Mr Norris Changes Trains

Product Information

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. 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.

Anni lives with Otto, her pimp, an enormously strong, good-natured working class man, middleweight champion of his local boxing club (p.57). It is a recurring comic motif that he insists on shaking William’s hand whenever they meet, and crushes it so hard, it takes a while for William to recover feeling in it. Or slaps people so hard on the shoulder that they nearly fall over.Il treno è quello dove all’inizio l’io narrante, William Bradshaw, incontra per la prima volta il signor Norris, e lo nota subito per qualcosa di eccentrico, per poi finire avviluppato dalla di lui chiacchiera. My first reaction was to feel, perhaps unreasonably, angry, I had to admit to myself that my feeling for Arthur had been largely possessive. He was my discovery, my property. I was as hurt as a spinster who had been deserted by her cat. And yet, after all, how silly of me. Arthur was his own master; he wasn’t accountable to me for his actions. I began to look round for excuses for his conduct, and, like an indulgent parent, easily found them. Hadn’t he, indeed, behaved with considerable nobility? Threatened from every side, he had face his troubles alone. He had carefully avoided involving me in possible future unpleasantness with the authorities.”

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. Garebian, Keith (2011). The Making of Cabaret. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-973250-0– via Google Books. You guys out there in gigabytes land all know I have a serious problem with Solipsistic Autism. You want fries with that? Just sayin, so you know the purely fictional headspace I’m coming from…

Throughout the 1930s Isherwood wrote novels and essays and collaborated with his friend from prep school, W.H. Auden, on three experimental plays – The Dog Beneath the Skin (1935), The Ascent of F6 (1937) and On the Frontier (1938) – as well as writing an extended prose account of their joint visit to China during the Sino-Japanese War, which was published along with Auden’s poems as Journey to a War (1939). But the humour is aided by Isherwood’s stone cold, precise and sometimes malicious eye for detail. The narrator reports everything with exceptional lucidity. Not only that but he disarms us with suddenly blunt turns of mind, which are often very funny, and which Arthur comments on:

It is the privilege of the richer but less mentally endowed members of the community to contribute to the upkeep of people like myself’ says the immoral, unrepentant Arthur Norris, who wears a wig (he has three, and they cost around four hundred marks) spends a lot of time in front of the mirror (again a nuance of gayness may be distinguished here, or am I wr The first novel focuses on the misadventures of Arthur Norris, a character based upon an unscrupulous businessman named Gerald Hamilton whom Isherwood met in the Weimar Republic. [1] The second novel recounts the travails of various Berlin denizens whose lives are directly or indirectly affected by the Nazis' rise to power. Isherwood based the character of Sally Bowles on teenage cabaret singer Jean Ross, Isherwood's intimate friend during his sojourn in Berlin. [2] Key to all these effects is the William/narrator persona. He laughs at everyone’s jokes, he gets on with (almost) everyone, he dances, he drinks but doesn’t get angry or maudlin. He knows what to wear, how to eat correctly at smart restaurants, he is tactful and polite. Quite a few paragraphs start with the simple sentences: ‘I smiled’, ‘I grinned’ or ‘I laughed’. He is flattering company. He is the perfect, well-mannered English house party guest and excellent company.The novel was still titled The Lost when Isherwood mailed the manuscript to Hogarth Press for publication, but the title was eventually changed to Mr Norris Changes Trains. Isherwood meant to evoke with that title not only Norris's continual moves from country to country to avoid his enemies and creditors, but also his constantly shifting political alliances and interests. [7] Isherwood's friend Stephen Spender preferred the original title, saying of the new one that "It gives one the sense of earrings." [10] An employee at William Morrow and Company, Isherwood's American publisher, told Isherwood that no one in the United States would understand the term "changes trains" and so Isherwood supplied the alternate title The Last of Mr Norris. [11] "He thereby created the false impression that these are two different novels, one the sequel to the other. Which ... led to much wearisome correspondence with readers, setting the record straight." [12] Isherwood's reevaluation [ edit ] This is an odd novel. Here we have a book which is at the same time a relic from the past and something modern. Sospirò. “Sono troppo vecchio per questo genere di storie. Questi continui viaggi … mi fanno molto male”. In a surprise development, Mr Norris takes William along to a Communist Party meeting, a hall full of Berlin’s working class, to which he makes a surprisingly impactful plea of solidarity with the poor peasants and workers of China!). William goes along and meets Anni and Otto there (chapter five). It is very funny when all four of them return to Arthur’s flat, open a bottle of wine,m and jovially refer to each other as Comrade Arthur, Comrade Otto and so on.