Mr Norris Changes Trains

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Paul Bowles was an American writer who wrote the novel The Sheltering Sky. [15] Isherwood appropriated his surname for the character of Sally Bowles. [16] Lehmann, John (1987). Christopher Isherwood: A Personal Memoir. New York City: Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-1029-7– via Internet Archive. Arthur washes and brushes up and they go for a last meal together but, although they giggle like schoolboys at the detective who so blatantly follows them and even enters the restaurant and has his own meal, the old spirit, the old closeness has gone. 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.) 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.

His glance, now vacant for a moment, was clouded again. An unpleasant thought seemed to tease him like a wasp; he moved his head slightly to avoid it." And then, the ending of the book, the last chapter, doesn’t at all treat the dangerous times, the Nazis’ arrival in power, the terror of his Jewish friends, at all frivolously. I thought he was being hard on himself.The novel follows the movements of William Bradshaw, its narrator, who meets a nervous-looking man named Arthur Norris on a train going from the Netherlands to Germany. As they approach the frontier William strikes up a conversation with Mr Norris, who wears an ill-fitting wig and carries a suspect passport. William Bradshaw is charmed by the older man (there is maybe more than a hint of a possible gay attraction here, though it is just a possibility that has faint chances of being envisaged by the author, and given that Isherwood was homosexual, the knowledge of that aspect has surely influenced this reader into reading too much between the lines, where there may be nothing of the kind) to the point where he ignores the warning signals, the conflict that he witnesses at the house of Mr. Norris, where his assistant, the vicious Schmidt, with his big head and contempt for Willi, has to chase away visitors…well, those who have come for money. Jean Ross later claimed the political indifference of the Sally Bowles character more closely resembled Isherwood and his hedonistic friends, [9] many of whom "fluttered around town exclaiming how sexy the storm troopers looked in their uniforms." [10]

Parker, Peter (2005) [2004]. Isherwood: A Life Revealed. London: Picador. ISBN 978-0-330-32826-5– via Google Books. 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.”And yes, reading it drew a complete blank in my virginal dreamspace about any possibility of Isherwood coming from what we - who may number among his ideological descendants - now call LGBTQ Land.

Here, in chapter thirteen, the book veers into spy thriller / Eric Ambler territory. Over the coming days our duo (William and Kuno) meet several characters – a Mr van Hoorn and his son Piet, tall blond and striking in a Viking way – a French popular novelist Marcel Janin who Isherwood satirises for the brisk superficiality of his research (maybe it’s a lampoon of someone famous – this book has no notes or introduction, it would be nice to know). Isherwood, Christopher (1976). Christopher and His Kind. Avon Books, a division of The Hearst Corporation. ISBN 0-380-01795-4 (Discus edition).

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In fact, over scattered conversations in cafes, restaurants or his flat, Arthur slowly reveals he has had quite a few brushes with the law and then that he actually went to prison, Wormwood Scrubs, for 18 months. Something to do with embezzlement or misappropriated funds. Nei primi giorni di marzo, dopo le elezioni, il tempo si fece d’improvviso mite e caldo. “E’ il clima di Hitler” diceva la moglie del portinaio; e suo figlio osservava scherzosamente che dovevamo essere grati al giovane Van der Lubbe, perché l’incendio del Reichstag aveva sciolto la neve. “Un così bel ragazzo” osservò la signora Schroeder con un sospiro. “Come mai può aver fatto una cosa tanto terribile?”. La moglie del portinaio sbuffò. 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.

Apparently Gerald Hamilton went through life managing to amass a large number of distinguished and not-so-distinguished friends, despite being a liar, a thief, and completely two-faced. A man guaranteed, in any political situation, to choose the most repellent side, and who fabricated almost every detail of his life. Hamilton would sell a friend down the river for the smallest amount of money. Despite being permanently bankrupt, he frequently managed to live a life filled with five-star hotels, fine wines, and good food, whether in Weimar-era Berlin or London in the swinging sixties. All this and more is, so I understand, contained in The Man Who Was Norris: The Life of Gerald Hamilton by Tom Cullen a book, as the title suggests, devoted to The Man Who Was Norris. I hope to read it at some point. Spender, Stephen (1966) [1951]. World Within World: The Autobiography of Stephen Spender. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-679-64045-5– via Google Books. Isherwood claimed that he and Ross "had a relationship which was asexual but more truly intimate than the relationships between Sally and her various partners in the novel, the plays and the films." [19] Disordine, miseria, lezioni private di inglese, riunioni di comunisti, sedute private masochistiche con frusta e stivali, interrogatori di polizia, orge, raggiri e misteri, fughe e ritorni: “I am a camera”, ha scritto Isherwood.Sospirò. “Sono troppo vecchio per questo genere di storie. Questi continui viaggi … mi fanno molto male”. William is at first scandalised and insulted by the imputation, by even the suspicion that he might betray his friend. But then he realises… he is the one at fault. All the time he had been projecting his own public schoolboy, English code of honour onto someone who really is from a different time and set of values. His bad. (There is also the deeper implication – that William might not understand anything which is happening around him).