Liberation

by Christopher Isherwood

  September 22. The Autumnal Equinox. (Just as I was starting to type those words—at about 3:23 p.m.—the velvet case containing the miniature of Richard as a child, which he gave me when I was at Wyberslegh last June, fell off my desk and damaged itself even more than it was already. But the prop, which I hadn’t been using, is still intact. So I pulled the doors of the case off and now it looks and stands much better without them. An omen? Of what?)

  I am really only writing today because I want to make a token act of work on this auspicious date. There’s nothing special to report. At present, a door-installing man is in the studio. We are promised the stairs and the deck next week. Still no plumbing and no electricity. Both Don and I find Walter Winslow the contractor so repulsive that we cannot bring ourselves to look at him while we’re talking to him.

  I had meant to begin my memoir of Swami today, but that would be just a compulsive gesture. What I will do, until I do actually begin, is to discuss the project with myself, here.

  For example: I originally thought I would start with getting the news of Swami’s death by phone from Jim Gates at Gavin’s house in Tangier, the day after our arrival from London. But I feel that this approach would have a certain vulgarity. Because it would necessarily hit a note of drama. . . . No, I should begin at the very beginning, quite undramatically. I should have to begin with Gerald Heard and, in fact, follow the line of my diary. I must be shown to have met Swami through Gerald—not merely in the sense that Gerald introduced me to him, but in the sense that Gerald presented him, Gerald’s image of him, to me. At first, I certainly saw Swami through Gerald’s eyes.

  Another thing I realize is that I must read right through my diaries—all of them, down to the present day, in order to get an overview. By an overview, I mean a sense of how the relationship between these two people, Swami and me, developed and changed. In this way, I shall probably find out a great deal which I don’t know, am not aware of, yet. Okay, good, that’s how I’ll begin.

  October 14. Have just finished reading the two typewritten diary volumes, 1939 through 1944. There is a great deal of good material in them but I still feel it would be a mistake to publish them in their present form. Not only because so many of those written about are still living. Because the material itself is too dense. There are so many minor characters whose portraits follow each other boringly, I fear. For example, the people at the Vedanta Center, and the people at the Haverford refugee hostel. One virtue of the material used in Christopher and His Kind is that it composed much more easily into the form of a nonfictitious novel. Its major characters are most of them extremely active and there is a sense, all through the narrative, of outside menace—from The Others in general and the Nazis in particular. The major characters in the 1939–1944 material are both contemplatives rather than actives— Swami and Gerald Heard—and there is very little sense of outside menace, even though the war is on during nearly all of the period.

  I come back, therefore, to the feeling that I should write exclusively about Swami. But, as yet, I don’t know how to do that. I can’t strike the right tone. I am certainly not aiming to write a biography. What I should try for is a highly subjective memoir—always stressing the idea that what I am describing is a personal impression, a strictly limited glimpse of a character very different from myself and therefore often quite mysterious to me. Without being fake humble, I should also—even for purely artistic reasons—stress the materialistic, gross, lustful, worldly side of myself—but without making Swami appear merely “better” than me. The real artistic problem is to find a way to do that.

  Now that Don’s studio has been more or less hammered together, the poor thing looks as crude as Frankenstein’s monster; its thick graceless skeleton is held together by oversize bolts. It’s quite clear that both Day and Winslow are amateurs. Day, having attached the stairway lights in an unreachable position, actually suggested that we should climb a nearby tree when we wanted to change the bulbs in them. (There was a don’t-care impudence in the way he said this.) Winslow is just a slob, trying to get by with his miserable fudging and lack of foresight. What they can’t take away from us—unless they build skyscrapers opposite—is our magnificent view, which is about a third better from the upper floor of the studio than it is from the balcony of the house.

  October 15. I was talking to Barada on the phone this morning, because I’ll be coming up to the Santa Barbara convent on Sunday to read. She told me that they would all like Vandanananda to return here and be head of the Hollywood center. I hadn’t heard this before. Barada also told me that Swami, shortly before he died, told Abhaya that it would be a good thing if Vandanananda succeeded him. Previously, he had been determined that Vandanananda shouldn’t succeed him and had even stated this in his will.

  I then asked Barada if she believed that Vandanananda had really had affairs with women in the congregation. She wouldn’t quite admit this, but she said that Vandanananda had been denounced to Swami by two women who were jealous of each other because of Vandanananda—adding “where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

  The woman who chants in the bushes below us had a passionate solo argument this morning, at the top of her voice, just as it was getting light. Maybe she was addressing her enemies. She kept shouting, “It’s not happening, it’s not happening, it’s not happening!”

  October 16. Yesterday afternoon, I spent nearly two hours with Dr. Elsie Giorgi—whom Gavin discovered years ago and the Boormans more recently—telling her my medical history and being examined, as part of a checkup. I shall hear more when my blood and urine samples have been tested, next week.

  I didn’t go to her because of the injury caused by my falling down the studio steps, on the 5th, or because of any particular anxiety I have been feeling about my health. But because she appeals to me as a possible successor to Dr. Kolisch—someone to ease me onto my deathbed, when the time comes. (This is the only medical function about which I’m seriously concerned, nowadays. Any fool can “save” a patient; but only one doctor in thousands is capable of “losing” him—seeing him off on his journey in the proper manner. I would trust Patrick Woodcock to do this, but Patrick isn’t around and soon he may be retiring.) Actually, Elsie seems to think I’m in good shape, at present, but that’s neither here nor there.

  She is a nonstop talker, an egomaniac, a show-biz snob and extremely sympathetic. Don is in favor of her, too.

  October 17. Last night, we had the Boormans, Tony Richardson, Neil Hartley and Bob Newman to supper. Natalie wasn’t free to come and cook so Don fixed a stew which turned out to be a masterpiece, the classic lamb stew, followed by a crème brulée which was worthy of it. Tony was a bit aggressive toward John Boorman, his usual competitive attitude toward a colleague, but John took it very well and the evening was a success. Tony talked intelligently about politics, saying that Ford should have balanced his pardon of Nixon by also pardoning all the Vietnam deserters.3 And he said that China is the only country which is preparing for the future world oil shortage by organizing its local industries not to rely on oil. (I have no idea whether this is true or not.)

  Today I drove to Santa Barbara with [one of the boys from the Hollywood center] to give a reading at the temple, and returned with Shelly Lowenkopf. More about this tomorrow.

  October 19. Couldn’t write anything yesterday because Bob Gordon came down from San Francisco to talk to me about his novel Leaks, and the friend who was to drive him back up there after our meeting arrived so late that we had to spend four hours together.

  I like Bob and I quite like this novel—at any rate as a possible movie story. We already showed it to Tony Richardson without telling Bob and he turned it down, but not very decidedly and I think maybe we can sell him on it. Don is reading it now. If he likes it we’ll try.

  As for the two who drove me to the Santa Barbara temple and back, [the boy] interests me far more than Shelly, who is a Jewish teacher of literature, brimful of energy and enthusiasm.4 [The boy] is in rather
the same situation that I was in, latterly, at the Hollywood center, when I had already decided to leave and was having sex and clap on the side and feeling guilty, simply because I happened to be staying at a religious institution and knew how terribly shocked the others would be if they found out. I think I made [him] feel better—if I did, the trip was worthwhile.

  On the 17th, Don made a valuable assertion of his will and set up an important historic landmark by drawing his first sitter in the reconstructed studio (Louise Fletcher5) although Doug Walsh was hammering away downstairs.

  October 21. Last night, while he was having dinner with us, Tony Richardson announced, with a perfectly straight face, that his one real reason for preferring to live in Los Angeles was that it’s the best place on earth to play tennis in.

  Today, for the first time in months, I have actually been doing some writing! But it’s only the notes for the sleeve of the reading record I made for Pelican.

  I saw Elsie Giorgi yesterday morning. She told me that my tests turned out almost perfect for my age. Nearly every count was within the normal limits; I only have too much iodine. This may be due to excessive use of iodized salt or eating too many shrimps. As for the pains in my knee since my fall down the steps, she is trying to cure them with some medicine, Butazolidin, which they give to racehorses to make them run faster—at least, I think that was what she told me! She is sort of like a witch; you can imagine her prescribing “finger of birth-strangled babe.” Kolisch was like that, too.

  October 31. I don’t know if the pains are really any better, aside from the natural healing of the injury, but going to a doctor, especially a new one, is in itself a rite of exorcism and I feel better for that.

  The last ten days have been a sloth period. Meditation zero. Much energy wasted on aggression against noisy neighbors, including the chanting woman, dogs and Walter Winslow, whose latest contribution has been to borrow our bucket and somehow make a hole in it. Little Tom Shadduck, now parted from his friend Eric [Moore], is still in our favor; he is repotting our plants and cleaning paint off the fronds of the sago palm.

  Part of my sloth seems related to that doldrums period which always occurs when I am waiting for the first bound copy of one of my books to arrive. This one is due tomorrow, so maybe I’ll get myself back to work again, at least on rereading my diaries.

  Doug Walsh continues to work nights in the studio with one or both of his skinny boy helpers, the pretty one and the weird one who pulls compulsive grimaces.

  November 21. The doldrums period has prolonged itself, with the excuse that I really can’t settle down to any kind of work until I have been to San Francisco and San Diego (November 28– December 1) and to New York (December 7–11, approximately) to make propaganda for my book. There will be more propaganda to be made here in Los Angeles, between these two trips.

  So far, I have read only three notices, two of them very short; the American Library Association Booklist and the Publishers Weekly. The first of these is bland and perfunctory, the second rather hostile: “[A]lways his ultimate measure of the world seems to be sexual.” The third notice, written by Penelope Mesic in the Chicago Tribune Book World, is quite vicious. It ends: “The big, bold book of fact has become a fairy tale.” But its viciousness has a tone which will probably sell a lot of copies and inspire loyal indignation in the hearts of Chicago queers.

  November 28. This afternoon we’re scheduled to take off for San Francisco. We’re not going on to San Diego, though, because the publicity manager, Jay Allen,6 got the word that three powerful news producers there, “Sun-Up,”7 the San Diego Union and KGO News,8 felt that their owners or backers, while agreeing that Mr. Isherwood was indeed a distinguished writer, would veto mention of his homosexuality or discussion of the subject in general!

  Well, so be it. As usual, before embarking on a campaign of this kind, I feel passive. (That’s probably why I so seldom have stage-fright.) Let the situation carry me wherever it wants to. This is all maya. Already, the orgasm of having produced the book itself has left me weak and almost indifferent to its reception—almost isn’t quite, however. I’ll probably bristle up if it gets some sufficiently nasty stinging insults.

  It helps immensely, having Don with me. On such occasions, I see the whole thing through his eyes, and that makes it interesting and worth experiencing.

  December 23. San Francisco was drastic and New York even more so. Both were reassuring, because I found I could hold my own in the rat race. Indeed, I often surprised myself and Don because I was so quick on the uptake during interviews. I am, more and more, ascribing this to the effects of the K.H.3 capsules which I have been taking regularly since November 10. But I couldn’t possibly have gotten through the New York trip without Don, who was sustaining me throughout. I have never known him to be more marvellous and angelic.

  Perhaps the most moving experience was going down to the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in the village and signing copies of my book, with a line of people, mostly quite young, stretching all the way down Christopher Street and around the corner. I had such a feeling that this is my tribe and I loved them. (“They’re beginning to believe that Christopher Street was named after you,” Gore said, with his sly grin, half flattering, half mocking, at dinner the night before last. He is dieting, in order to lose twenty pounds. Howard needs to lose thirty, but isn’t. I am happy to say that Howard seems ready to forget and forgive the fuss we had about the Jews.)

  The night we got back from New York (December 11) our taxi driver (who was young and cute) instantly informed us that a major earthquake had been predicted for December 20. This seemed like such farcical antipublicity for Los Angeles, especially when addressed to two arriving travellers, that we were more amused than alarmed. Still, I was a tiny bit relieved when the 20th passed without the quake. (The explosion of the oil tanker, which killed several people and broke windows all over the Long Beach area, might, perhaps, have been misread as an earthquake by a precognizing psychic.9)

  December 29. Paul Bailey came down from Oakland to spend a few hours here yesterday. We both liked him. He seemed truthful, intelligent, modest, with a nice funny face and blue eyes, rather fat. When he taped an interview with me, for the BBC—it was at the KABC10 studios—I noticed that his hands were shaking, just before we started, which seemed touching and sympathetic. But he obviously has plenty of gumption. He has been teaching at a college in North Dakota and told everyone there he was gay. With the result that the prize superstud student came to him and played a drunken scene in order to get Paul to go to bed with him.

  Paul told us a wonderful story about Gore being interviewed by some reactionary character, who said: “We’re getting far too lenient. We ought to bring back the cat-o’-nine-tails for these homosexuals. (aggressively) Don’t you agree?” Gore (poker-faced): “Certainly I do. But only for consenting adults.” At such moments Gore is in the class of Wilde.

  Talking of Wilde, a news announcer on the car radio this morning said, predicting rain: “Our fine-weather picture is turning into Dorian Gray.”

  And, talking of being too lenient to queers, I got a letter yesterday from the Reverend Paul Trulin, Chaplain of the California Senate, appealing to his fellow Californians to help repeal the recent laws “whose effect have (sic) been to legalize adultery, sodomy, homosexuality, and fornication (to name just a few) . . . all of which according to the Holy Scriptures are an abomination to the Lord. . . . Those of us who are fed up with this deplorable rejection of God by our government leaders have formed a committee to replace these law makers and leaders with god-fearing individuals.” So he appeals for money to support the campaign of the California Christian Campaign Committee.

  How deeply depressing this sort of thing is—such a glimpse of dreary spiritual squalor. This was a form letter of course. I wonder who gave them my name? A practical joker?

  December 30. The predicted rain has fallen heavily and there’s more to come. This morning, trying to concentrate on my meditation, I p
icked up The Eternal Companion to get some encouragement, opening it at random. I certainly got some! “After leaving the body the true guru lives on in the invisible realm; sometimes he reveals himself to his disciples, but at all times he helps and guides them . . .”

  Looking through Evelyn Waugh’s diaries (lent me by Ken Tynan, who is now living in the Canyon and said by Tony Richardson to be in a near-suicidal state) I found this note, made toward the end of Waugh’s life:

  In all discourses on prayer one is told not to expect an answer or a perceptible sense of nearness to God. Only very rarely are “consolations” given and they are not to be sought or highly valued. “You cannot pray? Did you mean to do so? Did you try? Do you regret failing? Then you have prayed.” To the sceptic this must be the essence of deception.11

  Why does the above surprise and move me? Because it seems to prove that Waugh actually was religious in a way that I can understand. In my lofty-snobbish way I have been taking it for granted that his religion was merely a function of his kind of snobbery. Now I want to read the whole book or at least much more of it. I think it was a very good sign that people often disliked and were bored by him, even when he tried to be pleasant. That makes his character seem more genuine, less compromised by posing. I have always thought of him as a poseur.