Lost Years 1945-1951 - Hardcover

Isherwood, Christopher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701169311 ISBN 13: 9780701169312

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2000

Synopsis

Christopher Isherwood settled in California in 1939 and spent the war years working in Hollywood studios and teaching English to European refugees. When the war ended he careered into a life of frantic socialising, increasing dissipation, anxiety and despair. For nearly half a decade he all but ceased to write fiction and he abandoned his lifelong habit of keeping a diary.This is Isherwood's account, reconstructed nearly thirty years later, of his day-to-day experiences in London, New York and Santa Monica. Begun in 1971, in a post-sixties atmosphere of liberation, Lost Years includes explicit details of his romantic and sexual relationships during the 1940s and unveils a hidden and sometimes shocking way of life, shared with friends, acquaintances and colleagues - many of whom were themselves well-known writers, artists, actors and filmmakers.Isherwood never prepared Lost Years for publication because he rapidly became caught up in writing the bestselling book which established him as a hero of gay liberation, Christopher and His Kind. Lost Years shows Isherwood both as a private being trying to make sense of the events of his life and as social chronicler, portraying the energy and, occasionally, abandon of the post-war years.

About this title

Review:

Christopher Isherwood is best known for publishing at least two minor classics, Mr Norris Changes Trains and Goodbye to Berlin. His first volume of diaries, published in 1996, also met with rave reviews, and the memoir about his struggle with his sexuality, Christopher and his Kind, was also highly praised. Set against these, it must be said that these Lost Years 1945-1951, re-created from memory and scraps of paper, are rather desultory and unsatisfying, and will tend to appeal to die-hard Isherwood fans rather than the general reader. Nevertheless, they do contain some good nuggets: a meeting with Georgia O'Keefe, described as "that sturdy old weather-beaten cedar root"; and there is an amusing moment when an inebriated Isherwood ticks off Greta Garbo for "arrogance, affectation and egomania". The other undeniable virtue of these memoirs is their searing honesty, both in matters sexual (random couplings, with "upwards of four hundred men", frankly described), and as regards the difficult and temperamental character of the writer himself. --Christopher Hart

Review:

"Isherwood's account is endearingly honest... a journal not only unusually objective but in parts shockingly frank. You are left feeling you have truly got to know Christopher Isherwood... A welcome supplement to Isherwood's Diaries and provides futher insight into a major literary figure" (Scotland on Sunday)

"In Lost Years Isherwood lays bare his mid-life crisis with critical self-candour, never losing his engaging manner nor his sense of humour... His diaries are the basis for all his creative work, and Lost Years is the most revealing so far" (Harpers & Queen)

"Positively compulsive" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Isherwood remains a curious and memorable writer... A master of translucent prose, the events and people of these years seem to be described by a narrator as perceptive as he is unobtrusive" (The Times)

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0701169311
• ISBN 13: 9780701169312
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 432