Review by Booklist Review
Isherwood, one of the foremost twentieth-century British writers, was a productive diary keeper, using his diaries, in the words of the editor here, "to discipline himself in periods of laziness or dissipation, to clarify his thoughts, and to right himself in moments of spiritual uncertainty." This volume spans the period from 1939, when Isherwood left England for good to live in the U.S., to his sixty-fifth birthday in 1960, when he was in permanent residence in California; subsequent diaries are forthcoming. His entries are stylish but not studied, spontaneous but not slapdash. And as diaries should be if published for public reading, his are analytical and not strictly narrative; one can learn what he thought and not simply what he observed. For Isherwood's devoted readers, then, they provide an invaluable source for an intimate encounter with the man and for coming face-to-face with the genesis of much of his work. A chronology and a glossary are appended. --Brad Hooper
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gossip, Isherwood noted in his diary after reading the Goncourt journals, can achieve "the epigrammatic significance of poetry. To keep such a diary is to render a real service to the future." He was then in the second year of his own diary, begun in January 1939 with his exit from England for a new life in America, his home until his death in 1986. He would draw on the diary for his novel A Single Man (1964), but the work for which he would be best remembered was done in the 1930sthe plays with Auden and the Berlin Stories, turned by John van Druten into I Am a Camera and musicalized further as Cabaret. The diaries show him only as an observer of these money-spinning stage metamorphoses. To many readers, the most important part of this literally weighty book will be the index. Although not in the canonized elite of the Auden-Priestley generation, Isherwood, through his connections on both sides of the Atlantic and his Hollywood scriptwriting years, encountered a vast number of people whose doings and misdoings make his diaries a mine of rumor, anecdotage and mere facts. Of lesser interest to some readers will be Isherwood's Vedanta discipleship with Southern California swamis, his desultory drug-taking experiments, his sexual adventures in the local gay community or his recuperation from hangovers. The diaries show him, however, to be on occasion a memorable observer of his contemporaries (one is "like Dorian Gray emerging from his tomb") and an unmemorable critic (Waiting for Godot is "Franco-Irish ugliness and stupidity"). Bucknell, who edited and introduced Auden's Juvenilia: Poems 1922-1928 and founded the W.H. Auden Society, furnishes a glossary of capsule biographies and textual notes. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
This first volume of Isherwood's diaries, edited by Auden scholar Bucknell (W.H. Auden: The Map of All My Youth, Oxford Univ., 1990), begins as he and Auden sailed from England for America on January 19, 1939. Immediately, Isherwood makes reference to a love affair, with second, third, and fourth choices waiting on the sidelines. These richly detailed diaries serve as a record of the time, offering a personal view of World War II and its aftermath. Many of the diary entries during the next 21 years deal with his love affairs with various men and his ultimate commitment to Don Bachardy in 1953. All the entries demonstrate Isherwood's need for self-accounting, discipline, clarification, spiritualityall fastidiously recorded here. His diaries acted as raw material for his fiction. The diaries abound with recognizable namese.g., Shelly Winters, Gore Vidal, Thomas Mann, and Tennessee Williamsmany of whom Isherwood met as a Hollywood scriptwriter. Bucknell has done a masterly job of editing this material. Highly recommended.Robert Kelly, Fort Wayne Comm. Schs., Ind. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Mixing mournful self-interrogation about sex, art, and politics; less than lucid delvings into spiritual matters; and wry chatter about acquaintances both obscure and celebrated, Isherwood's voluminous diaries provide rather too wide a window onto the eminent novelist and memoirist's foibles. Isherwood emigrated to America from England in 1939, and during the years covered here he lived in Los Angeles, worked as a screenwriter, studied and wrote about Vedanta Hinduism, wrote novels (Prater Violet, The World in the Evening, and most of Down There on a Visit), and had a few major love affairs. Close to half of this volume covers the first five years of Isherwood's expatriatism. Edited and annotated heavily by the author himself in 1946, these wartime diaries are sprinkled with the kind of artfully ironic character sketches familiar to readers of Isherwood's novels. The author socialized with the likes of Aldous Huxley, Charlie Chaplin, and Greta Garbo, but much of his time was spent with his guru and fellow disciples of Vedanta, which his musings do not enliven for the reader. Isherwood was criticized for not returning to Britain during the war; he is forthright here about his pacifism. Fussing about the obligations imposed by his swami and his lovers, the author indulges in mopy rants that tire even himself: ``I'm so bored with myself. . . . The whole of this diary is becoming a bore. Let's snap out of it. Come on, St. Augustine--amuse us. A little less about your sins.'' After substantial ellipses, the diaries become less consistently fretful in the mid-'50s, when Isherwood met the artist Don Bachardy, who would remain his companion until Isherwood's death in 1986. Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Igor Stravinsky, Somerset Maugham, and a raft of movie stars were Isherwood's pals in the '50s; finally, after hundreds of pages in which the creative process seldom merits a mention, Isherwood occasionally comes alive as a working artist in the latter entries. Maundering, prolix, altogether daunting.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
