Mr Norris Changes Trains

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Lehmann, John (1987). Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir. New York City: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-1029-7– via Internet Archive. Farina, William (2013). "Christopher Isherwood, Reporting from Berlin". The German Cabaret Legacy in American Popular Music. London: McFarland & Company. ISBN 978-0-7864-6863-8– via Google Books. Baron von Pregnitz aka Kuno – a scary drawling nightclub denizen, rimless monocle screwed intimidatingly into his pink face as if by some horrible operation (p.28) 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 While traveling on a train from the Netherlands to Germany, British expatriate William Bradshaw meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris. As they approach the frontier, Bradshaw strikes up a conversation with Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a forged passport. After crossing the frontier, Norris invites Bradshaw to dinner and the two become friends. In Berlin, they see each other frequently. Over time, several oddities of 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 Norris's personal life remain mysterious. He seems to run a business with an assistant Schmidt. Norris gets into more and more straitened circumstances and has to leave Berlin.

Christopher Isherwood wrote the fictional "Mr Norris Changes Trains" based on his experiences in Berlin in the early 1930s. He left England to work in Berlin as an English tutor since Berlin was much more liberal toward homosexuals. The character William Bradshaw (named after Isherwood's middle names) acts as a narrator and an observer in the book. So the humour derives mostly from the outrageous pretensions, lies and evasions of Mr Norris, as well as his humorous turns of phrase. He is, in his way, a sort of Falstaff, pompously fond of all the good things in life while completely unable to afford them. He is a great comic character. William meets Mr Norris on the train in the first chapter, and, sadly, there aren’t that many trains afterwards. Sadly, as I love reading about what happens on the trains. Mr Norris, while keeping up the appearances of a refined Englishman of delicate sensibilities, seems rather murky. Far less successful is how the British author writes about Mr Norris' business between Paris and Berlin: plotting and intrigues are definitely something Graham Greene is more apt to work on than his compatriot. Isherwood tries to tell us more about German communists but he somehow fails to be very convincing in that respect. William, in good faith and due to innate gullibility (I show him a little mercy not naming it stupidity), attends new friend's life. He accompanies Arthur to Berlin's underworld, engages in political activity and, convinced about his financial problems, let himself get entangled in spy affair. His interest and friendship to Norris does not falter despite warnings from other friends and Arthur's opaque explanations about his finances, dubious activities and disreputable acquaintances.Stansky, Peter (28 November 1976). "Christopher and His Kind". The New York Times. New York City. p.260 . Retrieved 11 February 2022. William’s favourite pastime becomes watching Mr Norris, and, gosh, is that boy observant! He notices everything, every furtive glance, every twitch of the mouth, every tense muscle.

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. Twenty years later, when Isherwood was invited to write an introduction to a memoir by the real-life person Mr Norris is based on, the memoirist, critic and crook Gerald Hamilton, he took the opportunity to put the record straight: 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.

For "Mr Norris Changes Trains" is set in a very well-defined place and moment of recent history: Berlin in the mid-thirties. That is precisely when Hitler seized power tightening his grip on a whole nation and - quite soon - changing for worse Europe as we knew it.

The whole city lay under an epidemic of discreet, infectious fear. I could feel it, like influenza, in my bones. Mr Norris takes William to dinner at a restaurant where they find Baron von Pregnitz aka Kuno. They’ve had some kind of a fight and Mr Norris rather desperately tries to be the life and soul of the conversation, before making his excuses and leaving, making it clear he’s dumped William for Kuno to seduce, which the latter tries to do in a taxi home, while William successfully fights him off (chapter ten). Thomson, David (21 March 2005). "The Observer as Hero". The New Republic. New York City . Retrieved 11 February 2022. As it happens William and Arthur glimpse Otto from a window when Arthur is summonsed to Berlin police headquarters for a, er, meeting. Arthur is so nervous he asks William to accompany him, which our man does. There’s a typically light-hearted / facetious exchange as they emerge from the restaurant where they have a boozy lunch before going into police HQ: I first read Mr Norris Changes Trains in 1984. God knows what I made of it then. I wanted to read some Isherwood after reading Eric Larson’s book about Berlin in the 1930s. I wanted to see what a fictional representation of this era looked like. It’s a strange and slight novel. The narrator presents as being gullible and naïve. The Mr Norris of the title is entirely untrustworthy. In a way, these three qualities echo some key elements of the times but despite this overlay, the author doesn’t do much with the narrative.Parker, Peter (September 2004). "Ross, Jean Iris (1911–1973)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (onlineed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. doi: 10.1093/ref:odnb/74425 . Retrieved 11 February 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.) Più avanti il lettore apprende che il signor Norris è un masochista. E magari è proprio per questo che va a Berlino: sembra il posto giusto nel giusto momento in cui trovarsi. Don’t beat yourself up, Christopher. It’s a very funny book, Mr Norris is a comic masterpiece and the crisp witty prose it’s written in is a delight to read. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-07-09 09:04:04 Boxid IA40171319 Camera USB PTP Class Camera Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Allen 2004: "The real Isherwood... [was] the least political of the so-called Auden group, [and] Isherwood was always guided by his personal motivations rather than by abstract ideas."