On Being A Camera And Sharing Memories That Rival Berlin In The ‘30s

“The point being, to understand Isherwood is to understand his infatuation with liars, which — returning to the camera metaphor — I think makes it reasonable to ask whether he himself was lying, or at least half-lying in a way he could find almost believable.”
— Old Awl chum Matthew Gallaway writes in The Millions about Christopher Isherwood and the notion of being a camera and lying and memory. (He references the great Jonathan Richman song, “Don’t Let Our Youth Go to Waste,” which was nicely covered by Galaxie 500. But that R.E.M. song is my favorite R.E.M. song, and I think it’s also Isherwood inspired, so let’s listen to that first.)

There is other music that has been inspired by Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, too.