The KitKat Club...we all know The KitKat Club, that dark and naughty place which has taken up permanent residence in our collective imaginations for now these last many decades. Home to Sally Bowles, The Emcee, Isherwood and all the other pre-War II shadow people--and a place that serves as one more example of how well we all know the Berlin of our imaginations.
The wickedly good Alan Cumming performs Wilkommen, the opening number in Cabaret. (Marvelous if unattributed video is courtesy of the ever-obliging internet.)
The city itself exists for us, especially Americans of a certain age, as a place that we have known throughout our lives. Born as we were in the shadow of WWII, raised on the narrative of the Wall and--then of its triumphal end--and now and for the last 25 years receiving dispatches from this city of peace, prosperity and extraordinary cultural vigor.
Thanks to Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories, we can even claim to know Weimar Berlin, a pre-war place of self-invention, danger and indulgence. A time and place with a sense that anything might happen and before the full blown evil of what actually did a few short years later...
Published in 1945, staged as a play, I Am A Camera, in the 1951 and then as a musical, Cabaret, in 1966, Berlin Stories's two narratives and their characters simply have not faded with time but seem to have grown in depth and resonance. So much so that when it came time recently to choose a 'Berlin book' for an upcoming Travel Talk at Scuppernong Books, I deliberated--there are many possibilities--but finally decided on this classic.
We'll be discussing Christopher Isherwood's Berlin Stories next week on Wednesday, March 23rd, at 7:00 p.m. at Scuppernong Books here in Greensboro, North Carolina. Click here for a bit more info.
I hope you will consider joining us--even if you have not read the book. As much as I love this book--and truly I do, re-reading it every few years--this discussion will also serve as an excellent excuse to muse on this most interesting of cities, a city I never tire of...with its complex past and its exhilarating present, both equally vivid and rich...
And for those who want to see Berlin for themselves? Well, I am so glad you asked...we'll be going there again this fall.
I hope you will consider coming along on with us...
Click here for more details including the itinerary and deposit options.
And hope to see you soon...at home or abroad...