"My Guru and His Disciple is a sweetly modest and honest portrait of Isherwood's spiritual instructor, Swami Prabhavananda, the Hindu priest who guided Isherwood for some thirty years. It is also a book about the often amusing and sometimes painful counterpoint between worldliness and holiness in...
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 wartim...
Something compelled Christopher Isherwood to set the record straight. Or, rather, to wade through all the suggested straightness (none of which I assumed, but that's the benefit of distance, Cabaret, an English degree, and a working knowledge of biography) in previous stories and banish it once a...
“Lo specchio, più che un volto, riflette l’espressione di una difficoltà. […] Lo sguardo provato è quello di un nuotatore o di un podista stremati; eppure, di fermarsi non se ne parla. L’individuo che stiamo osservando lotterà senza tregua fino al crollo. E non per eroismo. Perché non sa immagina...
This book is composed of 2 previously separately published stories: THE LAST OF MR. NORRIS which the author Christopher Isherwood, dedicated to his long-time friend W. H. Auden and GOODBYE TO BERLIN which was the basis of the play I AM A CAMERA and CABARET starring Liza Minnelli. I know some line...
This is one of my favorite books. My uncle gave me a copy when I was in high school, and I have re-read it every couple years, ever since.Isherwood is better known for Berlin Stories, a semi-autobiographical work on pre-Nazi Germany which became the basis for Cabaret.Prater Violet is a semi-autob...
We got up very late and have been fussing around, chiefly engaged in destroying old manuscripts; the early Meeting by the River material for instance. Now we have to go out and see people, including Margaret Leighton whom I like and Marti Stevens who bores me. Bill van Petten called to wish me a ...
on January 1; I’m not sure how long the flight to Los Angeles would have taken, according to schedule. Their first stop was at Guadalajara. On the way there, they got a glimpse of the real Paricutín, then a very young and notorious volcano (not quite four years old), smoking furiously. Between Gu...
I followed him into his room to break the news.“Schmidt’s been here.”If Arthur’s wig had been suddenly jerked from his head by a fisherman, he could hardly have looked more startled.“William, please tell me the worst at once. Don’t keep me in suspense. What time was this? Did you see him yourself...
For, however hotly I might profess anti-imperialistic opinions, I was still an heir to Britain’s guilt in her dealings with India. I was well aware of this and of the mixed feelings which guilt caused in me. While condemning the British, I felt an involuntary hostility to Hindus—just because my a...