Diaries: Volume 1, 1939-1960

great day by day accounts of life...before and during ww II. Isherwood is a gay man..but with incredible insight. And he knew and mingled with the greats of Motion Picture History...iconic people like Garbo, Chaplin...he took breakfast with these people and went for walks with them....as just "friends"...and during a very interesting time in America's and the world's history. WW II.

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.

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.

As an ardent fan of Isherwood's novels, I am, perhaps, the ideal consumer for these lengthy diaries. I left the book on my bedside table, only to be read at night, and for three months enjoyed the author's observant, witty, spiritual, intelligent and sometimes banal entries with thankful adoration. Covering as they do a span of time that allows for great personal change, as well as an ever-shifting political climate, the Diaries open a window into a beloved author's day-to-day, while painting a fascinating backdrop that moves from Hollywood glamour to Pennsylvannia Quakerism to Eastern Spirituality and back. Isherwood's writing is always crisp, and wise without condescension. Through his devotion to searching out self-awareness, I found myself re-examining my own creative production levels. Put simply, the book is truly inspirational. I can't wait for the next installment.

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.