William receives a message from Arthur that may just sum up the whole novel. ”Tell me, William, his last letter concluded, what have I done to deserve all this?” Isherwood began work on a much larger work he called The Lost before paring down its story and characters to focus on Norris. The book was critically and popularly acclaimed but years after its publication Isherwood denounced it as shallow and dishonest. In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).

Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood | Goodreads

William and Mr Norris succeed in crossing the frontier. Afterward, Mr Norris invites William to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin they see each other frequently (including eating ham and eggs at the first class restaurant of Berlin Friedrichstraße railway station). Several oddities of Mr Norris's personal life are revealed, one of which is that he is a masochist. Another is that he is a communist, which is dangerous in Hitler-era Germany. Other aspects of Mr Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt, who tyrannises him. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin. The two main characters are thinly disguised. The narrator is a young man called William Bradshaw (Isherwood’s middle names) who is travelling to Berlin to be a private tutor. Because Isherwood wanted to put the main focus on Norris, he makes Bradshaw a voyeur who watches what goes on and provides commentary. This makes Bradshaw seem morally neutral (and sexually neutral). Isherwood later thought this might have been a mistake, making it seem as though he was lying about himself. Bradshaw’s moral neutrality also gives the impression that he does not care about what is going on around him. Secondo me Mr Norris Changes Train, come recita il titolo originale, potrebbe essere considerato uno dei primi casi di “instant book”: racconta una storia ambientata a Berlino all’inizio degli anni Trenta - i protagonisti, il Mr Norris del titolo e l’io narrante William Bradshaw (nel quale qualcuno vuole vedere lo stesso Isherwood che ha vissuto a Berlino proprio in quegli anni mantenendosi con lezioni d’inglese proprio come il suo protagonista) lasciano la capitale tedesca quando capiscono che i nazisti non sono più contenibili (nel 1933 dopo aver vinto le elezioni Hitler diventa cancelliere del Reich) – il romanzo è pubblicato nel 1935 (sia in UK che in US). Cotto e mangiato, per così dire.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 an odd novel. Here we have a book which is at the same time a relic from the past and something modern. Towards the novel's conclusion, politics dominates the story as the plot strands cleverly come together. Just as William Bradshaw realises that he has been duped, so the German people are also being taken in by their Nazi leader. Unlike Hitler in the 1930s, Norris's own plans never seem to quite work out and, as the tragic ending presages the horrors that were to follow, so it also signals hasty departures from Berlin for both Arthur Norris and William Bradshaw. The name of the narrator, William Bradshaw, is drawn from Isherwood's full name, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood. In subsequent novels Isherwood changed the narrator's name to "Christopher Isherwood", having come to regard "William Bradshaw" as a "foolish evasion". Isherwood did not explicitly claim that he was William Bradshaw although the novel describes Isherwood's own experiences. He sought to make the narrator as unobtrusive as possible so as to keep readers focused on Norris. Although Isherwood was living more or less openly as a homosexual, he balked at making Bradshaw homosexual as well. In part this was to help the average reader identify with the narrator by minimising the differences between the narrator and the reader. Not to do so meant that "The Narrator would have become so odd, so interesting, that his presence would have thrown the novel out of perspective. ... The Narrator would have kept upstaging Norris's performance as the star." Isherwood's decision had a more pragmatic reason as well; he had no desire to cause a scandal and feared that should he cause one his uncle, who was financially supporting him, would cut him off. Yet Isherwood had no interest in making Bradshaw heterosexual either, so the Narrator has no scenes of a sexual nature. [9]

Mr Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood - Waterstones

With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows. He had just finished his eighth, he told us: it dealt with the amours peculiar to a winter sport hotel. Hence his presence here. After his brusque self-introduction, he proved most affable and treated us, without further request, to a discourse on his career, aims, and methods of work. Isherwood originally intended to call this novel The Lost, a title he conceived in German, Die Verlorenen. The title The Lost would have encompassed three different meanings: "those who have lost their way", by which he meant Germans who were being misled by Adolf Hitler; "the doomed", those like the character Bernard Landauer whom Hitler had already marked for destruction; and "those whom respectable Society regards as moral outcasts", like the characters Sally Bowles, Otto Nowak and Mr Norris himself. [5] Isherwood began writing the book in 1934, while he and his companion Heinz Neddermayer were living in the Canary Islands. The Lost was initially planned as a much more comprehensive work, but Isherwood jettisoned much of the material and many of the characters, including Sally Bowles, the Nowaks and the Landauers, to focus on Mr Norris. This process he likened to the surgery performed to separate Siamese twins, "freeing Norris from the stranglehold of his brothers and sisters". [6] The excised material formed the basis for the rest of his Berlin Stories. He completed work on the novel on 12 August of that year. [7]Norris’ finances clearly are a mess and his source of income unclear and vague. The role of Schmidt, who is particularly aggressive, is also unclear. 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. However, his political career starts to take off when the Nazis take power. Norris disappears for a while and then turns up again, sans Schmidt and takes a room at Fräulein Schroeder’s, where Bradshaw is staying. He receives mysterious telegrams from Paris (which Bradshaw and Fräulein Schroeder often steam open) from someone called Margot. He also seems to be financially in better shape than before, till Schmidt turns up, demanding money with menaces. With the Nazis on the rise, Norris plans one last coup, with the help of Bradshaw, to put his finances on sound footing. Of course, it doesn’t work out as planned and he turns out to be more pathetic than dangerous. Unauthorised use and/or duplication of this material without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that the material is credited and referenced to JacquiWine’s Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. Thank you.