The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  At breakfast next morning, X. watches Y.’s face for any sign of regret or distaste for what they did. But there is none. In fact, Y. is fairly beaming with satisfaction. “I wish I could stop myself smiling,” he says. They part, agreeing to meet again, on one of the few nights left before Y. leaves for Europe. It is understood that there’ll be more sex. In fact, when X. says he wishes they had started having sex together at the college, Y. seems to agree with him. Y. leaves the manuscript of his new novel for X. to read.

  X. can’t stop dwelling on this amazing scene. He keeps seeing Y.’s face as it looked at the crisis of their enjoyment, and then picturing it overmasked by the prim face of the bespectacled student. He feels that something truly beautiful has happened to him. He has been privileged to assist at a rite of spring, as it were. He tells himself that Y. will never be able to forget him. He will have been the first. And Y. will never quite be able to recapture that thrill again. Meanwhile, he starts, in an indulgent mood, to read Y.’s manuscript. Not at once, but gradually, he is overcome by another kind of amazement. For this novel is good. Indeed it is amazingly good. How could the author of the first novel have produced this? It is crude and awkward in places, yes; but it is the work of a writer of serious talent. X. is enormously excited. And relieved. As a matter of fact, he now realizes, he has been rather dreading that novel. Suppose it had been bad—as bad as he’d been expecting it would be? How could he have told Y.? As it is, the excellence of the novel presents another kind of problem. Will Y. believe him when he praises it? Thinking things over, X. sees that he and Y. have gotten themselves into an awkward tangle. They are in two relations to each other at the same time: teacher-student and lover-lover. X. thinks it highly probable that Y. will, by the time they see each other, have fallen in love with him. Why not? It would be the most natural thing in the world. Maybe Y. will even decide not to go to Europe but to stay with X. X. doesn’t want that. He feels pleasantly romantic about Y., but nothing more. Also he desires him, but that will soon wear off. If he can get another good hot night with Y., he will have had enough. But he does want that night. He wants to get Y. to bed as soon as possible. He even feels that the novel is a nuisance. Why did Y. have to produce it just at this stage in their relations?

  Nevertheless, X.’s enthusiasm for the novel is genuine and he takes the first opportunity to call Y. Y. is out and he gets through to Y.’s mother. Obviously she doesn’t know anything about him, but X. indulges in one of his characteristic fantasies. He imagines himself defending his conduct with Y. to Y.’s mother; telling her that he has done more for Y. in a single night than she and her husband have accomplished in twenty years. Then X. reflects that Y., if his mother tells him of the call, will fear that X. is canceling their date. Y.—in love for the first time—that college student doesn’t count—it was mostly imagination—will be terribly upset. He will give way to all his old inferiority feelings, will decide that X. doesn’t, could never have, loved him, that his cock is too small (actually it is enormous) etc. etc. X. gets quite sentimental as he paints this tragic picture for himself. Y. is so sweet and unprotected and helpless. He mustn’t be made to suffer, even for an instant. So X. calls again. This time, Y. has returned. He seems dazed rather than pleased when X. tells him how wonderful his novel is. Then X. explains that he is calling to reassure Y. There is nothing to interfere with their date that evening. Y. answers without much enthusiasm, “I shan’t be able to stay very long. My parents have a party.” X. gets a slight shock on hearing this. But he decides that Y. is probably talking in this casual offhand tone because his mother is listening.

  However, when Y. arrives that evening, X. sees at once that another change has taken place. Y. is certainly pleased—deeply pleased—that X. likes his novel. But his manner is ever so slightly abstracted. He is impatient to get back to the party. X.’s fantasy picture of him, a sensitive withdrawn boy, awakened to first love and trembling to meet his love again, in grateful lust, now seems absolutely idiotic: the senile invention of an old conceited fool. There is obviously no question of sex. X. is wise enough not to hint at it. But, when Y. says he must leave, X. can’t help asking, “You aren’t feeling badly, are you, about the other night?” “No, why should I?” Y. asks, with a certain indifference. “I just thought you might be.” “No, I’ve been thinking about it. You made me feel very peaceful.” And that’s all. X. gets the impression that, whatever it was that seemed to Y. to be happening, it was happening only to him. X. has played scarcely any part in it. Maybe it’s the same with Y.’s writing. Maybe that’s Y.’s whole attitude. People exist to serve him, with literary advice or a stiff cock, according to his mood, and that’s that. As Y. is getting into his expensive sports car, X. says, with slightly acid intonations, “Well you certainly surprised me—twice!” Y. smiles. “Perhaps I’ll surprise you again. I’ll have to think of something.” And then he says, “You make me feel peaceful. You’re my tranquilizer.” And with that, off he drives—to the queer bars of Cannes and the Spanish Steps and clap and crabs and lots of fun, no doubt. And X. goes back down to his house, reflecting that the Young are the Young are the Young, but that the Old, thank goodness, are tough—as they need to be.

  February 14. Talked to Don last night; he called from New York. He isn’t coming back today, which makes me sad. But he does seem eager to return and he said it would probably be on Friday. He has lots of things to attend to first, and I honestly don’t believe that this postponement is because of anybody else—though I never quite discount this possibility, suspicious (and guilty) old thing that I am.

  Rain in the night and more expected. I hate the prospect of it tomorrow, on my way to school. The classes are going fairly well—particularly the creative writing, which continues to be fun. Henri Coulette disappointed me by speaking with great reserve about my novel, though maybe that was partly shyness. However, Wystan wrote today saying that it is my “finest to date” and that Paul is “quite magnificent.” (Coulette said “Dostoevsky in a beach towel.”) And Mark Schorer called from San Francisco after I had gone to bed last night. He was very enthusiastic though admittedly drunk.

  It seems that I won’t have to appear at the trial of the bookseller who sold Tropic of Cancer, after all.fn285 I had warned the lawyer that I might turn out to be more harmful than helpful to the defense, because I should be bound to admit under cross-examination that it’s not just Miller’s book which I don’t find pornographic; I don’t believe that there is any such thing as pornography. And I don’t believe, for the matter of that, that the young can be corrupted by talk about sex.

  Yesterday, at college, Selznick called me from New York. He wanted permission to show my book to “several top-flight dramatists” and the real reason for this is that Jennifer said she would love to play Maria in the “Ambrose” episode! David was very impressed because the switchboard operator at the college referred to me as Dr. Isherwood!

  A marvellous passage in a letter from Richard. The first I’ve had since I left England. “Am sitting at the kitchen table. It feels very peaceful and forgotten and far away here, like it usually does—an atmosphere at once sad and calming and cheering—then a distant rumble of a plane over at the aerodrome about twenty miles from here, being what they call ‘tried out.’ It sounds like a distant heavy express train rushing across a viaduct. There has just been a violent downpour of rain, a cloudburst. Now it’s bright sunshine again.”

  February 17. Just after six. It’s getting dark. The weather looks pretty good. I have just finished making up the bed in the front room. Don is arriving tonight.

  What do I feel? Great joy. Oh yes, I know this is the beginning of a whole new maze of problems. I know that before another week is out we shall have tied ourselves into new knots, and the palpitations of my vagus nerve will have started up again. (All this while, since I’ve been back here, they have stopped.) Well, never mind. What must be, will be.

  Stephen and Natasha also got in today from Mexico. They are staying wi
th Evelyn Hooker. I should be glad of this, if it didn’t pose a problem with Don. He doesn’t want to see them, or even to have them come to the house.

  Actually, Stephen rather put me to shame by buying two copies of my novel and giving one to Evelyn. He is just exactly as usual, and his accounts of his tour in Latin America ditto. Natasha seemed a bit sad and grumpy.

  Richard writes again today to tell me Uncle Jack [Isherwood] is dead. He died on February 6. He had left a wish that there should be no flowers and no “communications.” But I felt I had to write and did, some crap or other. There’s no duty so horrible as family duty.

  Yesterday evening—chiefly because Gerald had urged me to do it—I invited Will Forthman to have dinner with me. He is a strange withdrawn creature nowadays. Not withered looking as yet, indeed he hasn’t changed a bit; but at the same time he seems ingrowing. He spends weeks and weeks up at Margaret Gage’s, toying with a dissertation on William James which obviously bores him pissless. He doesn’t want to go back to teaching and plans to spend another year—doing what? Gerald says he is burningly ambitious. If this is true, he must be very unhappy, because he hasn’t really found anything to succeed at. Because I was so ill at ease with him, I took him to La Mer and spent a lot of money. When I gave him Pouilly Fuissé, he said. “Wine is a good sedative!”

  February 23. Don has been home nearly a week now, and we have been very harmonious. He even agreed to meet Stephen and Natasha. There was no great reconciliation, but things passed off smoothly.

  I see in him a certain change. It’s odd, but this very short separation since New York seems to reveal it—maybe just because here we are at home and relaxed and can study each other. What I see is a reserve. He doesn’t seem so childishly open as before. I really don’t know if this is “good” or “bad.” It is simply that he seems more in control of the situation.

  However, the problem which we both expected does seem to be arising: can he work, all by himself and without being under pressure? We are considering doing some kind of reconstruction on this house, so as to provide him with a studio downstairs. But that in itself is no solution.

  Three sayings:

  Vera Stravinsky: “All I want is a cat, a fire and silence.”

  Don: “Stephen has one of the great virtues of a conversationalist—he never thinks before he speaks.”

  Me (quoted to me—I’d altogether forgotten saying it—by Evelyn Hooker, as a comment I made on her researches into the lives of homosexuals): “Evelyn, you think you’re going to discover a secret. All you’ll discover is a nature.” (Evelyn says that this remark has greatly inspired her!)

  February 28. And to these I must add another saying, also by Don and also about Stephen. Don was remarking how extraordinary it was that they were able to fill Royce Hall with people anxious to hear Stephen’s lecture the other day. I said, “Well, after all, he had the attraction of being a visiting fireman.”fn286 “A fireman’s the right word,” said Don, “because he certainly dampens the evening.”

  At breakfast this morning, we had a talk about frankness, because I had belatedly told him something about Gavin which displeased him and had later tried to soften the effect of this by making excuses for what Gavin did. I replied that I simply didn’t want to have him falling out with Gavin. Why not, he wanted to know. Because, I said, I wanted us all three to get along together. Don said this was a demonstration of my possessiveness. No, I said, nothing so sinister—it’s simply a matter of convenience.

  Nevertheless, by and large, Don and I are on the best of terms since his return. As for what I told him about Gavin,fn287 I most certainly didn’t do it to make mischief; mischief between them is against my deepest interests. Why did I do it, then? I guess, because I find it terribly difficult to withhold anything from him.

  A searchingly cold wind after the rain. I have never known it so bitter. We had supper up at the Selznicks’. David is still in New York. Kate Moffat kept telling me how happy she is with Ivan. I hope this isn’t dark-whistling. I nearly lost my voice, reading Macbeth with my students. But college is going quite well now.

  Only one thing’s wrong: I still am not getting on with my work.

  March 5. I still am not getting on with my work. I have to repeat that sentence. Nagging at myself hasn’t seemed to help. And yet, it is terribly hard to see just why I don’t do more. Because my immediate objective—getting the Ramakrishna book finished—is a question of willpower rather than of inspiration. It would still be possible to finish at least the rough version for the magazine before my next birthday, and I must make up my mind to do that at least.

  What prevents me? True, we’ve been getting up late in the mornings, but that’s far more my fault than Don’s. He is usually the one who makes the move. And now he is determined to restart working, including going to school. If he takes night classes, then I ought seriously to try working nights, which I easily could on the mechanical first drafts of the chapters and the material gathering.

  The first review of my novel, or rather the galley proof of it, arrived from England this morning; Julian Jebb for the London Magazine. Very favorable, calling “Ambrose” my finest work yet. May it be a good omen.

  Just spent the afternoon being tape-recorder interviewed by a trio from USC. That’s a typical waste of my time.

  March 18. Rain. The Canyon wet and sad. Don, who was sick in bed yesterday with a hangover stomach, is out drawing someone. Yesterday I cooked a pork supper for Bill Inge, Mike Steen, Jerry Lawrence and a friend of his from San Francisco named Lou Bennett. It was dull. Jerry dutifully read my reviews—the good ones from Cyril Connolly and Gerald Sykes, the bad one from the New York Herald Tribune. Actually, the Herald Trib. one was just a conditioned reflex puritan attack on the subject matter; the only sinister aspect of it was that the editor should have given the book to a man like that, who could do no other than react according to his nature. Later on in the evening Stanley Miron arrived, flashing enthusiasm, but it was late and everyone else wanted to get to bed. I was quite unable to be what Stanley expected, the all-wise, all-knowing uncle to advise him about his love life.

  I remain bogged down, or nearly, in the Ramakrishna book. Oh, it bores me so! And there is so little time to do anything on it. I have to keep going on my college work. This weekend for instance I must reread Wuthering Heights and then tell the students how Heathcliff evolved from Byron and Poe.

  Don: “Gavin has a vague way about being rich. He lets it pile up behind him but he never turns around.”

  March 25. Yesterday, the fine weather really began again, and today is just as beautiful. Don has gone down to the beach but I have strong-mindedly stayed here in the house and have just finished sorting out all the letters, etc. Now I want to do some work.

  Don is going through a bad period because he can’t make up his mind to start painting. Or rather, he has started but without the least appetite and he doesn’t know whether to force himself to go on, or what. The temptation, in a way, is to have another show here, of drawings. And yet, why shouldn’t he? Why should he force himself to paint? And so the devil of tamas plays with him. And there’s so little I can do to help, although I know this process inside out and have been going through it for the past forty years.

  The one way I can help him is to work, myself. And God knows I have every cue to do that. Not only have I the Ramakrishna book and the homework for my college classes, but I also have a new idea for a novel. It really came to me yesterday. I won’t write it down here, though, because it would be hard to find later. I’ll put it in the big book.

  The score on Down There on a Visit is still unsettled. New York Times, Saturday Review are good; Time will sell copies. Nothing yet from Newsweek, New Yorker. I know Dorothy Parker will be favorable in Esquire, suppose Stephen will be in The New Republic. In other words, the only serious slap was in the New York Herald Trib. And, in England, Cyril Connolly was very good in The Sunday Times, the Manchester Guardian was very good, The New Statesman sort
of reproving but grudgingly favorable. Angus Wilson delivered a schoolmasterish stab in The Observer. Haven’t seen the rest of them.

  Now the only thing to do is forget the whole affair and get on with the next project. I still feel very good about Down There and am glad I wrote it. It is good and I know it is good and so do nearly all of the people whose opinion I care about. So what more do I want?

  Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell came to dinner with us last night. It was a flop. The two of them, alone, seemed lost and dull, like two people who are having dinner together dully in a dull restaurant. It seems as if they only become animated when there are lots of others around. Dorothy sits so sadly, with a kind of aristocratic sweetness, a Lost Lady, the bags hanging down under her eyes. Somehow, we just could not cheer her up. The only time they showed animation was right at the end of the evening, when we got on to the subject of famous murders.

  I shall call this new novel project provisionally The Englishwoman.

  March 28. Yesterday and the two previous days I have made notes for The Englishwoman, and I really do feel there is something there, a sound basis for a novel or novelette. Not only that—I also have the feeling, which I always have when I’m confronted by a theme which is really right for me, “I’ll never be able to do justice to that!”

  So I feel much less guilty now about work. Especially as I have at last ground out a rough draft of chapter 13 of the Ramakrishna biography. And school is going well.

  Morgan doesn’t like my novel. He wrote a sweet letter about this, and I don’t mind. I really don’t. It’s funny, although I am such a dedicated disciple of Forster and have learnt so much from him, I don’t particularly respect his taste.

  March 30. Joe Ackerley came to supper with us last night, brought by Gerald Heard and Michael. Noticed how deaf he is. But otherwise very bright and sharp. And resentful—like most of us old things, alas. Apparently he is seeking wisdom from Gerald, that unreliable oracle. Joe wants to know what to do with the remainder of his life, or so one infers. Yet he didn’t seem at all eager to meet Swami, when I suggested it.