The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Prema camera happy, and collecting shots of monastic life to show them in India, snaps Krishna without permission, as he brings the food offering from the kitchen to the shrine. Krishna furious, spins right round, Prema gets him nevertheless, Krishna growls, “What do you think you’re doing?” Talking about this to Swami, who told me, the first time Prema appeared, Krishna said, “Who’s that detective?” And Swami added, “He is a detective, in some ways. He’s very curious.” Then he described the jealousy of Gerald Heard and Kolisch when Swami took them both to the Shanti Ashrama, before the war. “I felt like I had a pair of jealous wives.”

  (June 5.) This morning, Swami said that he had “the intense thought that I am the Self in all beings, so how can one harm anyone? It’s a wonderful life, if you can feel that.… I say, Oh, Lord, don’t test me!” (He explained later that he meant he didn’t want to suffer, as some people do.) While we were there, the Pope died,fn461 after great sufferings. Swami said this was perhaps because it was his last life. Sometimes karmas must be destroyed in this way. He told me, “Pray for devotion and knowledge. Say Not I but Thou.” But he added that it was no use praying that God’s will be done, because it will be done, anyway.

  His three experiences: a vision of the Impersonal God at Purifn462—lost outer consciousness, saw nothing but light, no images, no people worshipping, heard a voice in English saying God, God, God. Sujji Maharajfn463 grabbed his arm and told a priest to hold the other one. Later, Swami asked him, “How did you know what was happening to me?” “Because I’ve lived with Maharaj.” Then, back in his bedroom in the old house in Hollywood, before the temple was built, he saw [Holy] Mother, “very powerful.” After this he was dazed for three days. Then once in the temple, he saw Swamiji, with the Others more dimly behind him.fn464 This was in the nature of a reassurance, because Ashokananda had just attacked him (and me) for the alleged slurs on Swamiji in my introduction to Vedanta for the Western World.

  Oh yes, and that remark of Len’s that the monks have a joke amongst themselves. They look at a young boy with a young girl and say, “Are they really happy?” You are supposed to expect the conventional answer, No; and then the monks answer, “You’re damn right they are!” Swami couldn’t get the sense of this joke at all. Actually it is profoundly British.

  June 18. I think Don has finally decided to go to a psychiatrist; Gavin’s.

  Gloomsville morning with drip-fog; it will probably brighten too late. Paul Latouche appears to have gone through Don’s drawings and taken away the ones of himself and Rob.fn465 So today for the first time Don used the padlock on the door.

  Alan Campbell and Jim Geller dead. We went to see Dorothy Parker on the 15th, with Gavin. She was very pale, thin and somehow tough. A lot of people there making bright conversation, to keep her as it were afloat. Right after Alan’s death was discovered, and the coroner was still in the house, James Larmore arrived drunk and sang.… I guess Jim’s funeral will be tomorrow. I shall miss him; he was that unusual thing, an honest man. Have already arranged to have Hugh and Robin French for my agents. Maybe they can get me a job in England or Italy this fall, after the draft of my novel and the draft of the Ramakrishna book are finished. That would relieve the situation here. Henry Kraft visits regularly, but doesn’t seem to dispel the gloom for more than an hour or so.

  Have reached page 84 of my draft, and the midst of the last chapter but two of Ramakrishna.

  Paul Latouche, after a whole morning with me alone on the beach: “What’s your last name, Chris?”

  I tried to make Mr. Shikiya the gardener understand that Don has taken this studio room in the same house with Bill Brown and Paul Wonner at Ocean Park. But he merely took this to mean that Don is drawing portraits of people in a park, somewhere!

  A sign of the times: I look out the window and see two young boys about to climb over our gate. One of them is a Negro. I think, better not interfere. I tell this to Dorothy Miller. She laughs. She walks with a stick now and has applied for old age pension; she’s sixty-five. She says she has to lie down most of the rest of the day, after a day spent working for us. But I feel this work is good for her, psychologically, and anyhow it is a way of giving her money.

  On the 25th, I’m to speak at one of the sessions of the Pacific Coast Writers’ Conference, at L.A. State College. This is from the pep letter addressed to all speakers by Leon Surmelian, who’s directing it: “I know you will do your share to create a relaxed, informal atmosphere, combined with high seriousness of purpose, with a bit of friendship and charity thrown in. You are a dreamer among dreamers.”

  June 23. Last night I got drunk at Bruce Zortman’s and sideswiped some car on the way home and bashed up the Volkswagen. I was too drunk to go out and look to see just what I did to the other car—it must have been one of those which were parked at the entrance to the lane leading to Adelaide out of San Vicente, or, horrors, maybe the one belonging to our neighbors, the Marion Hargroves! Some worry and guilt about this.

  But such a heavenly day today. Don and I went in the water and I rode quite a big wave.

  Prema was terribly upset by Rechy’s City of Night, which I loaned him. He said, “I was sick for two days.” Couldn’t quite make out if this was disgust or lust.

  The young Jewish boy who comes to the readings at Vedanta Place asked Swami earnestly had he done wrong—he gave a man at work ten bucks and the man spent it on liquor. Swami was amused.

  Swami was impressed because Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip had gone to Victoria Station to welcome Radhakrishnan,fn466 which surprised me. But Swami said, “A few years ago, they’d have just said he was a native.”

  Don has started going to Gavin’s psychiatrist, Dr. Oderberg. He likes him, but has great difficulty telling his problems. Don says, “When I try to write them down, they suddenly seem so ridiculous.”

  The other day, Don found that his drawings of Paul Latouche and his friend Rob had been extracted from the closet in his studio. Paul firmly denies having had anything to do with this. So now we don’t see him around. And Don keeps the studio locked. (Note: one of Paul’s favorite expressions is “Are you ready for it?” He says this after he has told you something surprising. It’s equivalent to “Can you believe it?”)

  We have been trying to sell the Danish chairs, without success.

  I forgot to record Dean Campbell’s story of hearing a man yelling outside the window in the middle of the night. Two other men, who were with him and had presumably been threatening him or actually beating him up, then ran away. The man sat on the side of his car for a long while; then he got up and took off his pants and his undershorts and threw the shorts away. Then he dressed again and drove off. In the morning, Dean found the shorts were full of shit—presumably because the man had been so scared.

  July 26. Yesterday I finished, or rather, came to the end of the novelette—128 pages in this second draft, plus one line on page 129. Now I have put it away, and I hope I shan’t weaken and look at it again until both Don and Gavin have read it.

  As I was getting toward the end, I had the idea of calling it The Survivor—but this title has been used in various forms at least three times recently. Don suggests Making Do, which is a sort of Henry Green approach. I quite like it but am not sure.

  Beautiful weather, now, for this long while. Today I went in swimming, with Don and Henry Kraft.

  Beautiful news too, as far as it goes: the test-ban treaty was initialled in Moscow yesterday.fn467

  Talked to Aldous on the phone this morning and wished him a happy birthday. Largely because Chris Wood, who came to dinner last night, told us Aldous had said to Peggy Kiskadden that he has no friends. Also, I was concerned because Peggy (that’s to say Bill [Kiskadden]—who, amazingly, isn’t dead yet) thinks that they ought to have cut Aldous’s tongue right out, when he had that cancer, and that now he has it in the throat. Aldous admitted to being slightly hoarse still. But he leaves tomorrow for a trip to Europe, starting with some conference in Stockholm. He
seemed quite cheerful and pleased I’d called.… Alas, I can’t help still hating Peggy and feeling that she longs for Aldous to have cancer, in order to prove that Laura has neglected him and in general to get one more recruit to her squad of dying men.

  Dorothy Miller, who now cleans for us every week—not that we need it, but she needs the money—is plagued by a bluebird when she goes outdoors. It swoops down and pecks at her hair. So she wears a handkerchief tied over her head. I have a hunch that she regards the bird as some kind of an evil omen.

  I have been bad about going to the gym but pretty good about doing my daily Canadian Air Force exercises. Have now reached A+ on chart one. I hope to reach C+, which is the ceiling for my age group, by my birthday. Of course I plan to go on beyond that, at least to the ceiling for the 45-49 year group.

  Another birthday target, to have a rough draft of the two final chapters of the Ramakrishna book. So far I have written six pages of the last chapter but one.

  August 2. Dorothy refers to Don as “Mr. B.” We were talking about Gladys Cooper. She asked, “Is that Mary Pickford?” (She was thinking of Pickford’s real name being Gladys Smith and no doubt supposing that people as “in” as Don and me would refer to her thus!)fn468

  Gavin has read the novelette and seems to like it a lot. But he is concerned about George’s identity. He feels that George’s way of speaking and his attitude to his college job are so absolutely me that one cannot accept him as an independent character. This may well be true. But I’m not sure that anything can be done about it. Perhaps it will be better to publish this as an admittedly flawed work than to try to create a fictitious George and end by losing all the madness and gaining only a completely convincing dull character study.

  In bed, on Monday night, Don was silent for a long while. I thought he had fallen asleep. Then he suddenly asked, “How about A Single Man for a title?” I knew instantly and have had no doubts since that this is the absolutely ideal title for the novelette, and I shall use it, unless someone snitches it.

  Don has been going steadily to Dr. Oderberg. He feels that progress is being made, though he gets bored talking about his dreams. Certainly his whole mood has changed. No more gloom. But this is no doubt largely due to Kraft, who is now quite an institution. Also to association with Paul Wonner and Bill Brown. Don paints away at their studio and says he is at grips with his great problem—can he paint and if so does he really want to? No solution appears in sight, but the point is that he is at grips. Before, he was only fearing to get to grips with the problem. Also, he keeps on with his japa and feels that this is producing results. (He broke his beads yesterday.) So, altogether this would seem to be a very crucial and on the whole productive period for him. As I tell him, he is one of the few people who are doing something about their problems on all four levels—physical (he goes to the gym), psychological (Oderberg), artistic (Wonner-Brown and his painting), spiritual (japa). Don’s only doubts are about earning money. Should he go to New York, and become the new Bouché? I say, get to a point with the painting first.

  And me? I’m melancholic. But more of that another time or never. What I have to do is finish the Ramakrishna and get started on my new project—a book of autobiography along the lines of the lectures I gave at Berkeley: the autobiography of my books.

  August 9. Have heard from Edward, saying that the novelette is “absolutely wonderful and it has made me extremely happy” but adding that the Charley episode is an anticlimax and that the Ronny episode, though much better, isn’t quite up to the first seventy-five pages and the ending. (Actually page 75 is in the supermarket scene, so maybe he doesn’t like that, either.) Then he says, “The book as a whole cuts the reader to the heart, and dazzles him too. And I think your new manner comes off 100 percent. One gets the feeling from the start that you are totally at home in it.”

  So now I must reread the book—that is, as soon as I have finished the twentieth, last-but-one chapter of the Ramakrishna book. All the time that I’ve been writing about Ramakrishna’s cancer of the throat my own throat has been sore and I’ve been hoarse. I hope ending it will cure me!

  Yesterday I got the release arranged by Ben Alston from Mrs. Helen Burd, the lady whose car I sideswiped on June 22. Now it is over, I can admit that it has been a great worry to me. In fact, I superstitiously didn’t want to write about it before it was settled. It does seem to be, now, since the police have dropped the case and Mrs. Burd doesn’t even know now who did it. She has simply acknowledged receipt of the money to pay for the damage. She even told Alston to tell his client that he was “a fine upstanding boy” for coming forward and paying up! The fact remains that this little caper cost me nearly nine hundred dollars—damage to both cars and Alston’s fee of five hundred. And all I need have done was to sleep on Bruce Zortman’s couch, or for that matter take the most expensive hotel room in town—including taxi fare there and back to my car next morning, that would still have been at least eight hundred and some dollars cheaper!

  Frank Wiley is having to resign from the navy […]. Much more about this, no doubt, later. He’s in San Francisco.

  August 16. There’s so much to say, but nowadays I am just too damn busy to feel like writing here. I am in one of those crisis states: I function but I’m far from well.

  My throat is still sore and hoarse, although I finished the chapter containing Ramakrishna’s death, this morning. Dr. Allen examined me, it’s true, the other day, but then I am inclined to think he’s much too casual. Gavin says he failed to detect Gavin’s amoebic dysentery.

  I went to see Allen because of the rib I broke in the car wreck on the 10th.fn469 He didn’t think it worth x-raying; didn’t even strap it up. Ah, well. Enough money has been squandered already on my foolishness—around $1,500!

  Edward wrote a second letter, however, saying that this novelette has “even outdone your best.” So that makes up for much misfortune and I really feel eager to rewrite it, now.

  Don followed up his invention of A Single Man by finding me an adjective for the cremation scene in the Ramakrishna book. I wanted to suggest that the waters of the Ganges kept flowing past and offering no security, as it were, to the mourners. So Don thought a little while and said, “How about—the inconstant waters?” When I asked him where in the world he got that from, he said Romeo and Juliet!fn470

  Am off to the monks’ picnic at Laguna Beach tomorrow. Sunday I have to speak up at Santa Barbara temple, repeating what I said about Vivekananda.fn471

  Now I’ll get ahead with the draft of the last Ramakrishna chapter, but not rush too much. Am getting too compulsive.

  Don is very conscious of the existence of this “old black book,” as he calls it. He’s sure it’s full of criticism of him. I tell him, well, when I die, all he has to do is burn it. Very hard to tell how he is getting along. His mood is a sort of cautious pessimism, regarding his painting. As for Oderberg, he is being a bore right now, because he takes too much interest in Don’s parents.

  Lines composed while walking around the block, supposedly making japa:

  But, when so sad thou canst not sadder,

  Counting thine every vice and crime,

  Cry: I’m sure bad but these are badder—

  Goldwater,fn472 Teller, Life and Time.

  August 20. Have now gotten started on the rough draft of the last Ramakrishna chapter. Like all the other chapters, it turns out to be rather more difficult to do than I’d expected. Also it will probably be quite long.

  This morning I finished rereading Frank Wiley’s book […]. It really is quite good. I’m going to send it to Harper’s,fn473 to a man who wrote me the other day, named Roger Klein. He says he played Fritz in I Am a Camera at Harvard.

  My throat continues to worry me. It won’t clear up, although I’m now gargling with salt and water. I still feel it’s connected with my writing about Ramakrishna’s throat cancer. Not only did I happen to finish that chapter on the exact day of his death, but yesterday Lee Prosser sends me a
batch of folders about the lakes and caverns around his hometown, Springfield, Missouri, and among them is one about the Meramec Caverns, where Jesse James and his gang used to hide out. On this folder it says that an old man claimed in 1948 to be Jesse James and that his claim could never be disproved, and that he finally died in Texas in 1951, aged 103—on August 16!fn474

  Over the weekend, I went to the men’s picnic with the swamis at the Camel Point house in Laguna and also spoke at the Santa Barbara temple. Driving home, Prema told me he definitely plans to stay on in India, if he possibly can. Either he will settle down as a spiritual recluse in one of the monasteries, and “maybe become spiritual”; or he will find some worthwhile project connected with the Ramakrishna Mission and give himself up to that. Here he feels rejected. The business with Usha still hurts him terribly. He told Swami how he felt, but Swami didn’t make the speech Prema doubtless hoped for—didn’t tell him he is indispensable here, didn’t beg him to come right on back here after taking sannyas.

  Don has done some very interesting paintings of dolls. One or two of them are curiously poignant. You feel the tragedy of their not being human—just as one occasionally feels the tragedy of some human being’s not being more human.

  I got the Volkswagen back yesterday, all nicely painted up and straightened out, to give me another chance to be a grown-up driver.

  Henry Kraft has left [his photographer boyfriend]’s at [the photographer]’s request, and gone to live with friends. What will he do now? Don is inclined to be severe; doesn’t think Kraft is serious about his photography.

  August 22. In swimming yesterday with Bill Brown and Don, the other side of Pacific Ocean Park pier, near their studio. The water much cleaner there and the beach nicer. Very little pain from rib. Bill has been helpful about Don’s doll paintings. Paul Wonner is gloomy and always tired. Fear some liver trouble. To Dr. Allen about my throat; I worked myself up into a state of alarm. Mustn’t it be at least a growth on the vocal cords. Again, Allen seemed very casual, though I described my symptoms. He peeped down my throat for an instant, admitted it was inflamed, gave me a shot of penicillin. Today the hoarseness is as usual, though the inflammation has gone. I get another shot tomorrow.