Prater’in Menekşesi

by Christopher Isherwood, Betül Kadıoğlu (Translator)

Londra, 1933. Genç yazar Christopher Isherwood’un yolu Avusturyalı yönetmen Friedrich Bergmann’ınkiyle kesişir. 19. yüzyıl Viyanası’nda geçen bir aşk filminin senaryosunu yazmayı kabul eden Isherwood, kendini yepyeni bir dünyada, birbirinden ilginç kişilerin arasında bulur.

Film stüdyosunun dışındaysa gerilimi giderek artan bir dünya vardır: Hitler gücünü hissettirmekte, büyük bir savaşın ayak sesleri duyulmaktadır. Bergmann Viyana’da kalan ailesi için giderek daha çok endişelenip İngilizlerin kayıtsızlığına isyan etmeye başlayınca film projesi de yarım kalma tehdidiyle karşı karşıya kalacaktır.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, Queer, Film, British Literature, LGBT

92 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

English-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the basis for the musical Cabaret (1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.

With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .

After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.

In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.

In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).

In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.

In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).

Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Filmmaking is an odd occupation…

“It’s such a bore,” I said brutally. “It’s so completely unreal. It has no relation to anything that ever happened anywhere. I can’t believe a word of it.”

But nonetheless the script continues to be written… The world all around is in hectic commotion… The kettle is boiling… And the film director cuts a very colourful figure…

We visited the Tower, where Bergmann lectured me on English history, comparing the reign of the Tudors to the Hitler regime. He took it for granted that Bacon wrote the Shakespearian plays, in order to make political propaganda, and that Queen Elizabeth was a man. He even had a further theory that Essex was beheaded because he threatened the Monarch with revelations of their homosexual intrigue.

Show goes on… All is fever… Then suddenly there is a deep crisis… But despite anything the film is shot… And it isn’t a masterpiece…
Filmmaking: many are called, but few are chosen… As usual.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brief novella with no chapters published in 1945; Isherwood is as good as ever. It is autobiographical and the main character is called Christopher Isherwood. It describes Isherwood’s time as a screenwriter on the film Little Friend in 1934. The central character is a film director Friedrich Bergmann (based on Berthold Viertel). It is set at the time of the rise of Nazism, just before the Anschluss; Bergmann is an Austrian Jew. It is a satire of the film industry, but it also depicts a time and place and captures the general indifference to the rise of Nazism. Isherwood explores the tension between creative artists and the insidiousness of commerce.
Friedrich Bergmann is the stand out character, dominating the novella, a typical demanding and outrageous director; often self-important and unpredictable, but also charming and generous. Bergmann’s family are in Austria and this adds to the tension. The ongoing human tendency to avoid reality is at the centre. But for Isherwood the future was clear:
“Like all my friends I believed a European war was coming soon. I believed as one believes one will die … It was unreal because I couldn’t imagine anything beyond it; I refused to imagine anything: just as a spectator refuse to imagine what is behind the scenery in the theatre, The outbreak of war, like the moment of death crossed my perspective of the future like a wall; it marked the instant, total end of my imagined world.”
Isherwood’s description of life in a film studio is also telling;
"It will interest you, as a phenomenon. You see, the film studio of today is really the palace of the sixteenth century. There one sees what Shakespeare saw: the absolute power of the tyrant, the courtiers, the flatterers, the jesters, the cunningly ambitious intriguers. There are fantastically beautiful women, there are incompetent favourites. There are great men who are suddenly disgraced. There is a most insane extravagance, and unexpected parsimony over a few pence. There is enormous splendour, which is a sham; and also horrible squalor hidden behind the scenery. There are vast schemes, abandoned because of some caprice. There are secrets which everybody knows and no one speaks of. There are even one or two honest advisers. These are the court fools, who speak the deepest wisdom in puns, lest they should be taken seriously. They grimace, and tear their hair privately and weep."
The novel drifts along at a good pace, very enjoyable until the last ten pages and they are brilliant; Isherwood at his best. There is a coded description of his love life and then there is this;
"There is one question that we seldom ask each other directly: it is too brutal. And yet it is the only question worth asking our fellow-travellers. What makes you go on living? Why don't you kill yourself? Why is all this bearable? What makes you bear it?
Could I answer that question about myself? No. Yes. Perhaps ... I supposed, vaguely, that it was a kind of balance, a complex of tensions.”
This is a little gem of a novel.

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This slim satirical novel, written six years on from Goodbye to Berlin, is built around Isherwood's own experiences of scrip writing. For the generation of writers who grew up with silent cinema, the arrival of sound was an opportunity not to be missed. A chance to take a break from novel writing, and enter the glamorous world of film. All of a sudden actors needed lines, and obviously somebody had to write them. Austrian director Berthold Viertel learnt of Isherwood after his name was put forward by a friend he had met during his time in 1920s Germany. Viertel read and liked Isherwood's novel The Memorial so bought him in as a replacement to work on a script based on fellow Austrian Ernst Lothar's novel Little Friend.

Prater Violet, written when Isherwood was living in America since the outbreak of WW2, is set in 1934 and sees the author himself as the narrator, who is living with his mother and brother in England, when he is approached by director Friedrich Bergmann (who is closely based on Viertel) to work on a script. Austrian Bergmann is lured from Vienna by British film company Imperial Bulldog Pictures to direct the film Prater Violet which focuses on a handsome student who happens to be a prince, who meets and falls in love with Toni, a girl who sells violets. Isherwood initially thinks the project stinks, but in the end changes his mind. Isherwood and Bergmann discover their close affinity, and through their growing rapport Isherwood is treated to Bergmann's versatility, vitality and deep emotional content of things as they are. Hanging over the story is a foreboding of trouble brewing back in Bergmann's homeland. He starts to become increasingly rattled, is worried for his family, and with mounting fear is convinced Hitler is on the verge of reeking terror, which leads to bitter quarrels on set, and a despair that almost derails the picture.

It's one of Isherwood's most overlooked novels, and I have to say it entertained me a lot more than I thought it would. Prater Violet contains much of Isherwood’s understated elegance and observational prowess, his insight into human behaviour, and his power to charm. As characters go, Bergmann's presence is simply a triumph. He steals all the scenes he's in, with his long verbal attacks, and thoughts about love, politics, and industry gossip. It's quite easy to overlook Isherwood, who is still an important player, both in connecting dots of the novel, and in the actual production of the film, which in the end leads to Hollywood's interest in Bergmann.

[Jon Nakapalau · Rating 5 out of 5]

Atmospheric and encapsulated in situations that are often deeper than implied. This book is an interesting study about the connection between art, politics and personnel relationships. I really like the tone that this book sets; we are all kind of 'adrift' just looking for others who seem to be drifting in the same direction.

[Post Scriptum · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scrive Manganelli nella nota finale: “Se Isherwood scrivesse musica, la sua predilezione - ha qualcosa di infantile - andrebbe ai fiati: romanzi per oboe, clarinetto, per corno di bassetto. Il corno di bassetto è aereo di quella ariosità serale e boschiva che s’accompagna ad una solitudine insieme pittoresca e irreparabile; un precario sorriso custodisce una delicata risonanza, l’allucinazione dell’eco, una sonorità pensosa, e insieme elegante; la sonorità delicata di una angoscia ostinata ma inafferrabile; l’imprecisa, cattivante angoscia dell’esistenza.”

Londra, anni Trenta.
Chatsworth sogna di realizzare una Tosca scritta da Maugham, con Greta Garbo come protagonista, invece è alle prese con La violetta del Prater. A dirigerlo è il regista ebreo-tedesco Friedrich Bergmann, sceneggiatore il giovane e promettente scrittore Christopher Isherwood.
Si lavora in un clima di esaltazione, di entusiasmo, ma in Europa incombe la catastrofe. A Berlino è in corso il processo per l’incendio del Reichstag; in Austria gli scontri con le masse operaie sono aspri, seguono arresti, condanne, uccisioni. Gli inglesi non vogliono credere. Non ancora. Meglio illudersi che non accadrà. Meglio non pensare allo scoppio di una guerra europea. Meglio vivere nell’inconsistenza della finzione.
“Questo rispettabile ombrello è la bacchetta magica con la quale l’inglese cercherà di fare scomparire Hitler. Quando poi Hitler rifiuterà di scomparire, allora l’inglese aprirà il suo ombrello e dirà: “Dopo tutto, che può farmi un po’ di pioggia?”. Ma la pioggia sarà una pioggia di bombe e di sangue. L’ombrello non è a prova di bomba”.
Solo Bergmann pare inquieto. Sente la guerra avvicinarsi. L’Austria, dove ha lasciato moglie e figlia, non è più sicura.
E mentre fra le macchine dell’illusione volteggia la leggerezza, si scivola, dolcemente, verso il baratro della follia nazista.

La favola bella è pretesto per riflettere. Perché certa “leggerezza” tanto leggera non è.
“Che cosa ti spinge a vivere? Perché non ti ammazzi? Perché si riesce a sopportare tutto? Che cosa te lo fa sopportare?
Potevo rispondere a una domanda del genere? No. Sì. Forse… Supponevo, vagamente, che fosse per una sorta di equilibrio, un complesso di tensioni. Si fa la cosa che viene dopo nell’elenco. Un pasto da consumare. Il capitolo undici da scrivere. Il telefono che suona. Si esce in taxi, diretti in un posto qualunque. Il proprio lavoro. I divertimenti. La gente. I libri. Le cose che si possono comperare nei negozi. C’è sempre qualche cosa di nuovo. Deve esserci. Diversamente, l’equilibrio verrebbe interrotto, la tensione spezzata.”

“La morte, bramata, temuta. Il sonno, tanto desiderato. Il terrore del sopraggiungere del sonno. La morte. La guerra. La vasta città addormentata, destinata alle bombe. Il rombo degli aeroplani incursori. Le batterie contraeree. Le urla. Le case sbriciolate. La morte universale. La mia morte. La morte del mondo visto, conosciuto, assaporato, tangibile. La morte col suo esercito di paure. Non le paure che tutti conoscono, le paure cui si fa pubblicità, ma quelle più terribili: le paure segrete dell’infanzia. Paura del tuffo dal trampolino, del cane del fattore e del cavallino del parroco, paura degli armadi, dei corridoi scuri, paura di spaccarsi un’unghia con un taglierino. E, al culmine, la più indicibilmente temibile, la paura prima: quella di aver paura.
[…]
Forse avrei potuto volgermi a Bergmann e chiedergli: «Chi sei? E io, chi sono? Che cosa facciamo qui?». Ma gli attori non possono rivolgersi domande simili durante lo spettacolo.”

Libri sul divano dei pigri

[Jack Edwards · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely fell in love with this charming little book about cinema, performance, and the 1930s - I read it all in one go!

[Lea · Rating 4 out of 5]

An autobiographical novella about Isherwood's time working in cinema, first published in 1945. I thought portraying the worries about the war through the Austrian filmmaker was a smart way to contrast it with the British public at the time in 1933 - mostly indifference. Some passages about the imminence of war but going on with life as usual, as best a possible, were eerily familiar to me.

[Michael Flick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece. Does in 128 pages what contemporary (or recently deceased) "masters" can't do in a thousand pages. Every word, every sentence perfect.

The narrator, Christopher Isherwood, who is not the author but is the author, is hired to work on a film that is directed by an Austrian Jew in London during the fall of his country to Hitler. This slim book shows you everything that's wrong and that's right in the times--and tells you all you'll ever need to know about making a movie. The last seven pages are one of the greatest poems (albeit in prose) ever written.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It's past amazing. Read it.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Starring

Christopher Isherwood
as
Christopher Isherwood

and

Berthold Viertel
as
Friedrich Bergmann

Isherwood had worked with the Austrian writer and director on the 1934 film Little Friend, and Prater Violet, a sort of My Week With Marilyn without Marilyn, is the fictionalized result. Published in 1945, its brevity does not signify a lack of gravity. Europe is on the cusp of WWII and his time with Bergmann acts as the mirror in which Isherwood (coy about his sexuality) confronts not only his own reflection—

"The dilemma of Rudolf is the dilemma of the would-be revolutionary writer or artist, all over Europe. This writer is not to be confused with the true proletarian writer, such as we find in Russia. His economic background is bourgeois. He is accustomed to comfort, a nice home, the care of a devoted slave who is his mother and also his jailer. From the safety and comfort of his home, he permits himself the luxury of a romantic interest in the proletariat. He comes among the workers under false pretenses, and in disguise. He flirts with Toni, the girl of the working class. But it is only a damn lousy act, a heartless masquerade…”

—but that of a generation, of a country, and of an industry which for a century (looking back from the present) has churned out film after film without much regard for anything beyond the façades of a movie set and the money that will be raked in afterwards. The philosophical ending is similar to that of A Single Man, which will always have my heart.

[Sketchbook · Rating 1 out of 5]

An obvious wafer-thin parable : Isherwood in London writes, on assignment, a trite film script while Europe prepares for W2. Get the irony? His writing is clean and crispy clear, as usual, but only the last couple of pages crack anything personal or profound. The real irony about Isherwood, whose reputation continues to rise today, is that until a hit 60s musical ("Cabaret") was produced from a play - by someone else - based on his "Berlin Stories," no one in America or anywhere else was even aware of him. He says he never saw the musical. But it suddenly made him rich and famous. Now that's a far better story than "Prater Violet."

[Huy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Đọc xong không nhớ đang đọc gì chỉ thấy một mớ rối nùi, tưởng là truyện tình cảm lãng mạn ai dè giễu nhại chính trị :))

[Rachel Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books. My uncle gave me a copy when I was in high school, and I have re-read it every couple years, ever since.

Isherwood is better known for Berlin Stories, a semi-autobiographical work on pre-Nazi Germany which became the basis for Cabaret.

Prater Violet is a semi-autobiographical account of the young Isherwood was hired to write the screenplay for a relentlessly fluffy Ruritanian musical comedy, Prater Violet, to be shot in London in 1934.

The director, Friedrich Bergmann, is a Jewish intellectual who has left his family back in Austria. Upon first meeting Isherwood, Bergmann remarks, "I am sure we shall be very happy together. You know, already, I feel absolutely no shame before you. We are like two married men who meet in a whorehouse."

Prater Violet, the novel, is largely a character study of Bergmann, who sees both the tragedy and absurdity of his situation, pouring his energy into a ridiculous comedy while danger looms over his family and the world. It is also, quite genuinely, a hilarious backstage comedy about filmmaking, so the movie within the book and the book itself are perfect reflections of each other. The character sketches are dead-on, and the prose is marvelous.

If that was all the book was, I would have liked it a lot. But it's more than that. I'll put what made me fall in love with it, and makes it endlessly re-readable, behind a cut. It's not a plot twist in any conventional sense, but it did surprise me. I'd love to keep it a surprise, to allow you to discover it for yourself.

Since I know what you're all thinking: nobody in the book dies in the Holocaust, or dies at all. It's surprising more for stylistic and thematic reasons.



All through the book, we learn a great deal about Bergmann, but less of Isherwood. He turns his observant eye on others, but not himself. (An early line in Berlin Stories is "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.")

In the very last pages of the book, Isherwood lets us catch a glimpse of his life, his self, his soul, and what his relationship with Bergmann really means to him. After an entire book skating over bright surfaces striped with dark shadows, it's like a sudden plunge into deep waters, startling and revelatory and beautiful.

The last page returns to the original tone, sparkling and funny and understated. But now we know what was beneath-- what is always beneath all our surface interactions and appearances and silly projects and casual chat. The actual text is a letter from a friend, about how much audiences are enjoying Prater Violet and snubbing a politically superior and very serious indeed Soviet movie about the proletariat.

The very last line informs us that Bergmann moved to America with his family. The implication is that the success of Prater Violet got him a Hollywood job and so enabled him and his family to escape the Holocaust. The silly comedy that Bergmann reluctantly poured his creative energies into didn't turn out to be a great work of art. But it did save lives.

Those last few pages, together with the rest of the book, suggests to me that the frustratingly absurd, shallow, everyday work and interactions are also necessary and important. Though Bergmann and Isherwood discuss serious things, their relationship is built not only on that, but on sharing the absurdities of Hollywood and writing their fluffy movie. Similarly, the sparkling body of the book is what makes the depth of the climax work.

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isherwood, himself in the novel as novice scriptwriter, and his new acquaintance the German film director Bergmann, during their first lunch with the studio head Chatsworth:

The cigar somehow completed Chatsworth. As he puffed it, he seemed to grow larger than life-size. His pale eyes shone with a prophetic light.

‘For years I’ve had one great ambition. You’ll laught at me. Everybody does. They say I’m crazy. But I don’t care.’

He paused. Then announced solemnly: ‘Tosca. With Garbo.’

Bergmann turned, and gave me a rapid, enigmatic glance. Then he exhaled, with such force that Chatsworth’s cigar-smoke was blown back around his head. Chatsworth looked pleased. Evidently this was the right kind of reaction.

‘Without music, of course. I’d do it absolutely straight.’ He paused again, apparently waiting for our protest. There was none.

Very funny and very sad. In the mid30s, Bergmann has fled to Vienna with his family, leaving all his money and possessions in Nazi Germany. He’s come to England in 1938 to prostitute his art in directing a corny musical Prater Violet, leaving his wife and daughter in Vienna--he needs the money. Mid-film, the Germans take over Austria. Bergmann, already as amazed and frustrated as Zweig was that these English can’t see the evil and duplicity of Hitler, is frantic about his family.

All Bergmann’s pent-up anxiety exploded. ‘The picture! I s____ upon the picture! This heartless filth! This wretched lying charade! To make such a picture at such a moment is definitely heartless. It is a crime. It definitely aids Dollfuss and Starhemberg, and Fey and all their gangsters. It covers up the dirty syphilitic sore with rose leaves, with the petals of this hypocritical reactionary violet. It lies and declares that the pretty Danube is blue, when the water is red with blood...I am punished for assisting at this lie. We shall all be punished___’

I had just spent two days at the Deutsches Historiches Museum in Berlin when I found this in an charity shop. Two days (and much recent reading) submerged in images of the two world wars, and the stories of the people who started and suffered from them. Touring the gleaming new glass dome of the Reichstag that replaces the one damaged in the (probably Nazi-set) fire of 1933 and again later in the Allied bombing. So this felt like a continuation of living as much in the last century as in this one. Our horrific news from Sudan and Yemen and Afghanistan mirrored by news from Belgium and Austria and Poland and...people continuing to make movies like--take your pick.

Isherwood wrote (or at least published) this right after the war, and his Bergmann predicts all the disaster that looms in front of Europe. That part of the story is icy and fierce. But it is just as much a droll send-up of the movie business, filled at the top with crass but cagy executives, assisted by Cambridge boys with amused, well-paid nonchalance, and staffed by skilled crew members quickly but individually sketched. The writing is excellent until the last two or three pages, when Isherwood inexplicably devolves into a personal remembrance that melts away the power of his story. So definitely read it to page 98, and then stop.

[Gitte · Rating 4 out of 5]

First Line: “Mr. Isherwood?”

Yes, the protagonist of this book is Mr. Isherwood himself. Quite unusual, but also quite brilliant. The story takes place in London just before WWII, where Isherwood is working on a screenplay with Friedrich Bergmann. We follow the writing process and part of the movie production of "Prater Violet" – probably inspired of Isherwood’s (i.e. the real Isherwood) own experience as a screenwriter in the 1930s.

The story is also about the friendship between Isherwood and Bergmann. Their relationship was very amusing to follow. What a character we have in Bergmann! Just take a look at what Bergmann utters after meeting Isherwood for the first time:

I am sure we shall be very happy together.
You know, already, I feel absolutely no shame before you.
We are like two married men who meet in a whorehouse.

I LOVE Isherwood’s writing! To me, he’s one of the best. And I always love his description of the 1930s and 40s. He knows how to create a interesting setting about to be destroyed by the Nazis lurking in the background. Take another look at what he says about the Nazis (again, speaking through Bergmann):

That is how they wish you to imagine them, as unconquerable monsters.
But they are human, very human, in their weakness.
We must not fear them. We must understand them.
It is absolutely necessary to understand them, or we are all lost.

Isherwood is a true master of setting, tone, characters and writing. His characters are always so real. And amusing. One of the things that really cracked me up was his description of himself as a fictional character: An arrogant, whiny, lazy little prat. But we love him for his honesty. And aren’t we all whiny, lazy and arrogant from time to time? And don’t we all know this feeling:

I was feeling temperamental and sulky that day, chiefly because I had a bad cold.
My conscience had driven me to Bergmann’s flat, and I felt that my sacrifice wasn’t being properly appreciated.
I had expected to be fussed over and sent home again.

That one made me laugh! So all in all, Prater Violet was an entertaining and unusual little story. But I’m still glad it was only 122 pages. I think I would have tired of the story had it been longer.

For more reviews, visit my blog The Bookworm's Closet - a blog about fashion and literature.

[Silvia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Isherwood con i suoi dialoghi lievi e leggiadri mette a nudo le nevrosi del mondo del cinema e lo contrappone alla sorgente follia hitleriana; romanzo breve e denso comunque di significato sotto l'apparente leggerezza dello stile.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Isherwood, I find myself nodding and smiling, agreeing with all he says and does as if he's my older brother, my idol, who continues to impress me, and I continue to follow because I believe in them, their personality and their beliefs; or partly because I see parts of myself in Isherwood even flawed parts of myself which I can relate to, that I can laugh at myself as Isherwood does with his beautiful English sarcasm. Sarcasm, my best friend, my best weapon and defence.
- Written two night ago, at about 2am, scrawly as anything and diagonally across a piece of paper on my bedside table in blotchy biro.

When people tend to ask me my favourite writers I tend to leave Isherwood off. Sometimes I think to myself, well Matt this book probably only deserves 4 stars, but I can't help but give him 5 because they all just speak to me, through me, from me, seemingly. I think we all have personal things like that. I tell most people my favourite Led Zeppelin song is 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You', which is true, it's my favourite public Led Zeppelin. What's my actual favourite, that I listen to the most on my own and don't want to listen with anyone else? 'Going to California'. There we go, if you've bothered to read this, you've learnt something about me. My favourite colour, you ask me in town? Or outside the cinema or in the supermarket. I shrug: 'red', I say. I'm lying. My favourite colour is that burnt leaf colours that comes in autumn, those browns and oranges, all scorched and rusted.

Anyway, typical tangents. I find writing so personal, I can't help but go off topic. 'Prater Violet' has Isherwood as the narrator as he is employed to save a movie which the novel is named after. There's some great stuff about Isherwood struggling as a writer, which as a budding writer, I adore to read. There's wit and great characters like in all of Isherwood's novels and at the end, I was surprised with some philosophy from Isherwood, moving and dark but powerful and needed. Here's some quotes.

Bergmann, Isherwood's German's colleague, on the movie:
"Do you know what the film is?' Bergmann cupped his hands, lovingly, as if around an ezquisite flower. 'The film is an infernal machine. Once it is ignited and set in motion, it revolves with an enormous dynamism. It cannot pause. It cannot apologise. It cannot retract anything. It cannot explain itself. It simply ripens to its inevitable explosion."

Bergmann on the English and the rise of Hitler (evident in most of Isherwood's work as he lived in Berlin for 3/4 years):
"You see, this umbrella of his I find extremely symbolic. It is the British respectability which thinks: "I have my traditions, and they will protect me. Nothing unpleasant, nothing ungentlemanly can possibly happen within my private park." This respectable umbrella is the Englishman's magic wand, with which he will try to wave Hitler out of existence. When Hitler declines rudely to disappear, the Englishman will open his umbrella and say, "After all, what do I care for a little rain?" But the rain will be a rain of bombs and blood. The umbrella is not bomb-proof."

Isherwood on the film, later realising how much he sounds like Bergmann.
"The whole beauty of the film," I announced to my mother and Richard next morning at breakfast, 'is that it has a certain fixed speed. The way you see it is mechanically conditioned. I mean, take a painting - you can just glance at it, or you can stare at the left-hand top corner for half an hour. Same thing with a book. The author can't stop you from skimming it, or starting at the last chapter and reading backwards. The point is, you can choose your approach. When you go to the cinema, it's different. There's the film, and you have to look at it as the director wants you to look at it. He makes his points, one after another, and he allows you a certain number of seconds or minutes to grasp each one. If you miss anything, he won't repeat himself, and he won't stop to explain."

And a portion of Isherwood's questioning and thoughts at the end, to finish, though it goes on for longer than this quote below.

'What makes you go on living? Why don't you kill yourself? Why is all this bearable? What makes you bear it?
Could I answer that question about myself? No. Yes. Perhaps... I supposed, vaguely, that it was a kind of balance, a complex of tensions. You did whatever was next on the list. A meal to be eaten. Chapter eleven needs to be written. The telephone rings. You go off somewhere in a taxi. There is one's job. There are amusements. There are people. There are books. There are things to be bought in shops. There is always something new. There has to be. Otherwise, the balance would be upset, the tension would break.'

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found PRATER VIOLET an engaging novella that effectively satirizes the making of movies in the 1930s. The first-person narrator, "Christopher Isherwood," is a close adjunct to the author, and not above having a bit of fun with the making of a cloying studio movie set in "Olde" Vienna whose director is worried sick about the onslaught of fascism in the real Vienna, where his close relatives are marooned. The movie studio is set in London but much of the plot could apply to the Hollywood studios of the Thirties as well. A quick read; pay attention to the denouement. Not a major Isherwood novel but so much fun it doesn't matter. Originally published in 1945.

Thanks for the copy, Chris!

[Wayne · Rating 4 out of 5]

POST-READ:
Christopher speaks:
"There is one question that we seldom ask each other directly: it is too brutal. And yet it is the only question worth asking our fellow-travellers. What makes you go on living ? Why don't you kill yourself ? Why is all this bearable ? What makes you bear it ?
Could I answer that question about myself ? No.
Yes. Perhaps..."

And so Christopher does answer the question/s.
In that lucid, revelatory and directly simple fashion of his. But you will have to read it for yourself in the final few pages of this brief but varied novel.
Hitler's war is looming. England dithers. Austria faces social unrest and a voracious Germany. The Jews exist perilously posed. And a trite Viennese musical is undergoing production in London under the baton of a larger than life Austrian Jew who detests his fairy floss creation,
while his wife and daughter face peril in the real Vienna. Disparate worlds co-exist and Christopher is our observer and guide.
Isherwood never disappoints. Humour and drama tilt in the scales.
Read it!!!

PRE-READ:
This is a "reward" book given to myself...short and well-written,
by a favourite author who has never disappointed.

Having just read "The Hare With Amber Eyes",
I feel I am in very familiar territory with this one,
since it concerns an Austrian Jew, Friedrich Bergmann,
a larger than life character,
who is in England directing a film with a Viennese setting.
He is in semi-exile from the Vienna of Dollfuss which fell to
a bullying Nazi takeover and a very quickly organised
Jewish persecution since anti-semitism was rabib there
as "The Hare With Amber Eyes" chillingly illustrates.
When a workers' socialist uprising occurs in Austria,
the film director, whose wife and daughter are in Vienna,
is naturally thrown into despair.

Within the context of the film-making and the Nazi threat,
nestles the delightful relationship between
the young writer Christopher and the fatherly,
dynamic,creative and generous European director.
Isherwood plays a role very reminiscent of the French writer
and a BIG favourite of mine, Colette, who often introduces
herself into her stories playing a supportive role.
Her "Chance Acquaintances" is such a novella
which I never tire of reading and whose merits
I have of course proclaimed on Goodreads.

Another bonus is Isherwood's clear and lucid style.
In comparison to "The Spartacus Road" whose
gnarled style is exhausting, yet intriguing and challenging,
I feel I am riding on a slippery dip with my old mate Chris.
Thanks Chris wherever you are!!!

[Xenja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quel buon sapore di realtà tipico dei romanzi di Isherwood (dove il protagonista è sempre lui, Christopher), ingentilito da ironia, arguzia, malinconia. Dietro la divertente vicenda di un filmetto sentimentale girato negli anni Trenta c’è, più interessante, l’atmosfera della guerra mondiale imminente, c’è il vivo ritratto di un bel personaggio (il regista, austriaco e ebreo) e c’è la storia di una bella amicizia. E ancora, un finale splendido: la vita, l’amore, la morte, eppure senza alcuna spocchia e saccenteria, anzi con l’umiltà e la leggerezza che pochi sanno.

Forse avrei potuto volgermi a Bergmann e chiedergli: «Chi sei? E io, chi sono? Che cosa facciamo qui?». Ma gli attori non possono rivolgersi domande simili durante lo spettacolo. Ci eravamo scritte le parti uno dell’altro, Friedrich quella di Christopher, Christopher quella di Friedrich, e dovevamo continuare a recitarle, fino a quando fossimo rimasti insieme. Il dialogo era grezzo, i costumi e il trucco più assurdi, più caricaturali ancora della Violetta del Prater: il figlio di mammà, lo straniero ridicolo con un accento buffo. Be’, questo non importava. Perché, sotto i nostri travestimenti, e nonostante tutte le cose buone o cattive che avessimo potuto dire o pensare l’uno dell’altro, noi sapevamo. A livello più profondo della coscienza, due altri esseri, anonimi, impersonali, senza etichette, s’erano incontrati, identificati e s’erano stretta la mano.

[Marti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This must have been based very closely on Isherwoods real life work with Austrian director, Berthold Viertel as the model for the comically tyrannical, Friedrich Bergmann. Set in 1935, the director browbeats Isherwood into taking a job in on what everyone believes to be a "schmaltzy" melodrama (a peasant girl who unknowingly falls in love with a prince).

Things get off to a bad start, although the author grows to really admire the director, who, despite berating the cast and crew incessantly for their ignorance of the events unfolding in Europe (ie. Anschluss and general rioting in Austria); is actually a softie. It helps that the author speaks German.

As for the British cast and crew, I could not help thinking of the television studio in A Hard Day's NIght. Every type seemed to be represented, from the slippery Oxbridge under assistants with no ability to communicate with anyone beneath them, to the curmudgeonly film cutters and sound people.

Although way too short, I found it highly enjoyable.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely revitalized me. It's economy of language and precise plotting were refreshing and educational. I highly recommend it to anybody interested in novels that revolve around a central absence, here the impending outbreak of WWII as told through the sieve of a meaningless romantic-comedy.

If you liked this, make sure to follow me on Goodreads for more reviews!

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Isherwoods Praterveilchen ist so etwas wie das englische Gegenstück zum Letzten Tycoon von Fitzgerald. Eine witzige, gen Ende angenehm kitschige Hommage an die großen deutsch-jüddischen Regisseure der 20er und 30er Jahre. Entstanden als Abfallprodukt aus Isherwoods Hilfstätigkeit in einem Londoner Studio bei einem Film mit dem großen österreichischen Theaterregisseur Berthold Viertel, porträtiert und parodiert es einen zwischen Genie und Wahnsinn schwankenden österreichischen Regisseur und die Filmwelt um ihn, die einen Kitschfilm drehen. Mit dem Kitschfilm nimmt Isherwood zugleich Thomas Manns zu Recht vergessenen Erfolgsroman Königliche Hohheit auf die Schippe. Das ganze ist Isherwood-typisch in der Geschwindigkeit der Unterhaltungsromane der 20er geschrieben (und damit zum Zeitpunkt des Erscheines bereits hoffnungslos altmodisch) und durchgehend witzig.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember reading Prater Violet in my 20s and not liking it. Which was odd because I cherished Isherwood’s other novels, A Single Man, and Christopher and His Kind. So I thought I’d give it another whirl. Unfortunately, I was correct the first time. I just couldn’t connect with the story at all. And it wasn’t until the end that I thought to myself. Oh, this is Christopher’s writing.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoughts on the 2020 reread, incorporating some of these thoughts: http://www.danscanon.com/2020/04/prat...


This is my third straight year reading this short novel so I might as well cave and call this my first of my yearly rereads.

It's a farce about artists who think they're too good for the movie business jobs they're taken, set against the background of the rise of nazism in Germany. It takes solid aim at the vapidity of pretentious people in that world. There's a bit of a craft vs. art discussion that reminded me of Josh Brolin's character berating Clooney's at the end of Hail Ceasar. But there's a strong undercurrent of sadness and being adrift because of world events and the indifferent attitude of people toward those events and that is the lasting impression of the book.

I initially picked this up because I knew of his relation to WH Auden, but after reading several of his books, I may like him more!

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 3 out of 5]

How do you make art when the world is collapsing into ruin? With the perspective of hindsight, Christopher Isherwood fictionalizes his experience of working as a writer on a film directed in England by an Austrian film director in the midst of the Nazi unrest (and ultimate Nazi takeover) in Austria. In the typical Isherwoodian style (sharp studies of odd characters, complex plots, "I am a camera" style of observation; a blend of fiction and nonfiction; sharp wit), Isherwood explores art and creativity, the politics of the 1930s, the film industry of the same period, and what it meant to be a writer and a screenwriter.

[Bob Schnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a semi-autobiographical short novel about Christopher Isherwood's experience in British film making on the cusp of WWII. It is wry, comical and sad. The character of the Austrian director Bergmann is the stand out personality and most of the story revolves around his clashes with British manners, his eccentricities and his worries about his family left in Austria. Since Isherwood speaks German and is a writer, he is hired to work on the script, which turns out to be quite the learning experience. Many other reviewers call the book "charming" and I have to agree.

[Alvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A gemlike novella with a satiric tone that belies the existential heft at its center. Isherwood's language is fresh, his characters well-drawn, and the sociopolitical context is incorporated into the plot without didacticism or expository language. At the very end the narrator engages in a bit of woo woo existential pondering that would be cringe-worthy in lesser hands, but Isherwood handles it perfectly. Prater Violet really is flawless.

[Quân Khuê · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ngáp

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is hard to define. Part satirical memoir of the film industry in the mid 1930s, part meditation on life’s purpose, part reflection of the pre-WWII state of the world, it is both profound and playful. I really enjoyed it.

[Ellie Midwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Prater Violet” is a remarkable short novel by Christopher Isherwood - a writer, who I will forever associate with bohemian, pre-Hitler Berlin and the fascinating world of movie-making. It’s truly remarkable how, through such a short novel, Isherwood was able not only to transport me to the set of “Prater Violet,” but managed to deliver the vague feeling of threat hanging over Europe despite the fact that it had only been a few months since the Nazi Party had taken over power in Germany. His relationship with Friedrich Bergmann, an exiled director whose family remained in Austria where the political unrests only gain force, is wonderfully complex.

The portrait of Bergmann itself is positively fascinating; through Isherwood’s eyes, we get to know a man of a remarkable talent who is also an idealist at heart and wishes for the entire world to rise up to the hatred and the growing nationalistic threat before it’s too late. Bergmann himself insists that he’s a foreigner in the country where nobody understands him, but what’s worse, no one even cares to understand why exactly he feels such profound anxiety while everyone else insists that nothing awful is happening, that he is only imagining things, that Hitler only wants peace and all the other neutrality-driven nonsense to that extent. His emotions get in the way of his making the picture and eventually drive him into such an argumentative, angst-ridden state, that the studio considers replacing him with a different director.

I admit, the final few chapters made me nearly choke with emotions (but in a good way) as I was reading about the studio bosses’ cunning plan to save Bergmann from himself at least, even if the world can’t be saved. This novel is humorous and tragic at the same time; it’s touching and brutal in its honesty and so very relevant today - I would highly recommend it to everyone.