- Hardcover: 1024 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st American Ed edition (Oct 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0061180009
- ISBN-13: 978-0061180002
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.7 x 6.4 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,183,864 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Synopsis
Memoirs of the novelist's years after he left England to come to America expl Isherwood's thoughts on sex, politics, art, and religion.
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First Sentence
On January 19, 1939, Auden and I sailed from Southampton in the French liner Champlain, bound for New York. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
On January 19, 1939, Auden and I sailed from Southampton in the French liner Champlain, bound for New York. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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9 reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful
The truth is plain
25 Jun 2000
Format:Hardcover
I found this book compelling for a number of reasons. Like at least two reviewers here, as an Isherwood fan, I found his accounts of the early years fascinating. More interesting perhaps, one of the reasons I found them fascinating was because they were often banal, tedious, (but were they ever malicious?) full of frality and the soft vanities of an aging man. Surrounded by vain and often shallow people, his struggle to find spirituality in his work and in his friends was admirable, even if at times it did shock. In the end it is the humility of some of these entries that struck me, the fear that the best was behind, that ahead lay only decline and darkness. Finally, the genre of the diary is a peculiar entity. I am not sure it can be read like a book. It requires to be read in small bits, and always with an eye to the odd disjuncture of privacy and the public domain. Isherwood would not have been ashamed by this work, he might well have seen it as a parody of St Augustine: please make me celebite, but not yet.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
I thought this was a fascinating acount of Isherwood's life
22 April 1999
Format:Paperback
This title should be read by all fans of Isherwoods' novels and stories for insight into the man's character and life-style during his middle years after he emigrated to the United States. I was particularly interested in his committment to Vedanta and how that developed during these years, as well as the gradual development of his relationship with the very young Don Bachardy about whom we have so little information otherwise. Bachardy was and is a very private person. Isherwood emerges as a complex man and, like most diaries, this book shows him with all his personality warts as well as the ups and downs of his daily life. He suffered acutely at various times from very human maladies; boredom, writers' block, lonliness and hypochondriacal concerns. I think this has to be remembered when reading someone's diaries or letters. It's like seeing a person undressed; you get to view the good, the bad and the ugly. There is surprisingly little of Isherwood's sexual views or life included here however; certainly not much that is explicit, and his occasional bitchy remarks about Hollywood personalities is refreshingly candid. I would compare these diaries to those of Evelyn Waugh although Isherwood was far less the curmudgeon that Waugh was and lacked Waugh's crusty mean spiritedness.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Pleasant reading
26 Jan 2008
Format:Paperback
Not sure why some people reacted so strongly to this book. Yes, at times it reads like a secretary's account of some very dull meeting - but that is also its charm. There's an utter lack of pretense or self drama. Rather, it is a very meticulous accounting of the people Isherwood meets and his struggles to achieve a spiritual balance. This is like watching time pass while sitting on a curb where nothing much happens - only the view is of another's world and time. I enjoyed the gentleness of this man although his experiences and spiritual struggles are far from my own.
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