Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, 0749390549, Lowest Book Price Finder

Customer Reviews:

An Extraordinary Portrait Of Weimar Berlin!

"I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking," wrote Christopher Isherwood, at the beginning of "Goodbye to Berlin." "Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed." In the six portraits of Weimar Berlin that comprise "Goodbye To Berlin," Isherwood chronicles his life among the demimonde in this gloriously decadent capital city. He lived there, off and on, between 1929 and 1933. These marvelous stories are a fusion of fact and fiction. With each tale, and the passing of time, the sense of foreboding and the author's prophetic imagery intensifies, as Germany prepares to embrace Adolph Hitler.

Berlin was still a charming city of broad avenues, parks and cafÃ©s during this period. It was also a grotesque metropolis of night-people, visionaries, political fanatics - a place filled with intrigue, where vice and virtue were found in abundance - more of the former than the latter. 1930s Berlin was a powerful city of mobs and millionaires. And it was one huge salon, a center of European intellectual life where the arts and sciences flourished. This is the scene which provides a backdrop for Isherwood's stories.

The six "Goodbye To Berlin" stories form a relatively continuous narrative. In "A Berlin Diary - Autumn 1930," Isherwood introduces the reader to his landlady, the infamous Fraulein Schroeder, "Schroederschen," who calls him Herr Issyvoo. She is able to recite a history of her former lodgers by looking at the spots, stains and spillages left behind on her furniture, carpets and linens. Fellow flatmates include: Frl. Kost, a young woman, plump, blonde and pretty, who makes a living at the world's oldest profession - extremely upscale, of course; Bobby, who is a mixer at a west-end bar called the Troika, has adopted an English Christian name because they are all the rage; a commercial traveler, who is out most of the time, lives in the tiny attic which Frl. Schroeder refers to as the Swedish Pavilion; and Frl. Mayr, with her enormous arms, bull-dog jaw and coarse string-colored hair, is a music hall singer - the best in all of Germany, Schroeder assures with pride.

"Sally Bowles" certainly is divine decadence, and her antics make for a wonderful story. I had a difficult time keeping the image of Liza Minnelli singing "Cabaret" out of my mind, however. I must say though, after reading about Isherwood's Sally, I have to laud Ms. Minnelli on her performance. Her characterization is indeed recognizable in this Ms. Bowles.

"On Ruegen Island - Summer 1931" describes the author's holiday and the two characters he becomes involved with at a summer resort, Otto Nowak and Peter Wilkinson. Otto is a working class German youth, who uses his attractiveness to freeload off of men and women alike, rather than earn an honest wage. Peter Wilkinson, an Englishman living in Berlin, is extremely neurotic and very attached to Otto, although the two quarrel and bicker constantly.

"The Nowaks," Otto, (of Ruegen Island), and his immediate family, take Isherwood in as a lodger. As money becomes more difficult to come by and the effects of hyperinflation take their toll on Christopher's pocketbook, he has to economize and temporarily leaves Frl. Schroeder's relatively luxurious flat, for the slum-like, working-class projects of Wassertorstrasse.

In "The Landaurers," a wealthy Jewish family is aware of what is in store with the rise of Hitler's Nazism. Natalie befriends Isherwood, and through her so does her family. In this story the perils ahead are obvious and the Landaurers make preparations to leave Germany.

And in "A Berlin Diary - Winter - 1932-33," Isherwood bids farewell to Berlin. He will not return until 1952.

These are well written and important stories which paint a picture of a never-to-be-forgotten time. The language and content give a real sense of the period, and Christopher Isherwood's taut and descriptive narrative is superb. Highly recommended!
JANA

Stunning, Atmospheric, Prescient

`Goodbye to Berlin' is writing at its best: spare, unadorned, and sincere. Christopher Isherwood flies in the face of today's tendency towards florid, pretentious writing, which seems to favor five similies when none would have done. His evocation of pre-WWII Berlin through a series of interlinked stories, and the deft, subtly drawn characters - the famous Sally Bowles is just one - is unforgettable.

Perhaps it is the way Isherwood writes with a remarkable lack of ego - as his famous quote states, events are captured as objectively as a camera records light onto a photographic film. This does not mean he is impassive; quite the opposite. His desire is clearly to record a fragile time exactly as it was. Nobody knows the outcome of history until it happens, and the rise of the Nazi party as told here is all the more horrifying, as we experience it as the people themselves must have done - first a fringe party regarded as little more than a joke, then as rulers of the country, in a frighteningly short space of time.

Although it's small and perfectly formed, you'll never want it to end. Isherwood's original intention was to include these episodes in a much larger opus about Germany in the Weimar Republic, but there's something about the fragmented quality of the eventual book which is perfectly suited to its subject matter.

It takes pride of place in my library.

Amazing portrayal of a city soon to change

What is unique in this book is its lack of reference to Nazism. Only at the end do we really see politics enter the novel and feel Berlin's doom closing in. Almost everyone Isherwood comes across are not political- they just want to get on with life. As an exception to this there is a group of Communists her sets out to meet but they seem devoted to theory alone.
The sense of Berlin's eminent change builds up momentum throughout the novel- at the start it is difficult to imagine the city Isherwood is writing about is soon to lose a vast amount of its population to the camps, the army or the bombs and most of its buildings destroyed. The light-hearted section detailing Sally Bowles's friendship guides us into more serious pieces on poverty and charged relationships ending with Isherwood's exit from Berlin, as the Nazi's power grows too strong.
Isherwood's writing seems modern for its time and has a sense of amusing reality that reminded me of George Orwell's Down and Out In Paris In London. What struck me as his finest point was the way in which his characters just leap off the page into reality and seem bursting with life. This makes the ending seem even more poignant than it is as we leave many of these characters to face their fate.
This is a wonderful last glance back at the old Berlin that no longer exists.

Hello to old Berlin

This book is known as the original of "Cabaret"- which is why I bought it. And am I glad I did- don't expect the story as seen on stage or film, for here you will find several accounts of pre-war Berlin from various view points. The book is made up of several, smaller, novella's that are vaguely related while independent in themselves. Isherwood's strength lies in his ability to create characters that are believable (all, or at least most, were based on real persons that Isherwood had met), and to evoke the atmosphere of the Berlin of the 30's. His writing style is quite simple, yet says all that there is to say- which makes this book very easy to read. He manages to create the increasingly opressive atmosphere of pre-war Germany throughout the book; which grows into an observation of Germany's response to the growing threat of Nazism- which makes us feel as though we could possibly have been there. It is a fascinating account of the changes that took place, and it shows how people can be led astray to believe false truths etc. This has to be one of my favourite books of all time because of what it is- A study of various characters, A document of a changing Germany, An echo of a lifestyle now lost...Read and Enjoy- with crude fascination!

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