rachelmanija (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rachelmanija) wrote2013-03-18 11:10 am
rachelmanija) wrote2013-03-18 11:10 am
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Prater Violet, by Christopher Isherwood
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.
Prater Violet
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.
Prater Violet