The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969 [Hardcover]

Unlike some writers-- Eudora Welty comes to mind-- Christopher Isherwood certainly kept records of his comings and goings and apparently was willing for the world to know some of the intimate details of his life. He gave the world CHRISTOPHER'S KIND, his first diary and now his second diary of 599 pages plus an exhaustive glossary covering the 1960's has just been published. After wading through the entire book, I came away with two opinions: that Isherwood is honest about his life to a fault and that the daily events of even the most brilliant of writers are not always interesting. Henry James' letters-- at least some of them, for instance-- can bore your socks off you if you aren't careful. Parts of the diaries soar while other sections are dull. Case in point: in the entry for April 6, 1969 Isherwood lets us know that I "cut my corns. . . sewn a button on the cuff of my green shirt." Additionally, I have no interest in the Hindu religion, but that was a very important part of Isherwood's life so much of the diaries is about that. "I make japam" he says over and over. He goes to India, consults often with his spiritual advisors and is a serious disciple. What is much more interesting is his relationship with Don Bachardy, his lover who is 30 years his junior. Although their romance was often stormy and Don causes "disturbance, anxiety, tension, jealousy and rage," Isherwood clearly adores him: "My life wouldn't make any sense without him." When Don makes a trip to London, he wears Don's sneakers because "I like to have on something of his." Even though both men had other sex partners, their love for each other endured.

Equally interesting is the cavalcade of friends and acquaintances whom Isherwood and Bachardy entertained, both in restaurants and the homes of others as well as at their own home--"I really like this house," Isherwood says; but why wouldn't he, if you have seen photographs of their cottage by the sea. Some of their friends you expect; others may surprise you: Igor and Vera Stravinsky ("are almost the only people I feel really snobbish about knowing; they are my royalty"), W. H. Auden of course, Stephen Spender, Truman Capote, John Rechy, Charles Laughton et al. Many of these soirees too often resulted in a next-morning hangover for Mr. Isherwood.

Isherwood had opinions about everyone and everything including current events. A pacifist, he of course opposed the Vietnam War, had opinions about Goldwater, Johnson and the Kennedys. People including writers he liked or did not care for: He was fond of Mick Jagger, E. M. Forster, Cecil Beaton, he detested Timothy Leary, was not wild about the Richard (Elizabeth Taylor) Burtons and found Camus to have such a "dreary mind," couldn't read a book by Iris Murdoch, Nabokov's LOLITA is about nothing, at one point he says Faulkner has "flipped his wig," and finds Louis Untermeyer a "setentious bore."

Isherwood also seems to have had a strange love-hate relationship with the U. S., his adopted country. Sometimes he defends and misses the U. S., particularly on a visit to England when he longs for the beautiful balmy weather of Southern California . But he can just as quickly use the term "that junkyard America." His daily routine often consisted of exercising-- always trying to get down to the magical number of 150 pounds, sunbathing with Don and writing, both in his diary and his other works: DOWN THERE ON A VISIT, A SINGLE MAN--which went through several names before Don suggested that title-- and KATHLEEN AND FRANK, about his mother and father. As do many critics, Isherwood considered A SINGLE MAN his finest fiction: "I am almost certain it is my masterpiece." He was also a bit of a hypochondriac, often afraid that a pain in his neck or jaw or finger was the outset of cancer. He hoped that his religion would let him face his own death with grace and courage, something that his friend and neighbor Charles Laughton was not able to accomplish. Finally-- sad to say-- Mr. Isherwood makes derogatory comments about Italians, African Americans-- he uses the "N" word as least once although he turns on his car lights in support of Martin Luther King after he was assassinated-- and Jewish people many, many times, using words like "Jewboy" and that someone "jewed" him down on a price.

There still remains much to admire and love about Mr. Isherwood. He was always very open and honest about his relationship with Don Bacardy. And don't you have to love someone-- at least I do-- whose only New Year's resolution in 1968 was "to make the bed every morning and try to avoid mooning about"" Or who can write a "come-off-it-Mary" letter? Or who writes "I am resting from being miserable"? Or who says "I am boring myself p-ssless"? Or who defines a boring party as "too many people eating awkwardly on laps, and Roma wine served, a headache in every glass"? Or describes a woman "as such a cow"? Or says of another person," they unmade my day"? And finally "I aggressively refuse to take the woes of heterosexuals seriously"? One other thing: Isherwood loved sunsets over the ocean.

These diaries present an honest view of a flawed man but faithful friend, a man passionately in love, someone full of contradictions-- but are't we all-- and a brilliant writer who gave the world A SINGLE MAN. For that alone, he should be read and revered.

What a magnificent writer! What a great man! What a marvellous life! Ch.I. has certainly produced one of the capital diaries of the 20th century. His self-portrait is amazingly frank (remember he is a camera), and yet deeply emotional; all the feelings and (at times) their abrupt changes are registered without sentimentality, and he neatly focus them thanks to his shrewdness and uncommon intelligence. As for his world and times, one only needs to mention the outstanding friends and acquaintances --W.H. Auden, A. Huxley, I. Stravinsky, D. Selznik, E.M. Forster, Ch. Laughton, G. Heard, J. Harris...-- to get an idea of its relevance. The top of the top in California, New York City and London, plus many minor celebrities and some common people. Of course, there is the almost day-to-day chronicle of his relationship with Don Bachardy (a master on his own as a portraitist), full of love/devotion, and no few quarrels. Ch.I. found a refuge and a haven in Vedanta since his arrival in California (1939). Above all, it seems clear, he discovered his guru Prabhavananda, who gave him all he was missing after leaving Europe and the war horrors (his own father had been killed during WW1). But Isherwood was not at all a zealot. In these diaries we see the way he struggled against his admitted lack of faith. His guru was the presence that counted. A word must be said about Ch.I.'s extraordinary commitment to literature. His artistic work enhanced his major capabilities in the very process of writing and thus created a number of great books. This masterpiece in particular reads as if it were a luminous water, i.e., an organic lens; it is a clear, brilliant, and genial book. Yes, you will love it, and its author as well --a most honest man, honest even to himself.(Mexico City)

Yes, they're dense, and full of a myriad of people who have no significance except for their immediate relationship to Isherwood, but still I kept turning the pages because he so represents a world that doesn't seem to exist anymore. In a current society of regular joes who are looking to capitalize on their fifteen minutes by twitter feeds or bad reality shows, to see a true artist, and one in particular who absolutely adored the written word, is fascinating. Yes, much of the book is spent lamenting, bitching about, and many times adoring his longtime partner Don Bacardy, but it's also about the process of writing, of creating, and surrounding himself with true genius: Gore Vidal, David Hockney, the Stravinsky's and Capote, to name a few. His journals also speak about universal truths regarding aging, and where we're headed as individuals and the world at large that nearly fifty years later still seem incredibly relevant. An exhaustive, but comprehensive, and lovingly chronicled addition to a great writers canon of work.

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