The American Isherwood

September 30, 2004The Huntington Library

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Overview

• American period: 1939-86• Novels, memoirs,

screenplays, lectures• The man: writer, advocate,

partner

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

English Isherwood

• Novels All the Conspirators, 1928 The Memorial, 1932 Mr. Norris Changes Trains,

1935 Goodbye to Berlin, 1939

• Memoir Lions and Shadows, 1938

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

English Isherwood

• Plays, with W. H. Auden The Dog Beneath the Skin,

1936 The Ascent of F6, 1937 On the Frontier, 1938

• Non-fiction, with W. H. Auden Journey to a War, 1939

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

American Period

• 1939: arrives with W. H. Auden in US, settles in L.A.

• 1940: becomes devotee of Vedanta

• 1945: Prater Violet• 1946: becomes US citizen• 1951: I Am a Camera, play by

John Van Druten (film, 1955)

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

American Period

• 1953: meets Don Bachardy• 1954: The World in the

Evening• 1954: Diane, screenplay

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

American Period

Late Productive Years• 1959: first guest lectures at

Los Angeles State College• 1960: University of

California, Santa Barbara• 1962: Down There on a Visit• 1964: A Single Man

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

American Period

• 1966: Cabaret, stage musical, by Kander, Ebb (film, 1972)

• 1969: A Meeting by the River, last novel

• 1971: Kathleen and Frank, biography-memoir

• 1976: Christopher and His Kind, memoir

• 1980: My Guru and His Disciple, memoir

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Reading Isherwood

• American Contemporaries Truman Capote, Tennessee

Williams, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles

• American Influence Edmund White, Armistead

Maupin, Paul Monette

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Reading Isherwood

• Scholarship on Isherwood Gregory Woods (1998) David Bergman (1991, 2003)

• A Single Man (1964) “the founding text of modern

gay fiction.” Edmund White, 2004

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Lectures in California

• 1960: “A Writer and His World,” UC Santa Barbara

• 1963: “The Autobiography of My Books,” UC Berkeley

• 1965: eight-week course at UC Los Angles

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Lectures in California

“I believe that the function of the writer is to be, first and foremost, an individual. He writes, ultimately, out of his experience. And he should

think of himself as addressing a number of other individuals--not a

mass.”

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Lectures in California

“A Writer and His World”• Influences• Why Write at All?• What is the Nerve of the Novel?• A Writer and the Theater• A Writer and the Films• A Writer and Religion • A Last Lecture

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

A Writer and His World

“My life has been mainly occupied in writing about people who

don’t fit into the social pattern. They may defy society or be

terrified of it, or they may lead lives of scandal and alienate

everybody, or they may be the gadflies of society, like

Socrates, or they may be true Outsiders.”

“Influences,” 1960

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

A Writer and His World

“What stays with you in the Theater is character and

utterance. What stays with you in the cinema is image

and movement.”“The Theater is a box; the

cinema is a window.”• “The Writer and the Films,” 1960

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Lectures in California

“The Autobiography of My Books,” University of California, Berkely, April 1963

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

The American Isherwood

“Don’t tell the young that ‘fame is nothing.’

The experience of celebrity has a great deal to teach,

and the young have a right to demand it.”

• “A Last Lecture,” 1960

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

The American Isherwood

• Becoming an advocate• ACLU, anti-discrimination• Kathleen and Frank (1972)• Christopher and his Kind

(1976)

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

The American Isherwood

• “I’m so completely habituated to living in America that everything else seems very remote to me now.” (1960)

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

The American Isherwood

“…just as the waters of the ocean come flooding, darkening over the pools, so over George and the others in sleep come the waters of that other ocean--

that consciousness which is no one in particular but which

contains everyone and everything, past, present and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars.”

• A Single Man (1964)

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

The American Isherwood

“Christopher became defiant when he made the treatment of the homosexual a test by which every political party

must be judged. … ‘All right, we’ve heard your liberty

speech. Does that include us or doesn’t it?’”• Christopher and His Kind (1976)

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood

Special thanks to…

• The Huntington Library Robert Richie, director of researchSue Hodson, curator

• Lake Superior College, Duluth, Minnesota

• University of Minnesota Press Douglas Armato, director

September 30, 2004 The American Isherwood