Structure
Written in one continuous, expressive breath, Prater Violet follows Isherwood's involvement in the creation of an eponymous film. Much of the novel records the remarks of film industry workers and Isherwood's conversations with a brilliant Austrian film director, Friedrich Bergmann. Only at the conclusion of the novel does Isherwood significantly separate his voice from dialogue to provide a deeper philosophic commentary on his frustration with life. He asks, "What makes you go on living? Why don't you kill yourself? Why is all this bearable? What makes you bear it?" (154).
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“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
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