#27 - "The Berlin Stories" by Christopher Isherwood

I have finished my first book of 2011, or is it my first two books?  The Berlin Stories is two books combined into one; The Last of Mr. Norris  and Goodbye Berlin.  While the two are not directly linked, they do have a common narrator, boarding house and landlady (all the essentials to a great story).

Book one follows the narrator (presumably the author) on a trip from his native England, on the train, to Berlin, where he shares a berth with the odd, yet intriguing Arthur Norris.  The story explores their relationship in inter-war Berlin where they become involved with the local communist party, while Hitler and the Nazis rise to power in the background.  Arthur Norris is simply a great character.  I liked him, but wasn't sure why, and I loathed him for the same reasons.  I found him inexplicably interesting and mysterious, and didn't know what to make of him until the end.  At times he seemed as if he would fit right into a Le Carre spy novel, while at other times he seemed as if he could double for Willy Loman.  Add a little political intrigue into the mix and you get quite a story.

The second book follows a bit of a different format.  While it still revolves around the same narrator, almost all the supporting characters are different.  The second book reads more like a diary or journal, with six different entries, each about people the narrator spends him time with in Berlin.  Most famous of these is no doubt Sally Bowles, who Liza Minnelli won an Oscar for portraying in "Cabaret," but there's also his relationship with Peter and Otto, a gay couple struggling with their relationship in a soon-to-be-Nazi-run Germany, and Natalia Laundauer, a wealthy Jewish heiress, who's family isn't prepared for the fate we all know now they must have met.  Like Arthur Norris from the first story, the characters in the second book are so well written and developed.  They all at times seem oddly likable, but strangely repugnant.

I'm torn as to what to think of this book.  When I finished reading, my first thought was no doubt that I had enjoyed reading it, but when I look back, I'm not exactly sure why.  The first story was quite interesting, especially as the two get more and more involved with the communist party, all while Hitler is rising to power, but the second story didn't really have any story, nor any conclusion.  That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the second half, it just didn't seem to have any real point.  As I mentioned earlier, it was more a series of diary entries, which when I think about it, is exactly how it was intended.  I've always thought that a great story is what make me enjoy a book, but here the story wasn't the best part, rather it was the characters and the setting, both so well written, I couldn't help but get wrapped up in the period.

But I think what I enjoyed the most was the writing style.  More Hemingway than Woolf, Isherwood writes more like a storyteller, and less like a psychiatrist.  Instead of 'philosophical introspection' (a term I once saw used to describe boring, modernist novels like To the Lighthouse), he uses a more direct style of prose; describing the character and their actions, instead of their inner thoughts about their actions or other characters.  Combine this with his interesting characters, and Isherwood gave me an excellent read.

It was also interesting to read this book, knowing what was to happen in Germany and the world in the years following its publication.  When published in 1935, although the Nazis were in power, the war was yet to start, the world was unaware of the atrocities that were to occur.  While many of the characters in both books doubt war will ever happen, the narrator is less certain, predicting not only war, but ethnic mass murder.  If only Neville Chamberlain had thought that way, things might have turned out very differently.

You can read TIME's original review from May 20, 1935, right here.  They only review The Last of Mr. Norris, as the two were not published together at the time it was written.

I've forged ahead into my 28th book, Infinite Jest.  I almost went with a smaller, less intimidating book, but realized that I'm going to have to read this sooner or later, so I might as well dive in right now.  It's going to take some kind of effort to finish this thing before the snow melts (in May).

#1 - "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold" by John Le Carre

The first book on the list is done! It is of course only a drop in the bucket so to speak, but it's a start. The list has officially begun.

Alec Lemas is a British spy during the cold war. He enjoys drinking and women. While it may sound like James Bond, the similarities end there. In John Le Carre’s 1961 novel, Lemas is a spy looking to get out of the intelligence game, and looks forward to retirement. He takes on one final assignment, the riskiest of his career, which he believes is to kill an East German agent and will allow him to finally retire.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is nothing like one of Ian Fleming’s novels, painting a far more realistic and much less romantic picture. Lemas enjoys drinking, but not sipping martinis while uttering witty one-liners, rather getting drunk as quickly as possible. He enjoys womanizing, but rather than chasing a series of sexy foreign agents, he chases lonely women whose lives are more pathetic than his own. He lives in a small, shabby apartment in London, is divorced, doesn’t have any friends, and doesn’t have any money. He wears old suits and eats canned food and isn’t very likeable. He lives within the bleak back drop of the cold war, in dreary working class areas of London and divided Berlin. Sympathy for the protagonist is often achieved as a result of his depressing existence.

Writing from his own experiences working for M5, Le Carre describes a behind-the-scenes look at espionage and the cold war, describing a world of men who are completely absorbed in their profession. They’re willing to kill if asked to do so, and must spend every waking moment being suspicious of not only their enemies but also their allies. We follow Lemas from his public self-destruction, which results in a prison term, to his journey into East Germany, working with the other side. But the suspicions that he’s always had of everybody around him prove to be true as he becomes a pawn in a much larger plot.

While it wasn't at all what I would expect from a novel with 'spy' in the title, I was not disappointed. Le Carre's paints a perfect picture of dreary, almost depressing settings; ideal for a tale about the self destruction of the title character. The plot in the meantime, while again so different from any Bond story, was as intriguing as any other story I'd ever read. Add to that, I couldn't help but sympathize with Alec Lemas, which I find always makes for a better read. If you don't care about the main character I doubt you'll care how the book turns out. At the risk of gushing, I will say it was a great start to the list of 100 novels, and I can only hope I enjoy reading the other 99 as much as I did this one.



Time magazine’s original review from January 17th, 1964 can be found here:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,875631,00.html?internalid=atb100

Next up is Evelyn Waugh’s 1946 novel, Brideshead Revisited.

Though first in question, is they secondary

I’ve just returned from a quick trip to California to see a couple of hockey games, and I was able to do a bit of reading on the plane. The problem I’m going to have with this list is I’m not a very fast reader. I absorb everything I read, but it takes me a lot longer to get through a book. If I try to read something too fast, I end up missing things, and have to go back and re-read half the book.

The second problem I have with reading a book and The Spy who Came in from the Cold is proving to be no exception, is that I become curious about certain important elements in a book, be it the character or the setting or the era. While a book might be good at describing everything, it might not complete the back story. As a result, I end up doing a lot of secondary reading or research. For this novel, being set during the cold war, I've ended up doing a lot of reading about early 1960's Europe, espionage, the Berlin Wall, and so on. It really slows down my progress on a book, but I have so much trouble leaving these questions, swirling around in my head, unanswered.

I’ve almost finished this first novel however, and I have to say I’m totally surprised. This book isn’t at all what I thought it was going to be.

While I didn't really know anything about the story of this book before I started out, one scene has reminded me that I've seen a small bit of the movie. I remember flipping channels one lazy Sunday a few years ago and coming across a black and white film with Richard Burton. In the scene I saw, Burton was arguing with a grocer over some canned goods at the store. At the time, after seeing the title, I wondered what kind of spy movie had a scene in a grocery store, where the protagonist seemed to be arguing over the price of a can of corn. I love watching James Bond movies, but I don’t think I’d like them as much if they focused on the day to day things Bond did while he wasn’t spying. Imagine the disappointment one would have if “Dr. No” was about Bond’s latest visit to the chiropodist. Seeing the lead character discussing canned goods seemed just as dull. However, now having read most of this book, it not makes sense, but also wasn't dull at all. In fact, it’s quite a clever scene.

Here once again we sit...

After hittimg my first stumbling block a few days ago, I was forced to visit the library in search of a book to start this list. I'm going to assume that Nineteen Eighty-Four missing the opening pages was a sign I wasn't supposed to begin the list with a book I'd already read. So, I decided to pick something else that will hopefully be interesting and not too daunting. I don't necessarily want to start with Gone with the Wind, but rather something a little more modest.

The first book I am going to read from the list is now going to be John Le Carre's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. I don't know much about it, other than it is a spy novel. I read a couple of James Bond novels several years ago, and I'm going to assume I'll enjoy this one as well.

In addition to Spy, I also checked out Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh and Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs. I hadn't planned on checking anything else out, but I passed these two in the stacks and remembered them being on the list. I don't know anything about them either, but do remember Evelyn Waugh's name from an essay about World War II I read not long ago. As for Naked Lunch, I remember the movie coming out in the early 90’s. I haven't seen the movie, but I remember the poster, which featured either a typewriter wearing a suit. I don’t know why that’s stuck with me so well after all this time, but it has. The book cover of the edition I picked up is much less exciting with simply the title in large, bold letters. Part of me would have maybe preferred the suit-wearing typewriter. Could it be some kind of detective novel in the genre of Sam Spade? Sadly, I don't think so.

But I digress. I'm now at home, with a complete book in my hands, ready to start the list for real. With out further adieu I begin The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.