Reading Isherwood

Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader 

edited by Don Bachardy

"And the true realism, always and everywhere, is that of the poets: to find out where joy resides, and give it a voice . . . For to miss the joy is to miss all." (From The Lantern Bearers by Robert Louis Stevenson as quoted by Christopher Isherwood in his commonplace book.


The above quotation from Stevenson is placed as the epigraph to this selection of works by Isherwood. It is a selection that spans his lifetime as a writer from the early days in Berlin to the last days in Hollywood. In making the selections Don Bachardy and James P. White appropriately include the short novel A Single Man as the final selection. This is fitting because it is both the finest of Isherwood's novels and that one whose style and content delineate an ending to life and art in such a beautiful way. The other selections in the book include fictional, biographical, critical and spiritual writings that help the reader gain a picture of Isherwood's life from his own artistic creations. The result suggests how he imagined a world of love and freedom in an era when that life was hidden in ways that are difficult to comprehend in the twenty-first century. His friend Gore Vidal, to whom Isherwood dedicated A Single Man, states in his introduction: "throughout Christopher's life and work - and he made the two the same - he never ceased to attempt the impossible: to say exactly what a thing was and how it struck him in such a way that the reader might grasp it as he himself did, writer and reader as one in the ultimate collusive act of understanding."
This selection of his works captures that "collusive act" and presents it to readers everywhere.


A Christopher Isherwood Reader. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York. 1989

Portraits of Love

Chris & Don: 
A Love Story

Having read and enjoyed many of Christopher Isherwood's books over the years I was eagerly anticipating this cinematic memoir of his 34-year relationship with the much younger Don Bachardy. I was not disappointed as this documentary is a moving account of their relationship. After a brief introductory section on Christopher's life before his move to California and meeting Don, the film focuses on their story and, interestingly, more and more on Don Bachardy's own development as an artist. From the shy boy who is overwhelmed by the Hollywood stars in Chris's world Don develops a life of his own. A life of his own of a sort, since he owed so much of his development to Chris. How Don and Chris worked this out over the years and stayed together was fascinating. In its portrayal of this story the film was sensitive to both lives and provided a beautiful portrait of the love that kept them together until Chris's death in 1986. Perhaps most touching were the almost daily portraits of Chris that Don created during the final six months of Chris's life. Definitely a documentary worth seeing again.