The Berlin Stories

[DMsquared2]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 1:30pm

Let's discuss this shall we? Especially if you've read it.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 1:31pm

I read it about a year ago. It wasn't quite what I expected, but I loved it.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 1:34pm

SPOILER ALERT

I love how in the end of the Sally Bowles stories, he writes something to the effect of "Sally, send me a postcard."

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 1:58pm

It's fun to take the whole journey from Berlin Stories to the John van Druten play I Am a Camera, then watching the moview with Laurence Harvey and Julie Harris, then the book of the musical, the film adaptation and the changes for the recent revival.

I never tire of the story, or Sally, or the idea of witnessing that kind of upheaval.

I love this picture of Julie Harris putting on her Sally Bowles makeup in the dressing room of the now-defunct Empire Theater in 1952.

[luvtheEmcee]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 2:02pm

Yes, PJ, that's exactly why I read it. I'd seen the show and read I Am a Camera, but wanted to start at the beginning. I still have some blanks to fill in, though!

I was most impressed by Isherwood's voice as a writer: restrained, yet still witty, and completely transporting. When I finished the book, I kept wishing for more.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 2:08pm

Read his memoir Christopher and His Kind--it's just as extraordinary.

And watch the Julie Harris movie, if you haven't seen it. A young and beautiful Shelley Winters plays Natalia Landauer!

[Gothampc]

Posted: 2/7/08 at 2:23pm

"A young and beautiful Shelley Winters plays Natalia Landauer!"

With a really bad accent.