Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader

by Christopher Isherwood, Don Bachardy (Editor), James P. White (Editor), Gore Vidal (Introduction)

Overview

Best known for The Berlin Stories—the inspiration for the Tony and Academy Award-winning musical Cabaret—Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) was a major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement. Where Joy Resides is the perfect introduction to the author's essential writings.

This collection presents two complete novels, Prater Violet and A Single Man; episodes from three other novels, Goodbye to Berlin, Down There on a Visit, and Lions and Shadows; along with excerpts from Isherwood's nonfiction works, Exhumations, Kathleen and Frank, and My Guru and His Disciple.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250254863
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	03/31/2020
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.32(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.96(d)

About the Author

Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was born outside of Manchester, England. His life in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 inspired The Berlin Stories, which were adapted into a play, a film, and the musical Cabaret. Isherwood immigrated to the United States in 1939. A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, he wrote more than twenty books, including the novel A Single Man and his autobiography, Christopher and His Kind.

Editorial Reviews

Isherwood's mercurial, impressionable style, as reflected in this omnibus of his fiction, essays and memoirs, was a perfect vehicle for capturing a generation's loss of innocence and the impact of historical traumas on personal consciousness. Included are two complete novelettes. One, Prater Violet (1945), features witty, expansive Viennese film director Friedrich Bergmann, given to dark, apocalyptic broodings; the other, A Single Man (1964), recounting one day in the life of an unhinged Los Angeles college teacher, combines brutal introspection and precise observations of Americans' ``symbolic'' lifestyles. In perceptive essays, Isherwood calls Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island a ``superpotboiler'' and refutes the notion that Katherine Mansfield was a ``feminine'' writer. Also here are reminiscences of his father, killed in WW I; an account of his friendship with W. H. Auden; and encounters with Swami Prabhavananda, his California guru. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly