Isherwood in Transit ed. by James J. Berg and Chris Freeman (review)

This past summer I had the great pleasure to read the two first volumes (1939–1960 and 1960–1969, together more than 1,500 pages) of Christopher Isherwood's Diaries. These fascinating books cover the American, more specifically Californian, half of the author's life (1904–1986): a life often associated with his Berlin years, described in the book that inspired Bob Fosse's Cabaret: Goodbye to Berlin (1939). Both books also give a very direct insight into some of the "transit" issues studied in this new collection, gathered by two eminent specialists of Isherwood studies (their two previous collections are The Isherwood Century [2000], and The American Isherwood [2015]): the geographical issue, that is, the becoming-American of an English author (with his friend W.H. Auden; after many travels through Europe and Asia, his decision to migrate to the U.S. in January 1939); the ideological issue, that is, the coming-out of a gay writer and an increasingly explicit defense of queer culture in general (the aspect for which he is probably best known today); and the religious issue, that is, the turn away from atheism to Vedanta, one of the schools of Hindu philosophy (a key aspect of his life and work, which has proved to be a challenge for himself, as an explicitly gay and individualist character, as for his contemporary and current readers, generally less open to this strand of spiritual life).

When reading Isherwood's Diaries, it is crystal clear that these three perspectives—geographical, ideological and spiritual—are closely linked. When settling down in Southern California, Isherwood finds a social environment that fits his fundamental individualism while putting him in direct contact with other intellectuals interested in Eastern philosophy and religion and, more importantly, a Vedanta community that he will consider his spiritual home for the rest of his life (for several years, he even considered becoming a monk; in later years, he will do a lot of translation work on Hindu texts and devote important publications to his personal guru). Yet, in light of the questions raised by Isherwood in Transit, what comes to the fore in the Diaries is the increasing split between geography on the one hand and ideology and spirituality on the other. For questions of personal life and the relationships between self and the other, both at the level of personal and sexual relationships and that of the relationship with the larger dimensions of life and the soul, are the subject of permanent struggle and internal debate, typical of Isherwood's restlessness and his permanent refusal to take himself and the world for granted. His move to Southern California (more precisely Holly-wood—and, yes, the Diaries are also a place of high gossip) was undoubtedly experienced by him as a happy arrival. Los Angeles became the place where he really felt at home and only reluctantly left (he particularly hated New York, for example). Such was the comfort he felt in the hills near Hollywood that he did not cease to make sad and often naughty comments on the permanent change of the city.

The rapidly increasing population and the many disquiets this involved (noisy children, filthy beaches, visual pollution of the natural environment, racial and ethnic tensions, traffic jams, etc.) are one of the small but revealing leitmotifs of his diary writing. Certain pages are even very close to the well-known soliloquy in Chandler's The Little Sister (1949), in which Marlowe expresses his growing disappointment with everything that had recently gone wrong in the city he both loved and hated.

In sharp contrast with Isherwood's "goodbye to geographical transit" is not only his never-ending search for a freer way of living and thinking, as demonstrated by his defense of queer culture, but also by the extremely self-critical attitude toward his own thoughts and way of life. Isherwood in Transit is...