Characters
As in Prater Violet the main character, Isherwood himself, is a moderately successful author of fiction. He is fascinated by people and travel and pleasure.
Other characters include Mr. Lancaster, Waldemar, Ambrose (based on Francis Turville-Petre), Hans, Aleko, Geoffrey, Paul (based on real-life male prostitute Denham Fouts), Augustus, Ronny, and Ruthie.
Read more about this topic: Down There On A Visit
Famous quotes containing the word characters:
“We are like travellers using the cinders of a volcano to roast their eggs. Whilst we see that it always stands ready to clothe what we would say, we cannot avoid the question whether the characters are not significant of themselves.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.”
—Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)
“The business of a novelist is, in my opinion, to create characters first and foremost, and then to set them in the snarl of the human currents of his time, so that there results an accurate permanent record of a phase of human history.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)