The Sixties: Diaries:1960-1969

by Christopher Isherwood

  September 19. Well, yesterday I finished the last chapter of the Ramakrishna—the longest and cruellest of all my Vedanta chores. It’s marvellous that writing it didn’t make me lose my faith altogether. Don winces at the very idea of reading it, and yet I must have a cold-eyed critic who isn’t simply an atheistical idiot.

  Both he and I hugged Prema last night, saying goodbye. This pleased him, touchingly. He left for Honolulu this morning.

  Have told Gore I’ll dedicate A Single Man to him. This pleased him, too. Don, that wizard at name finding, has picked Kenny as a substitute for Ronny and Doris as a substitute for Ruth, in the book.

  Have been greatly worried over my throat, but I saw Allen again this morning and he maintains it’s an infection, nothing more. In fact, he talked in quite a relaxed manner about people who have premalignant nodules on the vocal cords.

  Very warm, after heavy rain. A good workout at the gym; the first since my rib was hurt. I can’t feel it now. The Republican poster had been taken down, so I didn’t have to protest to Lyle, as I had made up my mind to.

  Have now definitely said I don’t want to have to meet Henry Kraft any more. I should never have done so in the first place. That kind of thing is messy and was messy in the days of Lord Byron, and always will be messy. Unless one simply doesn’t give a shit.

  Which reminds me of a terrific squaresville thing Henry said ages ago about love. “For love you need four things—will, determination, integrity, responsibility.”

  David Smith (whom I like) describes how a colored queen talks: “Well, cakes, I’ll just tip over parkside and find me a chico chunk (an attractive Puerto Rican).” “Chunk” means anyone attractive; it’s full version is “chunk of life.” Other Negroes are called “kabukis.”

  September 26. The heat is beyond belief. It rises through the floor-boards of our balcony; at breakfast this morning it was stifling.

  Last night, Swami pressured me into saying I’d come with him to India for the Vivekananda centenary. I feel miserable about this. The idea fills me with blank horror. But it would only be for about three weeks. Starting December 19.

  Anyhow, it makes a reason for going into a drive to get both books ready for publication before then. I am working grimly at A Single Man. The Ramakrishna has to be typed up for me first.

  Don is doing oil portraits, rather more happily. His private life is obscure; but will be revealed no doubt before long.

  My throat is still just the same, and I am worried about it, of course. Altogether I am low on energy and melancholy and toxic. But much of that could be cured by drinking less, cutting out all smoking, taking exercise regularly and praying. (I never miss japam, but it is utterly mechanical.)

  In case A Single Man is later thought to be a masterpiece, may I state that it bores me unutterably to reread? Going through it is really a grind.

  October 8. For the first time, this evening, the sun set to the west of Point Dume, in the ocean. The beginning of fall.

  October 23. Last Saturday, the 19th, I finished the third and final (I trust) draft of A Single Man. It had taken me a little less than a month; I started it on September 21. The day before yesterday, I sent off typescripts of it to Simon and Schuster and to Methuen.

  Jerry Lawrence, the first person to read this final version with a fresh eye, seems to like it enormously; but he still says, as all the others did about the second draft, that the scene with Charlotte is weaker than the rest. I know I have improved it a lot; and there is probably nothing more I can do to it which would make any significant difference. At least, it’s weakness is in itself effective up to a point; because, if you’ve been let down, this is apt to make George’s sudden decision to run off to The Starboard Side all the more amusing and exciting; and perhaps the scene with Kenny will benefit by contrast.

  Vera, on the phone today, warns me we shall find Igor much slowed down and slower in the uptake. But she says the doctor says this isn’t just old age; it’s because he will take so many pills, particularly tranquilizers. We are to see them on Monday; the first time in ages.

  Chris Wood has finally lost his little dog Penny. She died while they were in New York, the other day.

  Today I began revising Ramakrishna and His Disciples (as I think it will have to be called). Tedious work. I have to keep taking out words expressing vehement overemphasis, such as absolutely, completely, utterly.

  October 31. Still sweating it out. Not a word from Methuen, even that they’ve received the typescript. [Alan] Collins of Curtis Brown in New York has read it and likes it, but doesn’t understand the scene with Kenny! Ah well, that aspect of the whole thing—whether people like it—anyhow, people like Collins and ninety-nine percent of the population—doesn’t seem so important, right now. I am almost certain that it is my masterpiece; by which I mean my most effective, coherent statement, artwork, whatever you want to call it.

  I still have this thing in my throat. And, psychosomatically, it gets worse every Wednesday when I have to read to the family up at Vedanta Place. A passionate psychosomatic revolt is brewing against the Indian trip. I am almost capable of dying at Belur Math, out of sheer spite. I will not surrender my will; be made to do anything I don’t like. With the Don-Henry Kraft situation, this is not apt to produce a real explosion; because any concession I do make immediately puts Don in a defensive position, and I can get back at him for making me make it.

  I seriously believe that I am, beyond all comparison, nastier and madder than ever before in my life; although still capable of occasional gentleness with Don and, of course most gracious and charming to strangers who rub me up the right way. My “religious life” consists in making japam without the faintest devotion, and indeed mostly while thinking of anything else in the world including my resentments. Now and then I get around to asking Ramakrishna to give me devotion “even against my will.” And this is not shit. I still believe. I still know that this is all that matters. And yet—

  Of course, I’m aware that part of this state of mind is due to the phase of intensive work I have been going through. When I work, I declare a “state of emergency” during which I’m allowed to behave much worse, and during which I always have the feeling, “How dare they upset me in any way, while I’m getting ahead with this sacred and important project?” Well, the work is over now, all except for revising the remaining sixteen chapters of Ramakrishna and His Disciples. This is most necessary and I think I can really improve the book a lot by cutting out all the preaching and nursery-school explaining of which I’ve been guilty; but, still and all, it isn’t strenuous, and now I ought to be simmering down.

  Igor, when we saw him, seemed lively and quite quick-witted, but Vera and Bob assured us that this was a “good” day, and that he was seldom up to this standard any more. Aldous appears to be really very sick. Laura, on the phone, sounded truly distressed. But she still spoke of his illness as an “infection.” She asked me to come and see him.

  Mexico is still on, but probably not until the end of November. Don may go to New York; or stay here, over Christmas.

  Swami amused us by announcing that The Leopard was the worst film that ever existed.

  Dodie Smith’s new novel has arrived.543 Have just begun it. It seems terribly harmless and readable. Wrongly readable. Like T.V.

  I suppose I should go and work out at the gym. I kind of hate doing this until I actually do it; and it takes up so much time. I am fairly strong in some ways, but still can only barely do nine press-ups, though the Air Force manual says my age group should be able to do fourteen! You should be able to do nine at eight years old.

  My Francophobia is more violent than ever. How I loathe Genet! I said to Vera and Bob, “Genet is someone who really got crucified—and then he comes back and lies about it!”544

  Reading V.V. Rozanov (because I really must return the two books on Saturday to the Stravinskys, after keeping them several years.) I have never heard love-hate for the Jews better expressed.545 It seems strange to
hear him say that the Jews are going to get possession of Russia; and now here we are, saying the same thing about America.

  November 1. Said yesterday:

  “Kitty’s month is nearly over.”

  “What’s so special about October? Why is it Kitty’s month?”

  “All months belong to Kitty.”

  Chris Wood likes the novel. He didn’t know how he should pronounce Geo.546 He was doubtful about, “Who are you trying to seduce?” Shouldn’t one say “whom?” (This seems to me absolutely grotesque.) He apologized because the part about Jim’s absence made him think of Penny.

  Jealousy: Not what they do together sexually. But the thought of their waking in the morning, little pats and squeezes, jokes, talk through the open doorway of the bathroom. For that one could kill.

  Jo, when I failed to watch Ben’s T.V. show on “The Eleventh Hour,”547 reminded me how I’d failed to see her show, too. And— to make me feel extra bad—she told what pains she’d had last night, after eating nothing but clam chowder.

  Yesterday afternoon, on my way to the gym: In Pacific Palisades, the kids are encouraged to write Halloween inscriptions on all the shop windows. But it is all Disneyfied, rendered harmless; and the kids themselves are carted off to the park to have organized fun there, and not annoy anyone.

  This morning a cable confirms that the novel has arrived at Methuen’s.

  November has begun. India is only one month and nineteen days away. Must I?

  I did do fourteen press-ups yesterday at the gym, after all!

  To meet Bruce Zortman yesterday evening on the UCLA campus, to see a performance of Pirandello’s Right You Are (If You Think You Are). I thought I’d put in a couple of hours doing research on some quotations in the library. The library was open all right, but there was no one there of sufficient authority to renew my library card. So I was stuck on campus for about an hour and a half, waiting for the show to start. Question: What do you do when you are alone? It is disconcerting to find what a bore one is to oneself. And prayer is so tiring. The whole brain begins to jingle.

  Pirandello’s urbanity. His delight in a kind of weepy maddening very Jewish kind of masochism (Signora Frola). The worst error in taste: Lamberto’s laughter at the end of each act. But the ending is fun; and this morning the play has quite a pleasant taste in my mouth.

  November 5. Aldous is dying. I went to see him yesterday morning, at the Cedars of Lebanon. He looks like a withered old man, grey faced, with dead blank eyes, speaking in a hoarse voice, hard to understand. But his mind seems to be as good as ever—that marvellous instrument, about to be swallowed up in the ruins and shattered.

  Laura looks haggard. She says that he does not realize how sick he is. And Aldous certainly gave me that impression; though of course it may be his way of softening the blow. He talked with a kind of petulance about being old. He was angry with the so-called arthritis in his back; this is an area where the cancer is spreading. He said to me that when one is old one is almost absolutely cut off from other people. But I think he enjoyed my visit. I told him the story about Jesus and the Blessed Virgin golfing,548 I described my difficulties with the Ramakrishna book, I went on about my horror of India; in fact, I said everything I could possibly think of. Aldous on his side spoke very interestingly about Rozanov, remarked that all the African new nations would soon be governed by their armies, and was only unable to remember one name: Puri. He seemed most interested when I told him that my character has gotten worse as I get older. He was amused.

  Gerald, who was to see him today, asked me anxiously what he should talk to Aldous about. Gerald can’t help showing that he is faintly disapproving; Aldous, he feels, should be thinking about death and consciously preparing himself for it, not pretending to himself. (Laura told me that Aldous still speaks of things they are going to do together next year.)

  In contrast, there was Igor, who came to dinner three nights ago and seemed nearly as good as new. He asked me so sweetly to observe what a good healthy pink skin he had for his age—and only one of those old-age freckles on his hands!

  A novel is just being published called A Singular Man, written by J.P. Donleavy. On top of this, its chief character is called George, and the book begins with his getting up in the morning! This is a real misfortune; as I’m nearly sure the publishers will want me to change the title.

  Jo doesn’t like the book, I’m sure. Ben, rather surprisingly, does. In fact he takes an uncharacteristic, almost arty attitude towards it; for example, he says he’s so impressed by its symbolism: the symbol of the Road, which appears successively as the freeway, the road of life narrowing to the width of Doris’s bed, and Charlotte’s description of her sister as being like a road. Ben also says, most revealingly, that, “The greatest thing in the book—in fact, in any book I ever read—” is Kenny’s line, “I’d have liked living when you could call your father Sir.” (A line which, incidentally, in my opinion, skates to the very brink of corn, Salinger-corn, and maybe falls in.)

  No news from New York or London yet.

  I have been very low; largely because of drinking too much. My vitality is sapped and I’m depressive and paranoid. Terribly violent resentment of Henry, whom I’m nevertheless now committed by Don to seeing quite often. I suffer in a way that is utterly grotesque. That must stop, of course. But how can it be stopped? Again and again, I come to the idea of having a friend, a real confidante, of something nearer my own age. But that only means Paul Wonner.

  As the result of all this, I have hardly worked on the Ramakrishna revision. Plenty of chapters have been typed up, but only six are even roughly revised. Every day I dodge work. I have no heart for it.

  November 6. After a quiet evening with Don, eating at Casa Mia, drinking nothing but a bottle of rosé and smoking nothing, I woke this morning refreshed and altogether more optimistic. Also we had a soothing heavy rainfall during the night. Today is windy and brilliant. I have restarted the Ramakrishna revision. Also done my Canadian Air Force workout. Terrible difficulty, still, with the fourteen press-ups; otherwise everything is fairly easy. (Have just realized I’ve been doing the press-ups wrong; maybe they’ll be easier the proper way—starting on the floor!)

  Aldous was so sick yesterday that Laura asked Gerald not to come. But he will be moved back home today, just the same, she says.

  Last night, while we were reading—Don hating [ James Baldwin’s] Another Country and calling it dull and self-conscious—I found in Rozanov’s Solitaria the passage Aldous quoted to me when I saw him. It’s when Rozanov says “private life is above everything. . . . Just sitting at home, and even picking your nose, and looking at the sunset. . . . All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.”

  The feeling in this seems to me kind of Zen.

  A mad picture sent me by a fan named Dolores Giles. It’s called “Pregnancy: The Fourth Month.” Shall try to give it to Jim Cole.549

  November 11. On the morning of the 7th, Peter Schwed called from New York to accept the book. He seems to like it very much indeed; said it is one of my best. He only suggested cutting one line, about wiping the belly dry, and wasn’t positive about that, even. He isn’t sure if the title need be changed. They will talk it over.

  An exhibit from The Age of Innocence; this letter from Lee Prosser—

  I hope my letter finds you as happy as I am. I am the most happy individual alive! I finished my novel, and my only hope is that it’s art. I hope it’s a good one. Would you read it and advise me? I would like to know what you think.

  Talking about alternative titles for my novel with Don in the car. I remembered Paul Is Alone and wondered if George Is Alone would do. Something wrong. How about He is Alone? Or maybe It is Alone? It couldn’t be It, I said to myself; because It is the Atman. And the next moment, Don said, “It couldn’t be It.” He had thought exactly the same thing. At such moments, our rapport seems almost supernatural.

  But, alas, thes
e moments have been few, lately. Terrible mood-storms about Henry, since my last entry. One thing came to me very strongly. I must be more positive in my attitude; not just wait to be offended and take offense. So I called Ben Underhill in San Franciso and asked could I stay with him. He is coming down to L.A. on business at the end of this week. Maybe I’ll go back with him for a few days. Meanwhile, I have tried to warn Don that he is actually starting to destroy the cohesive element between us, the “ultra-clay.” I don’t think he quite understood me or quite believed me, if he did understand. But temporarily—after staying out three nights in a row—he is all solicitude. I have said definitely that I do not want to see Henry any more, under any circumstances. I also asked Don to please take the photo of Henry into his studio. He had put it up on the desk in the back bedroom. . . . God, how I hate lowering the boom, like this! And yet it is, ultimately, the only decent and truthful and friendly way to act. The alternative is sulks and silent reproach.

  Aldous nearly died, a couple of nights ago. Yet he still seems unaware of his condition. He said to Laura that he was worried how he would spend the rest of his life, if he couldn’t write: and he implied that he expects to live at least five more years. Cutler doubts he will last through this month. Gerald says that Laura gave him lysergic acid a little while ago. According to Gerald, this ought to have made him realize his condition; but apparently it didn’t.

  November 30. Such a strong disinclination to write anything about Black Friday the 22nd. But I ought to. To remind myself.

  Don and I were still in bed, around eleven, because we had had Cecil Beaton to a farewell supper the night before (he left for New York next day en route for England) and Paul Wonner and Bill [Brown] and Jack Larson and Jim [Bridges] had been there too, and we had stayed up late. Henry phoned (even now, I mind that it was Henry—he seems to take possession of everything—pushing in in his thick-skinned German way) to say that the president had been shot. And we plugged in Harry Brown’s old radio, which we otherwise never use, and lay listening to the reports coming in and soon confirming the death itself.