Final Volume Brings Isherwood Diaries Near 3,000 Pages

After nearly two thousand pages of diaries from 1939-1960 and 1960-1969 [Kindle], today you can finish the epic trilogy with Christopher Isherwood's final volume of diaries 1970-1983 [Kindle] at 928 pages. You already know the familiar doubts, anxieties, and pleasures from the first two books, so the main question about this third volume is, Who's in it? The publisher says,

"Bachardy's burgeoning career pulled Isherwood into the 1970s art scenes in Los Angeles, New York, and London, where we meet Rauschenberg, Ruscha, and Warhol (serving fetid meat for lunch), as well as Hockney (adored) and Kitaj. Collaborating with Bachardy on scripts for the prizewinning Frankenstein and the Broadway fiasco A Meeting by the River, Isherwood extended his ties in Hollywood and in the theater world. John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, David Bowie, John Voight, Armistead Maupin, Elton John, and Joan Didion each take a turn through Isherwood's densely populated human comedy, sketched with both ruthlessness and benevolence against the background of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan White Houses."

PW's starred review called it "compulsively readable…a testament to his connections to the literati and Hollywood glitterati…a fitting finale to a fascinating life." 

Comments

[Laurent]

The volume is featured in the current offerings of Heywood Hill, Isherwood's London bookseller -- who sent him once a hammer by mistake, wrapped up for transatlantic parcel post. This will be an important companion, no matter what our age.