Isherwood: A Life Revealed

I've read a good amount of Isherwood in my day and enjoyed his various stories/novellas combined to make his Berlin Stories. These I had read quite a view years ago and was seeking a more in depth look at the life of Christopher Isherwood. Peter Parker does a nice job of portraying the author, and the book really takes off in the Berlin years. He was there to enjoy Weimar Berlin in all its glory, and the resulting literary product would represent the strongest writing of his career. And therein lies the problem. A biographer is responsible for the whole arc of the subject's life, but what to do when after the peak, the creative tension and imagination all falls along the wayside? To put it more succinctly, and as W. Somerset Maugham quipped during a drinking session with Herr Isherwood, ". . . if it hadn't been for Berlin, where would you be now?" A huge portion of the book basically entails Christopher Isherwood's constant traveling and cruising for young boys, and it does get tired after a while. It also serves to highlight the underlying problem: an underlying superficiality in character.

For me, this is the first biography of Isherwood that spells out the contradictions of this complex and fascinating personality and views them not as episodic pieces but as a whole life. Finally, I was able to see that the Hollywood and Vedanta years were not some unfortunate detour that Isherwood took, but an inevitable journey in a quest for authenticity and examination of truth -- real and perceived. This personal revelation is probably more a result of the life choices Isherwood made than anything Parker illuminates here, still I appreciated the fact that Parker HAS opinions, especially about the intrinsic value of Isherwood's work and I can agree or disagree with his assessments. I have walked away from this biography with a new appreciation of Isherwood's amazing talent and his profound integrity as an artist. The wild, the debauched, the dull, blissful, the banal and petty -- Isherwood captured it all, distilled it into his art and we are all the richer for it.

I read the English edition of this biography a few months ago and enjoyed it. I think that once you have read this book, you really don't need to read another biography of Isherwood. However, I kept thinking as I read this book, that has there ever been a life more recycled for literary purposes than Isherwood? I am a fan of Isherwood and am glad to own this book.