Customer Reviews (3)

good job
Such a good book. Not only did I love the book but it arrived a day before scheduled,in great condition and I appreciated it very much. Thanks for doing such a good job.

A reminder of why authors rarely attempt epistolary novels
After he moved in 1939 to Los Angeles, where he met Swami Prabhavananda, Christopher Isherwood translated many Hindu texts, wrote a biography of Ramakrishna (a nineteenth-century Indian mystic), and increasingly incorporated his newly adapted religious beliefs into his fiction. Those beliefs are ever-present in "A Meeting by the River," in which the author depicts two British brothers who serve as alter egos for his own spiritual and sexual longings.

The story is simple and is established in the first few pages: living near the Ganges, Oliver writes to his brother, Patrick, and reveals that he intends to enter the Hindu monastery at which he has been studying. In Los Angeles for business, Patrick, whose wife Penny and their children live in London, departs immediately to India to see Oliver, find "out what kind of state he's in," and to prevent "this monstrously unnatural spectacle of a young Englishman being turned into a Hindu swami." Patrick, however, has a secret of his own: a lover, Tom, whom he left behind in Los Angeles.

Conceptually, it is a brave book, but its execution is appalling. The book is often excruciating to read, and it's difficult to believe that Isherwood wrote such a book only three years after "A Single Man," which is a tour de force of incisive prose and controlled diction. Stylistically, the novel alternates between Patrick's letters--to Tom, to Penny, to his mother--and Oliver's diary entries. The epistolary sections transcend informality into the realm of chattiness; they are freckled with conversation tidbits, pillow talk, and exclamation points. ("You deserve the best, and what the best is, from your point of view, only you can say! Do I deserve you? I would never dare to claim that. But if you say I do, then I'll be the last to contradict you!") The diary entries, by comparison, are respites amidst the prattle, but even their loquaciousness threaten to turn these oases into swamps.

What saves the book from being a total wreck are Isherwood's fascination with the atmosphere of the monastery and his post-Freudian portrayal of the two conflicted brothers. (The offstage character of Tom, on the other hand, is a somewhat embarrassing boy-toy fantasy whose presence seems rather pointless, while Penny and the mother serve as little more than recipients for Patrick's increasingly hysterical letters.) The book's ending, too, while altogether unsurprising, contains just enough ambiguity to allow it to be incongruously affecting. The last few pages offer a regretfully brief hint of what this novel could have been.

A Thought-provoking read
Isherwood takes on the ambiguities inherent in sexuality,religious devotion, and sibling relationships in a completelynon-polemical way. Easy to read, involving, and witty, the Isherwood way. A fifth star would be deserved if the book were a little messier--it does have a slight tendency toward "patness". But that's a minor quibble.END ... Read more

Product Description

To many readers Christopher Isherwood means Berlin. The author of Goodbye to Berlin (1939), the British Isherwood found fame through the adaptation of that work into the stage play and film I Am a Camera and then into the stage musical and film Cabaret.

Customer Reviews (1)

The Best There Is!
Better than the literary crit stuff that has been published on Isherwood, and miles ahead of the various attempts at biography, these 'Conversations' give a portrait of the whole man. It really is the best there is on the life of Christopher Isherwood ... Read more

Product Description
A Spiritual Bloomsbury is an exploration of how three English writers_Edward Carpenter, E.M. Forster, and Christopher Isherwood_sought to come to terms with their homosexuality by engagement with Hinduism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating
When I stumbled upon this book I was transfixed - a volume of Isherwood's personal sentiments spanning 1939-1960.Though not always a daily account this volume defines his move from England to California and his formative years there as a writer.His diaries tell how he became a disciple of the Hindu monk Swami Prabhavananda, his pacifism in World War II, his work as a Hollywood screenwriter and his friendships with artists and intellectuals like Garbo, Chaplin, Bertolt Brecht, Stravinsky, Olivier, Richard Burton, and many others.In luminous prose he reveals his most intimate and passionate relationships, with Bill Caskey and later with the very young artist... Don Bachardy.A fascinating read! ... Read more

Product Description

The English writer Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years working in Hollywood film studios, teaching English to European refugees, and converting to Hinduism. By the time the war ended, he realized he was not cut out to be a monk. With his self-imposed wartime vigil behind him, he careened into a life of frantic socializing, increasing dissipation, anxiety, and, eventually, despair.For nearly a half decade he all but ceased to write fiction and even abandoned his lifelong habit of keeping a diary.

This is Isherwood's own account, reconstructed from datebooks, letters, and memory nearly thirty years later, of his experience during those missing years: his activities in Santa Monica, and also in New York and London, just after the war.Begun in 1971, in a postsixties atmosphere of liberation, Lost Years includes explicit details of his romantic and sexual relationships during the 1940s and unveils a hidden and sometimes shocking way of life shared with friends and acquaintances--many of whom were well-known artists, actors, and film-makers.Not until the 1951 Broadway success of I Am a Camera, adapted from his Berlin stories, did Isherwood begin to reclaim control of his talents and of his future.

Isherwood never prepared Lost years for publication because he rapidly became caught up in writing the book that established him as a hero of gay liberation, Christopher and His Kind.

With unpolished directness, and with insight and wit, Lost Years shows how Isherwood developed his private recollections into the unique mixture of personal mythology and social history that characterizes much of his best work.This surprising and important memoir also highlights his determination to track down even the most elusive and unappealing aspects of his past in order to understand and honestly portray himself, both as a writer and as a human being. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Plodding self indulgence
This is raw data: the banal musings of day to day living without any insight.Who cares if Hepburn did this or Garbo said that? It is a document of his daily activities with no analysis of the impact that the events depicted had on him as a person or writer.There aren't too many books I don't compulsively finish.This is one of them.

Important Gay History- A MUST Read
This book is a very important piece of our Gay History. People seem to forget that there were Homosexuals before 1978. This Memoir is very insightful, and really brings to life what gay life was like back then.
Homosexuals seem to ignore where we came from and how far we have come. Authors like Christopher Isherwood and Gore Vidal need to be read (as well as many others). On top of that it is a fun read.

Should Have Stayed "Lost."
Though I read and enjoyed Christopher Isherwood's "Diaries, Volume One", I was bored by these recollections,"Lost Years, A Memoir",which were composed by him some thirty years after their occurrence. Apparently he had abandoned his daily practice of keeping a diary between the years of 1945-1951, and this is his attempt to cover those lost years. There are some mildly interesting stories here, and also includes little tid-bits about the people you'd expect it to, Garbo, Vidal, Williams....but I found it very repetitious. Also, though I am far from a prude, and am just as much of a horn-dog as anyone else, I found the very graphic description of his sexual escapades to often be tasteless and vulgar. Tennessee William's "Memoirs", for example, included many accounts of sexual situations, but they were usually recounted with such humor that it only made them very comical. Not only are many of Mr. Isherwood's sexual memories told without any comical hindsight that one could maybe even identify with,or, in fact, any sensuality,but, they are beyond bad taste. I mean, there are some things I just don't need to know. Though I respect Mr. Isherwood and his literary legacy, and know he is remembered as a good person and friend, the overly prurient, if I may use such an old fashioned word, tone of this book really turned me off.The contents of these rememberences were just not interesting enough for me to get past the self-indulgent drivel. I guess there IS such a thing as too much honesty. Sex "in your face" is a bore, and so was this book.

"A Very Honest & Important Memoir"
If your looking to know the real "Christopher Isherwood" this is the book to read first.I really enjoyed this memoir called "The Lost Years" 1945-1951 because of its openness & honesty.If your interested in Christopher's daily life in every detail, from his friends, sex partners, lovers, and acquaintances it's all here.I expected to get details about all faucets of his daily life from this memoir and that's exactly what I got.If your looking for a sugar coated boring sexless book,look elsewhere.Christopher is very honest in laying out in graphic detail his sexual conquests.But that's not to say the book is just about his sexual life, it's like I said about all the daily details of his everyday life for those years.There's a wonderful Chronology in the back of the book for a quick history lesson of his life, and a glossary that is outstanding that contains all the bio's and history of his friends, partners,and relatives.

This book really opened my eyes to this wonderful writer, who happened to be gay.I thought the 90's were gay but after reading this book, things weren't much different back in the 40's.Gay life as we call it today, was really just as gay back then.Katherine Bucknell has done a wonderful job in editing this book, and gives us a wonderful introduction.Getting to know Christopher Isherwood as a writer and a human being has been a wonderful experience for me.Highly recommended.

Isherwood Embarrassment
This is the most embarrassing book I know written by a writer of literary reputation.It is a mean-spirited, self-aggrandizing work that will only detract from the author's standing as a serious author.There are repetitive renditions of affairs, including intimate details that make one wonder why this book, not finished, was published posthumously at all. Gossipy, and spiteful, awkwardly written, this is a shameful document, not literature. ... Read more

Product Description
In 1939 Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden emigrated together to the United States. In spare, luminous prose, these diaries describe Isherwood's search for a new life in California; his work as a screenwriter in Hollywood, his pacifism during World War II and his friendships with such gifted artists and intellectuals as Garbo, Charles Chaplin, Thomas Mann, Charles Laughton and Aldous Huxley. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Lovely
Lovely book of letters: best read in conjunction with "Christopher and His Kind" by Isherwood (to get the other side of the story). ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Not all that memorable....
This is admittedly only the second Isherwood novel I have read...and the first half sets up what I thought was going to be a really good finish...but I was a bit disappointed.

Regarding the various relationships of several members of a family, and a few outsiders, there is really one one thread that comes through as a focal point or 'main' story, and that is of the relationship between the character of 'Eric' and his cousin 'Maurice', as well as the involvement of Maurice and Edward, an older man in the habit of making life more cushy for Maurice, much to Eric's disdain.

Citing moral corruption and the decline of character of his cousin, Eric strives to barr Edward from continuing his support of Maurice with an appeal to the man's better judgement.

Again, this book has a lot of potential, but it just didn't move me the way The World in the Evening did. I give it four stars for Isherwood's writing style, but cannot give an additional mark for content. ... Read more

Product Description
Best known for The Berlin Stories-the inspiration for the Tony and Academy Award-winning musical Cabaret-Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was a major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement. This collection presents two complete novels, Prater Violet (1945) and A Single Man (1964); episodes from three other novels, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), Down There on a Visit (1962), and Lions and Shadows (1938); and excerpts from his nonfiction works, Exhumations (1966), Kathleen and Frank (1971), and My Guru and His Disciple (1980).

"The late Christopher Isherwood was a writer with exceptional powers of observation. . . . An excellent anthology." -Los Angeles Times

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) is also the author of A Single Man, Down There on a Visit, Lions and Shadows, The Memorial, The World in the Evening, and A Meeting by the River, all available in paperback editions from the University of Minnesota Press.

Don Bachardy, Isherwood's longtime partner, is a painter and writer living in Santa Monica, California. His books include Last Drawings of Christopher Isherwood (1991) and Stars in My Eyes (2000).

James P. White is a novelist who directs the creative writing program at the University of South Alabama. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

You Do Know Who Isherwood Is?
Christopher Isherwood's name and the breadth of his work is completely overshadowed by a musical adaptation of just one of his short stories.One of the best writers of memoir, reportage and fiction of the twentieth century, his work will one day appear on required reading syllabi alongside Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald.In the meantime, please read and share this book.

The demi-biographical stories presented in "Where Joy Resides" demonstrate Isherwood's ability to consolidate place, time, character and emotion into a concise and highly readable presentation.Although a diverse selection, the reader will finish the book with an understanding and affinity for the author.

Spend a weekend "Where Joy Resides," and I'm confident you will not remember Christopher Isherwood as the guy who wrote "Caberet." ... Read more

Product Description
The artist Don Bachardy lived with Isherwood for more than 30 years and during Isherwood's last illness Bachardy drew him almost every day - sometimes several times a day. The 100 drawings from this period are published here alongside Bachardy's journal and an interview with Stephen Spender. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A eulogy for lovers
Christopher Isherwood has been appreciated for years as one of America's finest writers.Recent publications of biographies, essays of remembrances, and historically important data in the form of his diaries have established his place in history.That he had a longterm relationship with artist Don Bachardy is a well known fact and in truth much of the notoriety currently is due to Bachardy's continued devotion.Nowhere is there a more profound paeon to love than in this book of ink drawings.As Christopher Isherwood lay ill and dying his lover stayed by his side, savoring all the moments remaining in their temporal relationship.How best to while away his attentiveness than to draw Isherwood.These profoundly touching renderings show Isherwood's decline and finally his death, even drawings of his corpse as Bachardy waited for the body to be removed from their Santa Monica home.This is not a morbid book.This is a book that radiates love and chronicles time passing and life ending.It is one of the most tender elegies we have in art. ... Read more

Product Description
Published to coincide with the revival of Cabaret, now opening on Broadway, Goodbye To Berlin is the original story of the chanteuse heroine Sally Bowles. Isherwood ironically captures life in Weimar Berlin, a city infamous for its flourishing demimonde and violent politics. 2 cassettes. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Goodbye Berlin as history
This is a very good book that was sent to me by a German friend who grew up in Hamburg during the war. I asked her how the Nazis came to power and she sent me "GoodBye Berlin" for the lesson it teaches.

An Unexpected Delight
I knew nothing of either this book or its author when I picked it up. I was merely compelled to do so because the blurb revealed that it was set in Berlin, a city which I will soon be visiting - and in which I might even be residing. I hoped to get a good vicarious understanding of the city through reading it.

I can't say that this hope was completely gratified. I did, however, learn a great deal about the city's denizens and its political crises in the 30s, pre-Hitler. The narrator of the book is also called Christopher Isherwood. This he attempts to explain in the preface: "Because I have given my own name to the 'I' of this narrative, readers are certainly not entitled to assume that its pages are purely autobiographical, or that its characters are libellously exact portraits of living persons. 'Christopher Isherwood' is a convenient ventriloquist's dummy, nothing more."

In other words, this is very thinly veiled autobiography. The narrator even mentions a book he wrote - "All The Conspirators" - which the real-life writer also composed. I must admit, this didn't particularly bother me - just thought I should point it out.

There is something enchanting about Isherwood's prose. It is extremely passive, for one thing; rarely does the narrator reveal his feelings; he is, as he says, "...a camera with its shutters open, quite passive, recording, not thinking." He recounts several enticing, sometimes jarring, anecdotes about living as an English teacher in Berlin's capital, forced to live in murky working-class tenements and uninhabitable attics, or in idyllic villas with querulous homosexuals.

What makes this little novel of vignettes special, though, is the characters. Each of them is so realistically rendered that one might be inclined to think that they really did exist - and, truth be told, they probably did, only under different names. They are fascinating, in any event.

I am a Camera...
The opening page of Goodbye to Berlin contains one of the Twentieth Century's most famous sentences: 'I am a Camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking.' One of the most famous, yet also most disengenuous sentences. For Christopher Isherwood might have wished readers to think that his authorial persona - wry, detatched, passive, laconic - was actually his real personality, but we know the reality - lithe and limber boys in bathhouses, for instance - was rather more colourful. In the end, Isherwood couldn't distinguish between what was real, and what was a product of his imagination, the two bled into each other, giving result to an immaculate set of writings from his Berlin period when he was living poor in guesthouses, teaching English and recording the final months of early thirties Berlin Bohemia with the menacing shadow of Hitler imposing on the edges, and moving ever more darkly towards the centre.

Goodbye to Berlin contains some of Isherwood's choicest writings. There is the memorable tale of Sally Bowles, a feckless slightly aristocratic girl who sleeps with producers in the hope of making her big break and sings clubs (badly) in the evening. Her story inspired the musical 'Cabaret', and Isherwood creates a superb portrait of a young glamorous woman using her transient sex appeal to manipulate men and their emotions.

What Kingsley Amis described as Isherwood's 'boyhorn' features, with a tale of Otto and Peter, a quarreling gay couple who struggle with their sexuality in the homophobic atmosphere of pre-war Berlin. Then there is Natalia Landauer, the rich Jewish Heiress of a wealthy family, and the poor and Frau Schroder, the plump, caring landlady who is intrigued by the patrician Isherwood and is enthralled by his stories 'Quite right Herr Isssyvoo!'

The passive prose style is a perfect foil for this decadent era in Weimar Germany. The people Isherwood describes are often selfish and feckless, but always bursting with humanity. The book concludes with a description of Jewish shop owners suffering increasing intimidation for Nazi bully boys.

The back end of that famous camera sentence: 'one day this will have to be recorded and fixed'. Well now that period is fixed in history. We knowwhat all this decadence ran into. For that, Goodbye to Berlin makes very poignant and powerful reading.

Down and Out in Berlin
Originally published in 1939, the vignettes which form this book were based on the period (1930-33) Isherwood spent in Berlin that coincided with the Nazi ascension to power. It exists uneasily somewhere in the grey zone between memoir and fiction. Taking a cue from Dos Passos' USA trilogy (whose fist volume came out in 1930, and which he certainly would have read), Isherwood described his writing as "I am a camera with its shutter open", thereby ostensibly branding it documentary in nature. The episodes certainly read as a straight memoir would, and since the narrator of each piece is called Christopher Isherwood, it's hard not to take them as such. But however much is fictional, and whatever else it may be, the book functions today as a time capsule of a society on the brink of horrific change. And it derives no little drama from our knowledge of what was to happen to that society over the next 15 years. Of course, it also endures in fame as the base material from which the musical/film Cabaret was formed, as well as the earlier play/film I Am a Camera.

The pieces run chronologically, beginning with "A Berlin Diary", which introduces the reader to the city, and to Isherwood's hand-to-mouth existence as an freelance English tutor and lodger in a low-end guesthouse. The idea is to introduce various colorful characters, such as the landlady and his fellow lodgers (a prostitute, a bartender, a music-hall singer, and a traveling salesman), and acclimate the reader to the setting. Next is "Sally Bowles", certainly the most famous of the stories, and featuring the most famous of his characters. I wasn't particularly engaged by the story of the 19-year-old English golddigging"actress", nor did it make a whole lot of sense as to why Isherwood would go to such effort to remain friends with such a self-absorbed chit of a girl. "On Ruegen Island" takes place at a vacation spot in northeastern Germany, on the Baltic Sea. It is primarily the story of Isherwood's English friend, and the young working-class German man he becomes infatuated with. It's a well-drawn, but almost cliche portrait of the neurotic, insecure sugar-daddy, his freeloading, bisexual plaything, and their dysfunctional mind games.

In the next story ("The Nowaks"), Isherwood catches up with this same dissolute hustler in Berlin, and ends up lodging with his family. This is an opportunity to sketch out daily life in an even lower-class milieu. This contrasts nicely with the next story, "The Landaurers", in which Isherwood becomes friends with a rather intense young Jewish woman from a wealthy merchant family. Here, Isherwood actively dislikes the young woman, and yet still cultivates her acquaintance for some reason. That reason may be the "friendship" he develops with her breezily cynically world-wise cousin Bernhard. There's something somewhat unsettling in Isherwood's offhand characterization of Bernhard's"Eastern" inscrutability and repeated references about how one could never really "know" what was going on in his head. These sound awfully like some of the classic stereotypes of Jews, and one wonders to what extent Isherwood harbored his own upper-class instilled prejudices. (This may be discussed in Peter Parker's Isherwood: A Life Revealed, but I'm not interested enough to track that down and check.) In any event, the contrast between the poor Nowaks and the wealthy Landaurers serves to highlight the growing Nazi menace, and Isherwood sees the writing on the wall in his final diary farewell.

The collection seems destined to be lauded ad nauseam as a fond farewell to the seedy, corrupt side of Weimar-era Germany and its fun-loving group of nightlife denizens: gay hustlers, women on the make, communist poseurs, and so on, all of whom would soon disappear or become reinvented under a completely different kind of of Nazi decadence. However, it's not at all clear to me from this that the Berlin of that time was markedly different from other large European cities of the time. Certainly Paris and other cities had a thriving "underground" scene at the same time -- Berlin's claim to fame (indeed a large portion of why Isherwood went there), was the steady and cheap supply of young boys, kind of a pedophile's paradise. In any event, those interested in the Berlin of that era may want to tackle Alfred Dobin's massive masterpiece, Berlin Alexanderplatz, which channels 1920s Berlin through the eyes of an ex-con.

It just WON'T Leave my tape player!
I was never one for audio books, I thought they were for people too lazy to read the real thing, and that many of them were read without feeling or emotion and sounded a bit like my 9th grade English teacher reading the death of Mercutio scene from Romeo and Juliet.But the combination of one of my favorite books and my favorite actor (Alan Cumming) led me to even buy used to hear what it sounded like.The search was well worth it!Alan puts so much into this brilliant recording.He intimately entwines you in the world of pre-war Berlin before the deluge.He is utterly witty handling the character of Fraulein Schroeder, uproariously funny with the famous Sally Bowles, and when he is Chris the narrator of the book, he takes you on a rollercoaster of emotions, from joy to sorrow to everything in between.Alan knows the book so well as if he came from that world.He captures your attention for the 3 hours that the running time is, and for 3 hours does NOT disappoint!If you're fortunate enough to be able and get a copy of this, I know you'll agree with me, and in the meantime they have to start reprinting this gem among literary and performance gems! ... Read more

Product Description
In September 1947, long before mass tourism and with no knowledge of Spanish, Christopher Isherwood and his lover Bill Caskey left for a six-month tour of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina. Isherwood's account of this journey, The Condor and the Cows, is one of very few classic travel books on South America and was among the books Isherwood considered his best.

Based on his trip journal and loosely structured by the vagaries of his travels, these pages give us an Isherwood who dreams of voluntary exile in the tropical paradise of Curaçao and dines out on stories of Nazis in Berlin, missionaries in China, and movie stars in Hollywood. He describes the surprising and sometimes unnerving people and places he encounters through telling, cinematic details-of Inca drinking vessels, the Spanish colonial city of Cuzco (which he calls "one of the most beautiful monuments to bigotry and sheer brutal stupidity in the whole world"), a bullfight in Bogotá, the towering ruins of Machu Picchu. Unsentimental, rich, and wonderfully rendered, this expanded edition includes additional photographs by Bill Caskey and a new foreword by Jeffrey Meyers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

hard to find biographic material
The author joined the Woolfs' press in 1931 as trainee manager, and soon published Isherwood's 2nd novel.Lehman used his diaries and letters from Isherwood to recount a fifty-year friendship.Includes Isherwood's life in Berlin, his pacifism, interest in Vedanta, etc.Well-selected drawings and photos. ... Read more

Product Description
Here is the definitive biography of one of the most exciting, influential, and elusive authors of the twentieth century. Christopher Isherwood’s novels and short stories, including those that inspired the musical Cabaret, have always been assumed to be largely autobiographical.

Based in part on Isherwood’s private papers–unavailable until now–this fascinating book presents the real story of his life, a life that saw a relatively conventional boy become an acclaimed writer, mystic, and “grand old man” of the gay liberation movement. In the end, Isherwood: A Life portrays someone who misled as much as he revealed.

Born in 1904, the heir to a large country estate where his grandfather was squire, Isherwood had a youth filled with both privilege and loss. His father’s death in World War I devastated his mother and created a “hero-father” image that would haunt both Christopher and his unstable brother for the rest of their lives.

He began to acknowledge his homosexuality at his English boarding school and subsequently formed a definition of “self” based on subterfuge, performance, and escape. With his lifelong friends W. H. Auden and Stephen Spender he emerged as one of the leading literary figures of the 1930s.

From the bars, nightclubs, and slums of Weimar Germany–where Isherwood created The Berlin Stories and introduced the world to Sally Bowles–to homosexual communes in Greece and Portugal, to the film studios of London (the subject of his novel Prater Violet) and Hollywood, his destinations became arenas for his reinventions. Isherwood’s later years as an unofficial spiritual and sexual sage in Southern California only added to the abiding mystery of his life.

In addition to using Isherwood’s correspondence, unpublished diaries, and other previously unavailable sources in painting this clear and definitive portrait, Peter Parker has also unearthed the author’s telling early works, including parodies, school memoirs, and even part of a crucial lost novel.

Painstakingly researched and brilliantly written, Isherwood: A Life captures the fugitive reality of a man who has become a favorite artist and important symbol of an entire era in our life of letters. Published in the centennial of his birth, it will be read as long as Isherwood himself is. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Well Written but Repetitive
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.

Recommended
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.

Size isn't everything!
Peter Parker's earnest, exhaustive and rather conventional biography fails to recognise the forest for the trees. Isherwood did, in fact, "find a home", both geographically and spiritually, although you might not recognise that from Parker, who indicated in an interview for The Telegraph that he didn't "judge" his subject.
The tone of some sections makes that claim a little hard to swallow but he has saved his worst finger-wagging for a crass putdown of Isherwood's guru, Swami Prabhavananda, whom he characterises as sly and manipulative, playing up to Isherwood's vanity in order to borrow some of the writer's cachet for Vedanta Society publications and good P.R.Parker even tries to mount a prosecution against the guru as not really being tolerant towards homosexuals at all, with Isherwood getting "special treatment", before finally beating a lame retreat into a disclaimer that Isherwood had "not been duped in any way". ( Parker is mouthing Denny Fouts, whom Isherwood called "the sourest of all critics").

Should we blame Parker for his cultural myopia? Even Isherwood's dear friend, W.H. Auden, regarded his religion as "Heathen mumbo jumbo" , but unlike Parker, did not fail to recognise the guru's bona fides ("Your Swami's quite obviously a Saint, of course.") Parker's churlish putdown of Swami Prabhavananda is sheer perversity and does him and his book little credit.


Isherwood presciently foreshadowed some of the neo-colonialist prejudice his spirituality might evoke In "An Approach to Vedanta" and elsewhere, David Robb picks up on the point in relation to the suspicion surrounding the reception of Aldous Huxley's turn towards spirituality.Robb identifies "an ingrained British contempt for subject native races." specifically in relation to Huxley's adoption of Gandhi's principles of nonviolence. Parker doesn't recognize this in his own attitude.

It's high time the Brits realised that they have had Isherwood suspended in aspic for far too long. Prof. John Sutherland, reviewing this biography for the London Review of Books, refers to Isherwood's "late life conversion to transcendentalism". As Isherwood met the guru in 1939 (when he was in his mid-thirties), and continued in the relationship for almost four decades, there's no way this could be construed as" late life".Reviews of the Parker biog. have flushed out many of these old canards lurking in the underbrush.

To Parker's credit, the second, very productive period of Isherwood's life IS given due weight. His judgments of the literary texts are fairly predictable, but he is unable to understand why Isherwood found "My Guru and His Disciple" (1980) as among his best work. Even Stephen Spender agrred on that (and he wasn't an uncritical friend, after all.)

When it comes to trying to evaluate the benefits to Isherwood from his 40 year practice of Vedanta, Parker is really out of his depth; his neo-Christian blinkers narrow his vision to the point where he can't even see what he is looking at. This is a shame. It seems also that he has avoided talking with many of the people still alive today who knew Isherwood during this time, to test his own prejudices, and that, too, is a failing in this portrait.

To give it its due, the 12 years' work Parker put into this biography does show. It will become the standard reference book on Isherwood for dates, places, people and events. But it will take a better biographer than Parker to capture all of the dimensions of this fascinating precursor of many (post-modern) trends. At 800 pages, he should have got it right (apparently he sliced 15% out of the final edit), but you have to ask why Isherwood's partner, Don Bachardy, was so bitterly disappointed with the outcome.I still feel the Berg and Freeman collections, and Katherine Bucknell, the editor of the diaries, give much more real insight into the man than this collection of facts has managed to do.

A much needed biography
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. ... Read more

Product Description
Uses the beauty of verse to express the highest truths of Vedanta. Includes an introduction to the Gita, and a study of non-violence versus the need to fight a just war.

The critics have singled out this translation:"The book is self-contained. A complete stranger to the Hindu Gospel can pick it up and in one or two evenings follow the poem from its terrific beginnings to its sublime end." -- New York Times ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Truly Spiritually Alive Book!
This book's translation made emphasis on you getting the message of Bhagavadgita without getting lost in details. The lines of the book breath spiritual wisdom and shift happens in your consiousness while you are reading it. Something that reading truly spiritual book is supposed to do. That distances this book from other translations that are filled with commentaries that only entrench mind deeper in pondering and don't give space for a spirit to emerge.

I would like to acknowledge here also the work of Eckhart Tolle : "A New Earth" - as a first spiritually alive book that made a permanent shift in my conciosness and started me on the path to spiritual world. Life is never the same again.

Simple & Excellent Translation
Of all the translations I have read, this one truly stands out. The best part is the simplicity of the presentation.

The Original Truth
If we lived in a sane society, a dog-eared copy of the Bhagavad Gita would be on every nightstand in every home of the western world.

So many publications of the Bhagavad Gita suffer from the same malady as most publications of the Corpus Hermeticum -- the inherent Knowledge, Existence, and Bliss ends up being buried beneath a ton of commentary. This particular collaboration by Prabhavananda and Isherwood wisely avoids commentary except in the Preface, Introduction, and ending Appendices.

I grew up in the Baptist church, the first born son of a Southern Baptist preacher. I can honestly say that the Gita has become as cherished to me as the bible. I now understand why so many Hindus express as much love for the Gita as they do the Sermon on the Mount. Once stripped of the layers of corruptions grandfathered in by men ruled by rajas, both holy books contain the wonderful, blissful, effulgent, Original Truth.

The beginning of the Gita, just as with the beginning [Old Testament] of the bible, suffers from Ishwara having breathed it thru the corrupting filters of men living in an age when war was considered noble [not that much has changed even in the 21st century]. Too many souls have rejected the Gita because of being repulsed after reading the first two chapters where Lord Krishna --- Brahman incarnated in the form of a man --- implores Arjuna to "shake off this cowardice, Arjuna", insisting that "if you refuse to fight this righteous war, you will be turning aside from your duty. You will be a sinner, and disgraced".

Similar words can be found in Numbers 31:14-18. And, among Hindus, as among Christians, too many adherents, dominated by rajas, take such words literally. Note that India is one of only eight nations in our world that stockpile nuclear weapons. Wisely, in Appendix II, Prabhavananda and Isherwood include a short treatise entitled "The Gita and War" in which Ghandi's accurate assessment of the Gita is provided:

"...he called it an allegory in which the battlefield is the soul and Arjuna, man's higher immpulses, struggling against evil."

I highly recommend that those reading the Gita for the first time begin with Appendix II, then read Chapters I and II while Appendix II is still fresh in their mind. After Chapter II, everything will begin to fall into place.

And, for Heaven's sake, by all means, ignore any Hindu swami, Muslim iman, or Christian preacher who tries to convince you that there is any such thing as a literal religious war of which you have a duty to Brahman/Allah/Jehovah to fight. What is your duty? Lord Arjuna explains it perfectly in the last chapter of the Gita:

"When he casts from him
Vanity, violence,
Pride, lust, anger
And all his possessions,
Totally free
From the sense of ego
And tranquil of heart:
That man is ready
For oneness with Brahman.
And he who dwells
United with Brahman,
Calm in mind,
Not grieving, not craving,
Regarding all men
With equal acceptance:
He loves me most dearly.

aptly named, "the song of God."
Perhaps the greatest piece of truly inspired spiritual literature ever written. Considered by many to be the epitome of the vast collection of writings that is Vedanta. Its the story of Lord Krishna's holy teachings and advice toa warrior whose heart is in great distress on the eve of battle. And aren't we all warriors on the eve of the battle of daily life? Lord Krishna explains the various ways a person can seek and find and know God. He speaks directly to each one of us from that transcendent Eternal One point of view, "when goodness grows weak, when evil increases, i make myself a body. in every age i come back, to deliver the holy, to destroy the sin of the sinner and to establish righteousness". and, "though a man be soiled with the sins of a lifetime, let him but love me, rightly resolved, in utter devotion: i see no sinner, that man is holy". and, "give me your whole heart, love and adore me, worship me always, bow to me only, and you shall find me: this is my promise, who love you dearly." I love the book very much indeed and have read it many times over the past few decades. This particular translation is a thing of sheer beauty and power. This is by far my favorite translation of the several i've read. [Prabhavanana and Isherwood, translation] This book belongs on the reading table of every sincere spiritual seeker. Its simply sublime.

Awesome!
This is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. If you're at all curious about Hinduism - this book has it all. Now I don't personally believe that a blue-skinned guy named Krishna ever really existed. But I do believe he is an excellent allegory, or character, used to convey the beliefs of Hinduism and the experience (and non-experience) of Brahman(God). My favorite thing about this book is that Krishna is active in everyday life. The story is actually an excerpt from the epic "Mahabarata". It takes place in the middle of a battlefield. Arjuna, a warrior, does not want to fight because he sees that all the guys on the other side are his relatives - his brothers so to speak. Krishna tells Arjuna to fight and then goes on to explain why it's ok - all the while expounding the ideals and beliefs of the Hindus. What's cool is that even though they express that God is in everyone and everything - it's ok to participate in ordinary life according to your nature. Arjuna has the nature of a warrior so he is supposed to fight when there is a battle. Not everybody needs to sit around meditating and smoking hemp.
The book is a masterpiece and it is beautifully done. Check it out. ... Read more

Product Description
Jonathan Fryer's revised biography of literary giant Christopher Isherwood. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

An Isherwood curio.
If you're a fan of Isherwood's "Berlin Stories," or have read his classic autobiography "Christopher and Hid Kind," then you may find this volume of letters of special interest.Isherwood was an iconic literary figure, and these letters illuminate his state of mind at the time he wrote his famous stories, battled to keep his German lover (Heinz) from being concripted into Hitler's army, and dealt with the stress of being separated from his family in England as war broke out in Europe.This is an extremely handsome volume, and quite absorbing for those with existing knowledge of this author's life and works. ... Read more