Mr Norris Changes Trains - Genesis

Genesis

Isherwood originally intended to call this novel The Lost, a title he conceived in German, Die Verlorenen. The title The Lost would have encompassed three different meanings: "those who have lost their way", by which he meant Germans who were being misled by Adolf Hitler; "the doomed", those like the character Bernard Landauer whom Hitler had already marked for destruction; and "those whom respectable Society regards as moral outcasts", like the characters Sally Bowles, Otto Nowak and Mr Norris himself. Isherwood began writing the book in 1934, while he and his companion Heinz Neddermayer were living in the Canary Islands. The Lost was initially planned as a much more comprehensive work, but Isherwood jettisoned much of the material and many of the characters, including Sally Bowles, the Nowaks and the Landauers, to focus on Mr Norris. This process he likened to the surgery performed to separate Siamese twins, "freeing Norris from the stranglehold of his brothers and sisters". The excised material formed the basis for the rest of his Berlin Stories. He completed work on the novel on August 12 of that year.

Initially Isherwood planned to write the novel in the third person, but when he decided to narrow the novel's focus to Norris he changed to first person. He believed that this would allow the reader to "experience" Mr Norris as Isherwood had experienced Gerald Hamilton.

The name of the narrator, William Bradshaw, is drawn from Isherwood's full name, Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood. In subsequent novels Isherwood changed the narrator's name to "Christopher Isherwood", having come to regard "William Bradshaw" as a "foolish evasion". Isherwood did not explicitly claim that he was William Bradshaw although the novel describes Isherwood's own experiences. He sought to make the narrator as unobtrusive as possible so as to keep readers focused on Norris. Although Isherwood was living more or less openly as a homosexual, he balked at making Bradshaw homosexual as well. In part this was to help the average reader identify with the narrator by minimizing the differences between the narrator and the reader. Not to do so meant that "The Narrator would have become so odd, so interesting, that his presence would have thrown the novel out of perspective. ... The Narrator would have kept upstaging Norris's performance as the star." Isherwood's decision had a more pragmatic reason as well; he had no desire to cause a scandal and feared that should he cause one his uncle, who was financially supporting him, would cut him off. Yet Isherwood had no interest in making Bradshaw heterosexual either, so the Narrator has no scenes of a sexual nature.

The novel was still titled The Lost when Isherwood mailed the manuscript to Hogarth Press for publication, but the title was eventually changed to Mr Norris Changes Trains. Isherwood meant to evoke with that title not only Norris's continual moves from country to country to avoid his enemies and creditors, but also his constantly shifting political alliances and interests. Isherwood's friend Stephen Spender preferred the original title, saying of the new one that "It gives one the sense of earrings." An employee at William Morrow and Company, Isherwood's American publisher, told Isherwood that no one in the United States would understand the term "changes trains" and so Isherwood supplied the alternate title The Last of Mr Norris. "He thereby created the false impression that these are two different novels, one the sequel to the other. Which ... led to much wearisome correspondence with readers, setting the record straight."