The American Isherwood

1. The American Isherwood September 30, 2004 The Huntington Library

2. Overview • American period: 1939-86 • Novels, memoirs, screenplays, lectures • The man: writer, advocate, partner The American Isherwood

3. English Isherwood • Novels • All the Conspirators, 1928 • The Memorial, 1932 • Mr. Norris Changes Trains, 1935 • Goodbye to Berlin, 1939 • Memoir • Lions and Shadows, 1938 The American Isherwood

4. 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 The American Isherwood

5. 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) The American Isherwood

6. American Period • 1953: meets Don Bachardy • 1954: The World in the Evening • 1954: Diane, screenplay The American Isherwood

7. 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 The American Isherwood

8. 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 The American Isherwood

9. Reading Isherwood • American Contemporaries • Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Paul Bowles • American Influence • Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, Paul Monette The American Isherwood

10. 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 The American Isherwood

11. 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 The American Isherwood

12. 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.” The American Isherwood

13. 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 The American Isherwood

14. 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 The American Isherwood

15. 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 The American Isherwood

16. Lectures in California “The Autobiography of My Books,” University of California, Berkely, April 1963 The American Isherwood

17. 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 The American Isherwood

18. The American Isherwood • Becoming an advocate • ACLU, anti-discrimination • Kathleen and Frank (1972) • Christopher and his Kind (1976) The American Isherwood

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

20. 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) The American Isherwood

21. 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) The American Isherwood

22. 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 The American Isherwood

23. The American Isherwood