Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  August 13. This morning Don and I went to a place in Santa Monica and he bought a Fiat with four doors, so Dobbin can get in and out without gasps and contortions. It is bigger than his V.W. but still fits easily into our carport. I mean, it will—it hasn’t been delivered yet; they promise it for tomorrow, but we’re sceptical.

  Jess Bachardy has already sold Don’s V.W. for us. For $1,750!

  Steven Arnold, who directed Luminous Procuress which we saw on the 9th at Universal, is about to start work on another film, Monkey, based on the novel by Wu Ch’eng-en which Arthur Waley translated. He gave the outline to Don, asking for our opinion, and Don thinks this is a good opportunity to get into “underground” moviemaking. So it is, or would be, if only we could make any suggestions. But Arnold’s version is so hopelessly unambitious, just a series of tableaux, strangeness for the sake of being strange and “oriental” and low-campy. We are trying to figure out how the original conception of the monkey symbol could be introduced into this version.

  August 14. According to a statement from Simon and Schuster, we sold 8,848 copies of Kathleen and Frank for the period ending March 31.

  After four dull hot days, today has been glorious. We ran down to the beach and went in the water. Waves big.

  Last night, we watched the first of a five-part series on the life of Leonardo da Vinci. Dignified, deadpan, unthrilling stuff. An idiot bearded commentator in modern dress kept appearing amidst the scenes; no doubt he was supposed to be like Kenneth Clark in Civilisation.202 He calmly informed us that, when Leonardo was arrested in 1476, it was on an unknown charge—probably heresy! Durant says unequivocally that it was homosexuality.203 If Durant’s information has been proved wrong that could only mean someone had discovered what the real charge was. How could it be unknown? Must look into this.

  August 15. Oscar Levant died yesterday. I talked to June today and she told me that he wasn’t particularly sick. He had been expecting a visit from Candice Bergen who was writing about him and he went upstairs in the middle of the day to rest before the interview. When June came into his room a bit later she found him dead. She began to cry and I wished her daughter Amanda hadn’t made her speak to me. But I did learn to my great relief that they are having a strictly family funeral; both Don and I had been dreading going.

  Steve Black came to see me this afternoon. He hasn’t changed much since the Cal. State days and I guess he is still fairly young.204

  He is settled in Vancouver now, with a different wife, and is perfectly happy in his job and may become a Canadian citizen. He has nearly finished a book on Whitman. He read me “As I Ebb’d with the Ocean of Life,” very badly but with deep emotion—so deep indeed that he tore the page quite seriously as he turned it and didn’t even apologize. I feel warmly toward him but he is hopelessly square. I cannot imagine him understanding Whitman. That’s a dumb remark, though. What I mean is, I can’t imagine him understanding my Whitman.

  Don got his four-door white Fiat yesterday. It is much more convenient for me to lie in than the V.W.

  August 16. This afternoon, parking on Santa Monica Boulevard near the freeway bridge, I backed into a plump Japanese lady named Mrs. Grace Mori. It was one of those tiny bumps which might be expensive. She was cross for a minute, then remembered her Japanese manners just before I delivered a line I’d prepared: “I am sorry to see that you have adopted our Western rudeness—we look to your race to teach us better behavior.”

  Rumors that Nixon may be settling up the war.205 The awful thing is that one doesn’t want him to, because then he’s certain to be reelected.

  In a booklet which contains everything Vivekananda wrote about Ramakrishna, I found the original Bengali–English translation of Vivekananda’s Bengali hymn which I later Englished as “Breaker of this world’s chain. . . .” It contains the marvellous line: “Samsara’s bondage-breaker, taintless Thou”!206

  Last night we had supper with Swami at the Malibu house. He seemed better than ever. Vividishananda was there, from Seattle. He is nearly blind. I do like him. He is an example of a really lovable bossy person. He cross-examined me exactly like a police officer, just for the sake of asking questions. “When exactly did you first come to the United States?” “On which years did you visit India? And you saw Calcutta only? Why was this?”

  August 17. That was our last visit to the Malibu house, at least for this year. Swami and the others are leaving it early next week. Seeing him there is a special experience; the ocean creates an atmosphere of massive calm, despite all the noise it makes, and you are secure from the apologetic but bossy interruptions of the women at Vedanta Place. Whenever Don and I visit Swami now, we make pranams; and I am beginning to realize what a bond this has formed between the two of us, both being his disciples and bowing down to him together. The fact that we meditate at the same times, though in different rooms, is also part of this bond. It has formed very slowly, imperceptibly almost, and yet it is perhaps the most important feature of our whole relationship.

  We talked to Jo Lathwood yesterday on our way down to the beach. What a rugged old thing she is! She remarked how big the waves are just now, and said that she was nervous swimming out through them that morning; “But, of course, once I’m outside them, then I’m all right, I’m launched, I’m like a ship.”

  Don did some very good drawings of Paul Millard’s friend Rob [Matteson] yesterday, and then Paul came down and we all had dinner together. While Paul and I were alone, he told me how Rob left him for six weeks and went to live with a man named Graham in the Valley, in a single room. Graham is a hypochondriac, in his fifties, very poor, very stingy and incredibly ugly, but he seems to have temporarily bewitched Rob; it’s all over now. Paul also told us that Speed Lamkin’s aunt has died at last, leaving him a huge chunk of Delta Airlines stock. (Delta recently had to pay out a million dollars to a hijacker, which is so far a record!) Speed says he is going to settle in London, presumably to annoy Marguerite!

  Mrs. Grace Mori called very early this morning, to tell me that I owe her thirty-four dollars and ten cents for repairs to her car. She was quite apologetic about this, but I was hugely relieved it wasn’t more.

  Wyatt Cooper has called at last to say he wants to put five of Don’s drawings—of Dali, Virgil Thomson, Margaret Leighton, himself and me—in the second issue of his magazine. We had begun to fear he was going to back out of the whole thing.

  August 18. We had supper with Roddy McDowall and Paul Anderson last night; they live in the house George [Hoyningen-] Huene used to have. Trashy oddments of furniture have destroyed all its charm, but the patio at the back is still attractive. Paul fixed cheeseburgers in extremely short shorts, his legs aren’t as sexy as I’d expected. Then we saw Lubitsch’s To Be or Not To Be, which I simply hated. I loathe all films about the Nazi–Jew confrontation, although I have to admit theoretically that a good one might be made. This is sheer schmaltz.

  Because Roddy wants to meet Mary Miles Minter O’Hilde[r]brandt, I called her this morning and got a full hour of talk, chiefly about her lawsuit against Rod Serling. (He showed her picture on T.V. in a documentary about famous murderesses!) All she would finally say was that Roddy had her permission to call her and talk (ha!) to her. M.M.M. also kept on telling me that we should put up a sign opposite her house, to show people where we live, so she won’t be disturbed.

  August 19. We’re just off to Santa Barbara, to stay the night with Bill and Paul and then I have to give a reading at the Vedanta temple.

  Last night we went to another of Tom Hayden’s talks on Vietnam. This one was the best we’ve heard. What interested me most was his explanation of the way the South Vietnamese troops make an arrangement with the North Vietnamese, so that the South can seemingly “occupy” and “pacify” a district when in fact the North is still controlling it. The South agrees not to rock the boat and in return the North agrees to allow its presence in the area and not move in and destroy its forces completely, as it easily could. Jane Fonda was t
here, looking older, but still good. We left during the question period because it was so hot and so many people were smoking.

  Incidental information, obtained from the radio: in one of the national parks, the park signs used to be made of redwood. But the bears ate them, so the signs were made of plywood instead. It was then discovered that the plywood signs contained glue which the porcupines simply love; they got eaten too.

  Have at last reached the end of 1947 in my reconstructed diary.

  August 20. When we got to Bill and Paul’s house we were told, to our amazement, that they are definitely going to live in New Hampshire. Bill found a house for them there while he was away in the East. Don thinks that Paul doesn’t really want to go— although one would think that it would be Paul, not Bill, who would be more apt to take to life in the country. (They will be surrounded by woods.) Paul had already done something to his back, that very day; it got worse during our stay. So maybe that was the first shot being fired in a big psychosomatic offensive.

  My reading at the temple went off all right, and afterwards Don and I had lunch with the nuns before returning home. The chief topic of conversation (and no wonder!) was that Mick Jagger has bought a house right across from the convent.

  Have just had a call from Dorothy Miller. She has had pneumonia, but what she really wanted to talk to me about was Oscar Levant’s death. I’m sure she hoped I would have some gruesome details which hadn’t been reported by the press.

  August 21. Very hot this morning, almost too hot for the beach and much too hot for the gym. However we went in the water. We also tried to work out a storyline for Monkey. Not much success.

  Paul Millard called to say there may be an offer coming up for our Hilldale property. But Arnold Maltin told Dick Dobyns that we wanted $75,000, which is surely far too little considering that there is still between thirty-six and forty thousand to pay on it.

  We have a heavy dinner party tonight, John Houseman, Merle Oberon, her boyfriend Robert Wolders (who was with her in her last film), Joan Didion and her husband John Dunne, and Gavin and Mark. It is Gavin’s farewell party. And it’ll be the first time we’ve seen Mark since the quarrel. Well, anyhow, thank God we have Mrs. Leavitt to cook for us!

  August 22. The party went quite well. Merle, looking amazingly like her famous self (at sixty), was being as gracious as she knew how. Don thought her exactly like British royalty. Her friend Robert Wolders is good-looking in an entirely uninteresting way, with nice manners and a slight accent (Scandinavian?)[.]207 He did something very tiresome and inconsiderate, however—arrived in a car with a boosted battery which went dead on arrival and drove said dead car down our ramp till its fender touched our cars, nearly. It was a miracle that he managed to back it out again but he did—after a repairman had been phoned for, and the battery recharged and the engine of the car left running all through supper.

  John Houseman was also royalty of a sort, very grand and gracious. He has a languid, dogmatic tone when he talks about the theater which I find disagreeable; I don’t think I’d enjoy working with him. But he seemed much more sympathetic when he complained that his book Run-Through hadn’t sold nearly as well as he had hoped. This started Joan Didion off and also her husband John Dunne. We all deplored the ruthless commercial tactics of the bestseller writers, who tour the country getting to know the owners of all the key bookstores and send agents to buy up dozens of copies at the shops which furnish the sales figures on which The New York Times bestseller list is based. I said I always feel that Jesus was referring to them when he said, “Verily, they have their reward.” Did he?208 I’m always dubious about my own quotations. But this one got a big laugh.

  Joan, as usual, spoke in that tiny little voice which always seems to me to be a mode of aggression. Or an instrument of it, anyhow; for it must be maddening in the midst of a domestic quarrel. She drinks quite a lot. So does he.

  Mark, whose hair had been inexpertly rinsed and was therefore pinkish, seemed most anxious to be friends. And Don recognized this by promptly kissing him when he arrived. Nothing whatever was said or hinted about the quarrel. I guess we shall see him again, and certainly Gavin, on Friday afternoon. They leave for New York next day.

  It was very hot yesterday and has been again today. Almost too hot for the beach. I ran down, jumped in the water, didn’t lie in the sun at all. This morning we worked on Steven Arnold’s Monkey story; we have now worked out quite a charming continuity and only need to fill in some details.

  August 23. More work on Monkey today. I really wish this film could be made properly, because I think we could produce an excellent script for it.

  Incidental information; at the barber’s: Human hair used to be mixed with mortar to help bind it together. The barber (at the shop next to the Tudor House) told me that he has a customer who is a doctor and who asks for all of his cut hair; the doctor takes it to his lab and analyzes it to find out if he has enough of certain minerals in his system.

  Still very hot. There is a big fire up near Ojai. You can’t see much smoke in the sky but the sunlight is reddish.

  Two boys, Michael McDonagh and Jeff Bailey, came up from Long Beach to see me yesterday. They were both fairly attractive, quite well read and almost certainly queer, maybe lovers. But all they wanted to talk about, seemingly, was had I known So-and-So, what was So-and-So like?

  Saw Jess and Glade with Don, because his car needs a radio putting into it. Jess and Glade seem to be definitely going to Europe—despite the fuss Glade made about it and her threats of dying during the trip. But oh my God it is heartrending how worried they are about details. The passengers on this tour have already been given a briefing session, and, from the way Jess describes it, the briefer must act like a marine sergeant addressing recruits before the start of boot camp: “This is it, men!” He has obviously succeeded in terrifying all these elderly people at the thought of all the problems they face. One big question Jess asked me, “They tell us that the ladies may have to use rest rooms with coin machines on the doors; now, we’ll be going through a lot of different countries with different currencies—shall we be able to turn in the coins we don’t use and get them exchanged for another currency, or will they only change bills?”

  August 24. A talk with Peter Schneider on the phone yesterday, about the poems he sent me. He really is astoundingly thick-skinned; took my faint praise of some of them as a matter of course, asked me to send one of them on to Swami and to send him a copy of Prater Violet to give to a friend. Woe unto him when he ceases to amuse me! However, this time he did amuse me because I got him onto the subject of Jim Gates. Peter said, “Now I’m surprised I could have lived with him for three years. . . . I hoped, when he joined the monastery, he would become forceful and quiet and serene, but it makes him more jumpy and obsequious. . . . We’ve always been very close but I’ve always been disgusted by him; he tries to please everyone and he agrees and says he likes everything. I used to be brutally frank with him, when we lived together. His eyes used to fill with tears and he’d say, Do you want me to move out?”

  And yet I can’t just dismiss Peter as “a bad boy” (which is what Don calls him). I like him when he says how he hates religious people and how he doesn’t even like Vedanta philosophy. I think he is sincerely impressed by Swami. He says that his feeling for Swami is quite different from what he would feel for a father, “or a young lady” (he always calls girls “young ladies,” which sounds so oddly prim).

  Supper last night at Jo Lathwood’s, with her daughter Betty and Anne Baxter and a middle-aged male friend of hers (not a lover, Jo told us in advance, and indeed he seemed to be probably a closet queen). Anne talked our heads off. She is a true demon—even her looks are demonically well preserved. She could have taken on Peggy Kiskadden in her prime. Much of her talk was about playing the lead in Applause, and we had to be very careful what we said, lest we should reveal that we saw Lauren Bacall in it here, an unpardonable crime, since we didn’t see her in it while we were in New Y
ork!

  August 25. This morning at breakfast, Don told me about a conversation he had had with Mark Andrews, the night he and Gavin came to supper, the 21st. (Don was surprised he hadn’t told me before and it’s just possible he had, because I was a little bit drunk and that always brings amnesia.) Don had asked Mark, “I suppose you’re excited to be going?” and Mark had made a grimace and said, “I’d be excited if I was in a picture.” And then he had gone on to tell Don that he is dreading leaving, that this is “the only place in the world.” “As soon as we get there, Gavin will start working on his film” (Galsworthy’s The Apple Tree, which Bogdanovich is to direct, and which Robin French tried to get for us to write) “and then what’ll I do?” Don remarked how we all jump to conclusions and how wrong we usually are; we had all taken it for granted that it was Mark who had insisted on moving away from Los Angeles because of his disappointment over the screen roles which didn’t materialize.