Goodbye To Berlin
by Christopher Isherwood | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 9780749390549 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 9780749390549 Global Overview for this book
Registered by BookGroupMan of Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom on 12/27/2022
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I nearly read this a while ago - but can't remember the circumstances - but I have promoted as a book group choice. To be read soon.
(16/01/23) This is a fascinating little book, more so for its style and historical context, book-group-worthy rather than being a great, or even a very good book. On that basis I'm edging towards a 6/7. As explained by CI he is not the ‘Christopher Isherwood’ who ties these 6 episodic stories together. This seems a little too contrived, so I don’t believe him, calling the lead character ‘Joe Bloggs’ would have been less artful?
The setting is mostly in and around Berlin as Hitler was beginning his rise to power in the early 1930's, but there were still some political tensions and communist intrigues. Jews were beginning to look over their shoulders and the SA 'Brownshirts' and others are beginning to make their presence felt. But otherwise, the feeling is of a gay (in the old and new sense), liberated, and Bohemian melting pot. The true stars are the fascinating characters of CI’s acquaintance, who always upstage him … My favourites are the young English socialite Sally Bowles; Otto and the chaotic Nowak family, and the sad mother who ends up in a mental hospital (hints of ‘Snow Country’?); and the ascetic and detached Bernhard Landauer. I think the planned larger novel conceived as ‘The Lost’ would have been a classic, a Joycean vision of Berlin, in this case at a particular momentous point in time and place. The last diary segment becomes more obviously a pre-cursor to Hitler and the end of the era. Our cast of eclectic characters will be differently affected by the coming storm, obviously the Jewish and homosexuals, but also artists, foreign visitors and fair-weather voters like Frl. Shroeder (CI's landlady). Isherwood talks of Natalia Laudauer having ‘escaped’ to study in Paris, ‘ … all these people are ultimately doomed. This evening is the dress rehearsal of a disaster. It is like the last night of an epoch’
(16/01/23) This is a fascinating little book, more so for its style and historical context, book-group-worthy rather than being a great, or even a very good book. On that basis I'm edging towards a 6/7. As explained by CI he is not the ‘Christopher Isherwood’ who ties these 6 episodic stories together. This seems a little too contrived, so I don’t believe him, calling the lead character ‘Joe Bloggs’ would have been less artful?
The setting is mostly in and around Berlin as Hitler was beginning his rise to power in the early 1930's, but there were still some political tensions and communist intrigues. Jews were beginning to look over their shoulders and the SA 'Brownshirts' and others are beginning to make their presence felt. But otherwise, the feeling is of a gay (in the old and new sense), liberated, and Bohemian melting pot. The true stars are the fascinating characters of CI’s acquaintance, who always upstage him … My favourites are the young English socialite Sally Bowles; Otto and the chaotic Nowak family, and the sad mother who ends up in a mental hospital (hints of ‘Snow Country’?); and the ascetic and detached Bernhard Landauer. I think the planned larger novel conceived as ‘The Lost’ would have been a classic, a Joycean vision of Berlin, in this case at a particular momentous point in time and place. The last diary segment becomes more obviously a pre-cursor to Hitler and the end of the era. Our cast of eclectic characters will be differently affected by the coming storm, obviously the Jewish and homosexuals, but also artists, foreign visitors and fair-weather voters like Frl. Shroeder (CI's landlady). Isherwood talks of Natalia Laudauer having ‘escaped’ to study in Paris, ‘ … all these people are ultimately doomed. This evening is the dress rehearsal of a disaster. It is like the last night of an epoch’
Journal Entry 2 by BookGroupMan at The Cross Keys 🍺 in Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom on Sunday, January 29, 2023
Released 1 yr ago (1/19/2023 UTC) at The Cross Keys 🍺 in Chester, Cheshire United Kingdom
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
Passed on to a fellow book group member, in exchange for an omnibus containing of Isherwood’s Berlin novels.
