October Light

[The Real Dean Oakland]

I was saying the other day that every October I re-read Christopher
Isherwood's Berlin Stories, specifically the short novel, The Last of
Mr. Norris. It really does read well in the October light.

Isherwood, of course, lived in Santa Monica later on in his life. He
was a screenwriter for a time, as well as a novelist. He was born in
England in 1904, lived in Germany right before the Second World War,
then moved to the West Coast. He wrote the screenplays for two the of
the Berlin stories--I Am a Camera & Cabaret. Of all three, however, I
prefer Mr. Norris. The narrative is fresh and, on the whole, it's a
wonderful, very readable story.

What I didn't know, however, is that he wrote the teleplay for
Frankenstein: the True Story, which I remember watching when I was a
kid. It was laborious.