SOURCE: O'Brien, Kate. “Fiction.” Spectator (3 March 1939): 364.

In the following excerpt, O'Brien praises Isherwood's detached narrative style in Goodbye to Berlin.

Mr. Isherwood has brought to something like perfection the laconic and unemotional selectiveness of the camera. He swings his lens and refrains from running commentary. That is to say, if there is a joke in what he catches it is in it—it is not spoken “off”; if there is an emotion, the film takes its shadow and the camera-man finds nothing of his own to say. For this relief much thanks. It is a beautiful, quick way of record, and the care and passion which lie behind its present state of accomplishment deserve the highest praise.

I do not think that criticism nowadays is sufficiently generous to the pains and virtues of technique. We are forever praising the blundering “masterpieces” of would-be writers who, having, let us...