Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood – Five Novels Are Better Than a Million Flags

Goodbye to Berlin, published in 1939, is a novel by Christopher Isherwood set in Berlin in the early 1930s. Isherwood himself is the central character, a diffident young Englishman, vaguely trying to write, while language tutoring to pay his rent.

Isherwood is mild-mannered, easy-going, inclined to be lazy, preferring observation over judgement. His one completed novel has sold five copies. He is drifting along without much obvious ambition. Meanwhile the society around him is increasingly riven by political zealotry on both left and right.

Is a policy of muddling along, not getting too exercised about anything, an answer to extremism? Maybe this is a book about unremarkable events in a young man’s life, serving as an antidote to the fanatical. On the other hand, it is difficult to claim that Goodbye to Berlin presents aimlessness as an ideal. There’s an interesting scene towards the end of the book where Isherwood gives English lessons to Herr Brink, a master at a reformatory for problematic boys. Brink remarks on the challenge of giving the boys a clear direction and purpose in life. A local engineering firm where many of the reformatory’s charges used to eventually find work is closing down, a victim of the dire economic situation. Without this chance of employment, crime is the next most obvious career option. On a wider level, a society struggling with economic collapse sees millions of people out of work. The aimlessness and frustration that results is a fertile ground for radicalisation, as people flail around for something to give their lives purpose.

So the answer to extremism is not to live a directionless life. After all, Isherwood had the gumption to write a novel about his Berlin sojourn. The book that resulted does not give easy answers. There is no black and white, only shades of grey – quite fitting really for Isherwood’s down at heel Berlin experience. Next time life seems drab, I will recall Christopher Isherwood’s book and start looking for some interesting nuances in the grey situation. These might take on the appearance of colours in the down at heel, gaudy Berlin night club where Christopher meets Sally Bowles.

While answers and clear advice are not what this book is about, there is perhaps a suggestion we take on the difficult job of finding purpose and identity within ourselves rather than going for some easy, ready-made external political or nationalistic option. Write a novel rather than wave a flag.