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1939-1960: Diaries Volume 1
In 1939, Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden emigrated together to the United States. In spare, luminous prose these diaries describe Isherwood's search for a new life in California; his work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, his pacifism during World War II and his friendships with such gifted artists and intellectuals as Garbo, Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Charles Laughton, Gielgud, Olivier, Richard Burton and Aldous Huxley. Throughout this period, Isherwood continued to write novels and sustain his literary friendships - with E.M. Forster, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams and others. He turned to his diaries several times a week to record jokes and gossip, observations about his adopted country, philosophy and mystical insights. His devotion to his diary was a way of accounting for himself; he used it as both a discipline and a release.
1104 pages, Paperback
First published October 28, 1996
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About the author
Christopher Isherwood
166 books1,495 followersEnglish-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as
Goodbye to Berlin
(1939), the basis for the musical
Cabaret
(1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 2, 2015
First of all, these diaries are beautifully and ably edited by Katherine Bucknell, providing a fascinating introduction of over fifty pages. In addition to the journals themselves, Bucknell delivers an Isherwood chronology, glossary, and index at the end. She divides the journal into three parts:
The Emigration, January 19,1939–December 31, 1944;
The Postwar Years, January 1, 1945–April 13, 1956;
and The Late Fifties, April 14, 1956–August 26, 1960.
The voice of Isherwood evolves from that of a solid mid-career writer to that of an “emeritus professor,” beginning his senior years with as many projects as he can handle.
I’ve always felt a certain affinity for writer Christopher Isherwood (born in Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire, England) 1904-1986, for a number of reasons. Largely because he is one of the first important writers of his generation to write fiction with gay characters—with gay love lives, as if it is a normal situation—I’ve looked to his writing for a certain guidance. Through his well-traveled life he demonstrates a certain brand of courage. He never seems to hide who he is from the world at large—even Hitler’s Gestapo as he lives in Berlin during his twenties. He doesn’t marry a woman as cover, as many of his colleagues and friends do. He openly loves and shares a domestic life in a major way with at least two men, three, if you count one relationship that is rather ill-fated. The latter one, his partnership with artist Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior, endures from 1953 until Isherwood’s death in 1986.
I also feel close to Isherwood because of the career he chooses, one that is rather skin-of-your-teeth at times. He writes the projects he wants to, not the ones that necessarily earn him the most money. Granted, he does work in Hollywood, writing and co-writing screenplays for any number of films. Even with regard to these, he seems to turn down the less interesting projects or the ones in which he knows working with certain personalities will be difficult. He lives by his wits but also by a strong artistic intuition, and by his own well-honed critical skills. Seems that he is seldom wrong in assessing the work of others, and his own, as well. Through reading this 1050 page document, I’ve attained yet another view of Christopher Isherwood, and that is as human being. At one point, in the 1950s, he and Bachardy have around $6,000 in the bank (a little over $50,000 in today’s currency). You can’t get more skin-of-your-teeth than that.
Isherwood begins keeping diaries when he is twenty; however, those written prior to this time he himself destroys. He is in his mid-thirties when he begins keeping the series of diaries that are featured in this volume. It is also at this time that he begins publishing, in particular, the novel, Mr. Norris Changes Trains. This volume of diaries is a blend of many features.
Isherwood writes of his daily travails with lovers, physical ailments, which seem to grow in number as he ages, tussles with film studios, accounts of social events, both formal and informal. From the limited amount of Isherwood’s fiction that I’ve read (The Berlin Stories, Down There on a Visit, and A Single Man), I wouldn’t expect to encounter a person encumbered with a number of insecurities: his health, his weight, his looks, his mostly tentative drug use (he has a real penchant for mescaline), alcohol consumption, driving, finances. You name it and he seems to fret over it. Daily. At the same time, there emerges from these journals a man who is quite serious about his work. I paraphrase some of his oft-repeated wording: Didn’t write today. Too hung over from last night’s party. Wrote four pages on novel today. Want to write 100 pages by my birthday. He is as critical of his own work, when it doesn’t come together, as he is of others’. He lives for his art. Even in his fifties, to insure a proper income, he must accept film writing offers and part-time teaching opportunities at various colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area, where he chooses to make his home following his naturalization as a US citizen. In fact, an important part of each entry seems to be a report of the weather. Went to the beach today. It was hot. It was cold. Still hot. Still foggy. Absolutely gorgeous. These comments could well be a comment on his internal weather. At any rate, the Diaries provide any writer with plenty of positive and negative examples of how to be a “successful” writer.
The Emigration, January 19,1939–December 31, 1944;
The Postwar Years, January 1, 1945–April 13, 1956;
and The Late Fifties, April 14, 1956–August 26, 1960.
The voice of Isherwood evolves from that of a solid mid-career writer to that of an “emeritus professor,” beginning his senior years with as many projects as he can handle.
I’ve always felt a certain affinity for writer Christopher Isherwood (born in Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire, England) 1904-1986, for a number of reasons. Largely because he is one of the first important writers of his generation to write fiction with gay characters—with gay love lives, as if it is a normal situation—I’ve looked to his writing for a certain guidance. Through his well-traveled life he demonstrates a certain brand of courage. He never seems to hide who he is from the world at large—even Hitler’s Gestapo as he lives in Berlin during his twenties. He doesn’t marry a woman as cover, as many of his colleagues and friends do. He openly loves and shares a domestic life in a major way with at least two men, three, if you count one relationship that is rather ill-fated. The latter one, his partnership with artist Don Bachardy, thirty years his junior, endures from 1953 until Isherwood’s death in 1986.
I also feel close to Isherwood because of the career he chooses, one that is rather skin-of-your-teeth at times. He writes the projects he wants to, not the ones that necessarily earn him the most money. Granted, he does work in Hollywood, writing and co-writing screenplays for any number of films. Even with regard to these, he seems to turn down the less interesting projects or the ones in which he knows working with certain personalities will be difficult. He lives by his wits but also by a strong artistic intuition, and by his own well-honed critical skills. Seems that he is seldom wrong in assessing the work of others, and his own, as well. Through reading this 1050 page document, I’ve attained yet another view of Christopher Isherwood, and that is as human being. At one point, in the 1950s, he and Bachardy have around $6,000 in the bank (a little over $50,000 in today’s currency). You can’t get more skin-of-your-teeth than that.
Isherwood begins keeping diaries when he is twenty; however, those written prior to this time he himself destroys. He is in his mid-thirties when he begins keeping the series of diaries that are featured in this volume. It is also at this time that he begins publishing, in particular, the novel, Mr. Norris Changes Trains. This volume of diaries is a blend of many features.
Isherwood writes of his daily travails with lovers, physical ailments, which seem to grow in number as he ages, tussles with film studios, accounts of social events, both formal and informal. From the limited amount of Isherwood’s fiction that I’ve read (The Berlin Stories, Down There on a Visit, and A Single Man), I wouldn’t expect to encounter a person encumbered with a number of insecurities: his health, his weight, his looks, his mostly tentative drug use (he has a real penchant for mescaline), alcohol consumption, driving, finances. You name it and he seems to fret over it. Daily. At the same time, there emerges from these journals a man who is quite serious about his work. I paraphrase some of his oft-repeated wording: Didn’t write today. Too hung over from last night’s party. Wrote four pages on novel today. Want to write 100 pages by my birthday. He is as critical of his own work, when it doesn’t come together, as he is of others’. He lives for his art. Even in his fifties, to insure a proper income, he must accept film writing offers and part-time teaching opportunities at various colleges and universities in the Los Angeles area, where he chooses to make his home following his naturalization as a US citizen. In fact, an important part of each entry seems to be a report of the weather. Went to the beach today. It was hot. It was cold. Still hot. Still foggy. Absolutely gorgeous. These comments could well be a comment on his internal weather. At any rate, the Diaries provide any writer with plenty of positive and negative examples of how to be a “successful” writer.
Read
December 14, 2008I'm not 'currently reading' it because I don't have an aim to finishing it anytime soon. I think I'll just dip into it off and on, when I need a break from other things. The very first page brought me right back to 'Christopher and His Kind,' and reminded me how much I love the way Isherwood writes about himself (the self-knowledge that comes with utter detachment) and the sharp but patient and tender way he anatomizes the motives of others. And the prose! It's no wonder that Cyril Connolly praised the "sharp cutting edge" of Isherwood's style, and called him "a hope of English fiction" for pointing a path out of the Mandarin vs. Vernacular stalemate and toward a rationed lyricism, a rich and suggestive plainness. I am so happy to have this.
July 15, 2022
“Who are you – who writes all this? Why do you write? Is it compulsion? Or an alibi – to disprove the charge of what crime? What am I, I wonder?”
“I record all this mess of facts to try, somehow, to convey the strangeness. Is it all, all a dream? My life seems bearable, often pleasant, sometimes delightful – but it is just a few inches apart from me.”
“The ocean marvelous. But I am dull. There is the real danger that I shall sink into a drab ugly interior life of sex fantasies and absurd grotesque resentments – and this in spite of all I have and know and am. My underside is increasingly sordid. That’s why this journal gets duller and duller. I force myself to write it, because it somehow keeps a door open between myself and me.”
For the past six weeks I’ve dipped into this in-between reading other books & have to say, Isherwood, even with all his faults, has been my favorite company (in book form) that I’ve had in a while. 901 pages & 21 years of a man’s life – but what a life!
It’s a fascinating mix of Hollywood tidbits, his spiritual journey with Vedanta, his personal life – the ups & downs of relationships, writing struggles, lots of drinking, a bit of drugging, travel, writer friends like Auden, Huxley, Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, the list goes on. So many famous names pop up from Charlie Chaplin to Georgia O’Keefe to Yukio Mishima to Stanley Kubrick – a real who’s who.
Isherwood essentially started a new life after settling in California right before the start of WWII, having left England, spending many years in Germany, then leaving his young lover Heinz because of Nazi escalation. He works as a writer for big film studios & on his own books, becomes a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, has a detour with the Quakers helping refugees & has a lost weekend that lasts a few years.The start of his life with artist Don Bachardy, 30 years his junior, is documented. An emotional rollercoaster, but true partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986.
Isherwood repeatedly does this interesting thing where he describes someone’s character or appearance in a seemingly critical & harsh way, but then says “But I do like her” or “I didn’t dislike him” or “She’s rather beautiful.” I think because he was so self-critical, being very aware of his own faults, he viewed people honestly, but generously. This generosity lessened considerably into his middle-age when he became grouchier, increasingly resentful, hypochondriacal, vain & edged towards misogyny. But he admitted these things, hated these feelings, (almost) always strove to be better, becoming more aware of how life can just slide by. He’s also very funny & I did laugh often reading this.
This book is not only a great document of Isherwood's life, of a working writer's life, but a really good historical document. Katherine Bucknell did a great job editing this & her introduction is enlightening. There are several more volumes of these diaries, so I am looking forward to dipping into Isherwood's life again.
“I record all this mess of facts to try, somehow, to convey the strangeness. Is it all, all a dream? My life seems bearable, often pleasant, sometimes delightful – but it is just a few inches apart from me.”
“The ocean marvelous. But I am dull. There is the real danger that I shall sink into a drab ugly interior life of sex fantasies and absurd grotesque resentments – and this in spite of all I have and know and am. My underside is increasingly sordid. That’s why this journal gets duller and duller. I force myself to write it, because it somehow keeps a door open between myself and me.”
For the past six weeks I’ve dipped into this in-between reading other books & have to say, Isherwood, even with all his faults, has been my favorite company (in book form) that I’ve had in a while. 901 pages & 21 years of a man’s life – but what a life!
It’s a fascinating mix of Hollywood tidbits, his spiritual journey with Vedanta, his personal life – the ups & downs of relationships, writing struggles, lots of drinking, a bit of drugging, travel, writer friends like Auden, Huxley, Stephen Spender, Paul Bowles, the list goes on. So many famous names pop up from Charlie Chaplin to Georgia O’Keefe to Yukio Mishima to Stanley Kubrick – a real who’s who.
Isherwood essentially started a new life after settling in California right before the start of WWII, having left England, spending many years in Germany, then leaving his young lover Heinz because of Nazi escalation. He works as a writer for big film studios & on his own books, becomes a disciple of Swami Prabhavananda, has a detour with the Quakers helping refugees & has a lost weekend that lasts a few years.The start of his life with artist Don Bachardy, 30 years his junior, is documented. An emotional rollercoaster, but true partners until Isherwood’s death in 1986.
Isherwood repeatedly does this interesting thing where he describes someone’s character or appearance in a seemingly critical & harsh way, but then says “But I do like her” or “I didn’t dislike him” or “She’s rather beautiful.” I think because he was so self-critical, being very aware of his own faults, he viewed people honestly, but generously. This generosity lessened considerably into his middle-age when he became grouchier, increasingly resentful, hypochondriacal, vain & edged towards misogyny. But he admitted these things, hated these feelings, (almost) always strove to be better, becoming more aware of how life can just slide by. He’s also very funny & I did laugh often reading this.
This book is not only a great document of Isherwood's life, of a working writer's life, but a really good historical document. Katherine Bucknell did a great job editing this & her introduction is enlightening. There are several more volumes of these diaries, so I am looking forward to dipping into Isherwood's life again.
January 15, 2010
Fabulous! Not only did Isherwood write incredibly interesting diaries (and this only goes up to 1960), but he seems to have known everyone of any consequence whatsoever. And he seems to have read everything of any consequence whatsoever. What a mind! The editor provides an exemplary introduction and an exhaustive, invaluable glossary, which is especially in ascertaining who's who and what's what. The research done for the glossary alone is stupendous. Since these are diaries, the reader can dip in, sample, read as desired. I was fascinated.
April 2, 2020
Best Boi.
March 14, 2016
I started this hefty volume a few months after 911 and finished it eight years later. It is dense and can be tedious, however it is a fascinating and valuable look into the daily life of a pivotal gay writer. I loved the mixture of the mundane and the creative; complaints about the noise of the next-door-neighbor children, bouts of insecurity around his lover Don, procrastinating writing, discovering pacifism, drunken cocktail parties, his spiritual practices. It is a worthwhile read, 'especially for any artist or writer.
August 13, 2020
After hearing and reading about him for so many years, I only recently actually read something by Christopher Isherwood - The Berlin Stories, which is such a wonderful book it made me want to read more of his work. Being related to Bloomsbury and the American post-WWII scene, I was curious to read his diaries.
And I liked it; he led an interesting life and was friends with lots of interesting people, from Auden and Greta Garbo to Aldous Huxley and Ivan Moffatt. But I was hoping for more, somehow it feels like he's too restrained, he records his life somewhat shallowly, maybe because he repeatedly says he's keeping the journal as a form of discipline. Then there is his attitude concerning religion, which as a stark atheist I cannot relate to, even if his stand is the one I can accept - never proselizing, and not denying life's pleasures or complexities. Guess it was a way to deal with his inner demons and depressions, and if it worked for him one cannot really criticise it, but still.
Anyway, it's beautifully written, and it's a great depiction of the life in Hollywood in the post war years. And I still want to read more of Isherwood, I think his novels will be more engaging than his diaries.
And I liked it; he led an interesting life and was friends with lots of interesting people, from Auden and Greta Garbo to Aldous Huxley and Ivan Moffatt. But I was hoping for more, somehow it feels like he's too restrained, he records his life somewhat shallowly, maybe because he repeatedly says he's keeping the journal as a form of discipline. Then there is his attitude concerning religion, which as a stark atheist I cannot relate to, even if his stand is the one I can accept - never proselizing, and not denying life's pleasures or complexities. Guess it was a way to deal with his inner demons and depressions, and if it worked for him one cannot really criticise it, but still.
Anyway, it's beautifully written, and it's a great depiction of the life in Hollywood in the post war years. And I still want to read more of Isherwood, I think his novels will be more engaging than his diaries.
September 13, 2023
I tried, I really tried. But too much and too trivial. Over 1000 pages and I was so looking forward to devoting the time. So repetitious, so wrapped in self and worse still, wrapped (rapt?) in Hollywood trash.
At least it confirmed to me that by and large actors have no personalities other than that they play and can be mighty boring as people.
I went faster and faster and finally gave up the ghost. Choose any page at random and still it's mired in the same people interacting trivially.
Maybe my interest is too much in people who experienced WWII and actually contributed to the effort, even the ENSA people did something!
At least it confirmed to me that by and large actors have no personalities other than that they play and can be mighty boring as people.
I went faster and faster and finally gave up the ghost. Choose any page at random and still it's mired in the same people interacting trivially.
Maybe my interest is too much in people who experienced WWII and actually contributed to the effort, even the ENSA people did something!
September 8, 2019
An ideal tanning read, if only we'd had more nice days this summer
November 19, 2023
A really interesting look at the 19th century society and how life changed through the decades
July 10, 2009
For some, it might come across as gossipy. malicious, bitchy and self serving. However, the man wrote in his diary for almost sixty years!! Many times about his fears. The book states that the qualities of intense engagement and commitment were more important to Isherwood than any other, it's evident.
March 21, 2010
A fascinating look at the life of an opening gay man in Los Angeles from the 40s through 60s. I love the mundane nature of so many of the entries (i.e, I'm feeling fat today). While too much for me to read straight through, this one sat on my bedside table for a year or so and I would turn to it periodically.
September 25, 2009
What I learned from this book - avoid hypochondriac compulsive diarists.
October 9, 2009
"Goodbye to Berlin" is one of my favorite books. Reading that made me want to write.
read-what-i-wanted-from-these-books
June 19, 2016P. 206, p. 403
He consistently calls Britten 'Benjy'.
He consistently calls Britten 'Benjy'.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews