of Baron Pregnitz. Another weird thing we ate for Saturday tea was butties made from tinned salmon made to go further with the addition of brown breadcrumbs and made to taste less bready with the addition of vinegar. It is a world of rented rooms, where the land lady may provide breakfast and draw the baths for those who scrape to pay a marginal rent. He may have gone for the boys, but he couldn't help seeing everything else that was in front of his eyes, the plight of other marginalized members of society especially.

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood

It was a place of ostentation, sexual deviance and poverty - but desperate to reassert itself as an important modern city on the comeback from defeat and hyperinflation. He left Cambridge without graduating, briefly studied medicine and then turned to writing his first novels, All the Conspirators and The Memorial.The first novella in this is, “Mr Norris Changes Trains,” where William Bradshaw encounters the sinister Mr Arthur Norris, on a train to Berlin. Kuno turns out to be gay, interested in a relationship with Bradshaw (he is rejected) and in reading English schoolboy books that feature only boys and no adults. Even though it’s abundantly clear that Mr Norris is something of a swindler, he is hugely likeable with it. I first read this book thiry years ago, being most concerned with the Sally Bowles/"Cabaret" connection, and loved it. He is a rather delicate and fussy individual, used to the finer things in life even though he seems to have little money of his own to indulge in such luxuries.

Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood | Goodreads

It’s interesting because it’s so much more than just “homosexuality”; it’s very precious in a way, however inconvenient it may be. It made me wonder whether NYC’s Germanic past was a reason for the present day culture having similarities to that of interwar Berlin. George is a gay middle-aged English professor, adjusting to solitude after the tragic death of his young partner. The former has William Bradshaw as the narrator in 1930s Berlin, but it is, really, Isherwood himself. NORRIS, Isherwood's semi-autobiographical narrator, William Bradshaw, acts as a detached, Nick Carraway-like observer of the strange escapades of one Arthur Norris, a mysterious British ex-pat with an affinity for masochism, intrigue, and wigs.Goodbye to Berlin comprises of six separate vignettes of life in and around Berlin, encompassing people of different class, sexuality, gender and nationality. On the other hand, I do and always shall maintain that it is the privilege of the richer but less mentally endowed members of the community to contribute to the upkeep of people like myself. This is misleading, as Isherwood's narrator actually thinks quite a lot throughout the novel (and of course there is no such thing as narrative objectivity), leveling incisive judgments across the book's six chapters as he introduces us to Berlin's 1930s red-light district and a cast of alternately quirky and doomed characters, including the infamous Sally Bowles, who would go on to be immortalized in the film Cabaret. She gets out of Germany before the war starts whereas the film suggests the singer stays on in Berlin. Norris was potentially a very interesting character: he is himself a conundrum, a man of contradictions - why on earth would he even befriend Bradshaw in the first place?