- Paperback: 352 pages
- Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Reprint edition (February 10, 2015)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0374535221
- ISBN-13: 978-0374535223
- File Size: 870 KB
- Print Length: 352 pages
- Publisher: North Point Press; Reprint edition (November 19, 2013)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00F8FXF0E
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Christopher and His Kind is an
autobiography. It’s intended to be read as such, but it is more than that!
Isherwood writes his story as an observer rather than a diarist. One gets the
sense that someone else writes the book and that Isherwood is simply the main
character. Of course anyone who has read Christopher Isherwood’s other books will
recognize his voice.
The most famous, or should I
say notorious, years of Isherwood’s life are those he spent in Germany (mainly
Berlin). Berlin in the buoyant years just after WWI and before WWII was a
hothouse homosexuality where boys grew into men like mushrooms, almost
overnight. Some were gay, some were bi, and others were straight and almost all
had one thing in common. They were on the make for money. The fact that this
young Englishman could travel to Germany, find lodging, buy food, frequent nightclubs,
all with no visible means of support other than his writing, meant that he at
least had some financial underpinning. To the boys and men of that time, with
little or no skills other than sexual, Isherwood was a field worth plowing.
Isherwood is urged to travel
to Berlin by his friend WH Auden. It is an invitation that will mark the end of
his English identity and mark him as a perpetual ‘foreigner’
— a citizen of the world rather than of a single
country. One can only
marvel at his bravado. In Berlin, young men drift in and out of Isherwood’s
life (as young men are so often wont to do). Isherwood discusses them all, and
here is where I feel I must offer a caveat. Most of Isherwood’s close friends,
and some of his lovers, both serious and casual, find their way into his professional writing,
and he alters their names. Fred will become Jack, and so on. The reader while reading Christopher and His Kind must
either have a catalogue memory, or be willing to keep a scoreboard. As I neared
the end of the book, I likened it to the famous Abbot and Costello comedy skit,
Who’s on First. That said,
Christopher and His Kind is a
fascinating look at a time and place lost in all but sepia colored photographs
and grainy films. And that is why I recommend it.
