September 27, 2022 • 40 mins
In the 1960s, Christopher Isherwood gave an unprecedented series of lectures at California universities about his life and work. During this time, Isherwood spoke openly for the first time about his craft and spirituality. The release of the updated edition of ISHERWOOD ON WRITING includes the long-lost conclusion to the second lecture, including its discussion of A Single Man and A Meeting by the River. This conversation brings the volume’s editor, James J. Berg, into conversation with fellow Isherwood scholars Chris Freeman and Claude Summers.
BIOS:
James J. Berg is a writer, editor, and scholar living in New York, and editor of ‘Isherwood on Writing.’ Chris Freeman is professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California. The two are coeditors of ‘Isherwood in Transit,’ ‘The American Isherwood,’ ‘Conversations with Christopher Isherwood,’ and ‘The Isherwood Century,’ winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Studies.
Claude Summers is William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Dearborn. A founding member of the Modern Language Association’s gay and lesbian caucus, Summers helped lead the gay studies movement to maturity within the academy.
NOTE:
This episode includes archival audio of Christopher Isherwood speaking at the Honors Convocation at the University of Southern California, 1974.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Chris Freeman (00:05):
These lectures were essentially lost to history
or filed away deep in an archiveuntil you publish this book.
Claude Summers (00:14):
My becoming interested in Isherwood really
had to do with the fact that Tedand I saw so much of ourselves
in A Single Man.
James J. Berg (00:25):
Christopher Isherwood kept so much, and Don
Bacardi kept it pristine thatthere's so much there.
Chris Freeman (00:34):
Hello, and welcome to our conversation
about Christopher Isherwood onthe occasion of the new and
expanded edition of Isherwood onwriting coming out this fall
from the University of MinnesotaPress edited by James Berg with
a forward by Claude Summers. I'mChris Freeman, and I'm here with
both Jim and Claude to have aconversation about Christopher
(00:57):
Isherwood, Isherwood on writing,and other exciting related
issues. Jim Berg and I have beenworking on Christopher Isherwood
for quite a long time. My bestcalculation is the same amount
of time from the time thatChristopher Isherwood moved to
Los Angeles and then publishedSingle Man, about twenty five
years. And Claude Summers hasbeen working on Isherwood, even
(01:19):
longer than that.
Jim Berg is also a developmentaleditor who works with academic
authors, helping them to bringtheir work to publication, and
he and I have collaborated onseveral books about issue with
including the issue withcentury, which won the Lambda
Literary Award back in February.Claude Summers is Emeritus
professor from University ofMichigan Dearborn and is a real
(01:41):
pioneer in gay and lesbianstudies, although he started his
work as a renaissance andseventeenth century scholar. But
in the late seventies, he wasworking on Christopher Isherwood
already and had, in fact, beenone of the cofounders of the gay
and lesbian caucus for themodern language association in
the early nineteen seventies.And we'll be talking about that
a little bit today becauseIsherwood was one of their first
(02:02):
keynote speakers. So I wannastart, Jim, by asking you to
tell us a little bit more aboutthe Isherwood on writing book as
an archival project and thenwhat's new in this expanded
edition.
James J. Berg (02:16):
Okay. Great. Thanks, Chris. I first saw
mention of Isherwood's lecturesin the biography he wrote of his
parents, Kathleen and Frank,which was published in the early
nineteen seventies. As I say inthe book, I marked that passage
long before I wrote a word aboutIsherwood.
Then when the Huntington Libraryin California acquired
(02:37):
Isherwood's papers many yearslater, I was one of the lucky
first scholars to see what wasactually in the collection. And
I found cassette tapes andtranscripts of many of the
lectures. I was awarded thefirst Christopher Ischwood
Fellowship at the Huntington toresearch a project on the
lectures and was given a grantfrom the Minnesota Humanities
(02:57):
Commission to publish withUniversity of Minnesota Press.
Minnesota, at that time, hadstarted publishing paperback
editions of Isherwood's novels,and the director, Doug Armato,
has done a great job ofnurturing Isherwood's legacy and
scholarship. So for this newedition, part of the interest is
simply that this is the firsttime the book has been in paper,
(03:20):
but it also includes somematerial that came to light
after the original publication,including two lectures from 1965
at at the University ofCalifornia Los Angeles in which
he talks about a single man anda meeting by the river.
Chris Freeman (03:36):
And, of course, now we recognize that a single
man is arguably the mostimportant book that Isherwood
wrote. So having this newmaterial really is, noteworthy.
James J. Berg (03:47):
Yeah. And he, he talks a little bit about how the
book came to be and what hisintentions were for the book.
And I think some of that is kindof surprising, even for those of
us who have read A Single Man anumber of times, they've read a
lot of the scholarship about it.He tells a story that we've
heard that you and I, Chris andClaude, you probably have heard
(04:10):
before about how he startedwriting A Single Man and it was
originally gonna be called TheEnglish Woman. Says he was
recently very much taken withWilla Cather's work.
To be specific, he says, mymortal enemy, a lost lady, the
song of the lark, and theprofessor's house. And then he
says, and in the way that onealways longs to do something one
(04:34):
can't, I thought how wonderfulto write a very calm, sort of
clear, uncomplicated,exceedingly simple story about a
character, a single person andher life. And then he starts
writing, an English woman andthen changes focus to be about
an English man, the Georgecharacter as we know him now.
(04:54):
And he talks about George as aperson representing an almost
laboratory specimen of middleage. He began to think what an
interesting thing middle age isand how peculiar and how most
people think it's a period ofcalm in a very beautiful, in a
rather boring way as long as onedoesn't have anything to do with
(05:14):
it.
When as a matter of fact, it'sprobably the most protean of all
ages. That's to say part of thetime when it's absolutely senile
and at other moments monstrouslyjuvenile. And it's a great age
for committing indiscretions ofall kinds. This came to me with
considerable force because thenight before, I'd happened in
(05:34):
the middle of the night to goswimming in the ocean, which led
to various situations which areneither here nor there. I love
that that linking of hispersonal life to the the very
famous and provocative scene ofGeorge swimming with his student
Kenny in the ocean.
Chris Freeman (05:53):
The ill advised swim in the ocean when he nearly
drowns and or freezes to deathbecause it's almost Christmas.
James J. Berg (05:59):
Right.
Claude Summers (06:00):
It it was an ill advised swim, but it was also, a
baptism of the surf. And I thinkthat that turns out to be well
considered, in terms of whatwhat happens afterwards. It is
so marvelous to have these newcomments that Isherwood made
(06:20):
about a single band. Because asyou say, we've come to see it as
really Isherwood's masterpiece.And somehow, without this new
material, that last lecture inthe first edition cuts off so
abruptly.
And having the new edition justadds immeasurably to it. So, I
(06:42):
am so happy that that that hasbeen added to it.
James J. Berg (06:47):
Yeah. It's so fascinating to hear him talk.
And we'll share an audio cliplater of him giving his what he
called his last lecture. Thereare a couple of other points
about a single man that he talksabout that are pretty key to the
book, but also key to the book'saudience. Right?
So he talks about his character,George, as a homosexual, which
(07:10):
is pretty significant in 1964.And he talks about, you know,
George being very involved inhis own life as a middle aged
man and to a certain degree,with the business of being And
he uses the phrase other thanthe others, which you may
recognize from the German daysof the nineteen thirties. And
(07:32):
he's very isolated from theothers. And he goes on to say,
that's why he's a homosexual.He's a foreigner and he also
belongs to another kind ofculture in some way.
That's, of course, part of beinga foreigner. He also has, by
virtue of being homosexual, theadded artistic advantage that
even the death of the personthat he was most attached to is
(07:53):
sort of socially unacceptable. Imean, he can't have an accepted
place in society even as awidower, so to speak. But on the
other hand, he is in factaccepted by society and this is,
of course, the paradox of sociallife and is even quite looked up
to and is regarded as a sort ofserious person and as a possible
(08:14):
source of wisdom. I find hisasides so fascinating sometimes.
And he says, I still feelconsiderable satisfaction over
this book, but perhaps that'llpass. And then the last thing
that I'll share is about one ofthe major questions that's that
readers have at the end of thebook is whether, spoiler alert,
(08:36):
George dies. And this is what hesays. The book is written on a
very familiar concept of a dayequaling a lifetime. And in a
certain sense, you have the agesof man all revealed in one.
And since all life ends indeath, there has to be a death
included. Now some people havesaid it would have been much
better to have had a symbolicdeath. But what I did in fact
(09:00):
was to have a kind of optionaldeath because I phrase this very
carefully in such a way that Ido not actually say that he
actually died on that particularnight or even that he was going
to die. And I think that's themost we have from Isherwood at
this time, about what is, aswe've said, his most significant
(09:21):
work perhaps and especially hismost significant American work.
Chris Freeman (09:26):
And for me, this comes down to the different
levels of what we know aboutChristopher Isherwood. We know
from the lectures certainthings. And, Jim, these lectures
were essentially lost to historyor filed away deep in an archive
until you publish this book. Soto me, they're absolutely
essential lens into Isherwood'skind of theories of writing, but
(09:51):
also he talks a lot about whathe has read, his approach to
reading. He talks a little bitabout politics, being a member
of the ACLU, and things likethat.
And, of course, he does not talka lot about being gay. And, you
know, another place where weknow so much about Isherwood
that we didn't know, you know, afew years ago from the archive
(10:12):
is from his diaries. So forexample, in the, lectures, he
doesn't really talk much aboutVirginia Woolf, but we know from
the diaries that missus Dallowaywas a key, source or
inspiration, I guess you couldsay. Claude, you've been working
on Isherwood since the latenineteen seventies, and we knew
almost nothing about him exceptwhat he had published and a few
(10:34):
interviews. So how is it for youto look back and think about
when you first wrote you wrote amonograph on him that was
published around 1980.
Isherwood was still alive. Sohow is it for you to think about
how much more we know now thanwe knew then?
Claude Summers (10:51):
I mean, we obviously know much, much more,
thankfully, to writing onIsherwood, among other things.
But I was very fortunate in thatmy late husband who died, just a
year ago, so still pretty raw.But, he had corresponded with
Isherwood when we first met inthe nineteen sixties. And on
(11:14):
several occasions, we then wereinvited to visit Chris and Don
in Santa Monica One Year after Ithink it would have been 1972
after the MLA, which was held inSan Francisco, we came down.
And, of course, they werecharming, charming people, and
(11:36):
Isha would talk so freely abouthimself, that we were really
sort of surprised.
Although at the time I waswriting the book, there wasn't
as much nearly as muchscholarship as there is now.
There had been a book by AlanWild, which was a very good
book. I mean, it still is a verygood book. There was Carolyn
(11:59):
Heilbron's little writers andtheir work pamphlet, which which
was good. What I found sointeresting about working on
Isherwood is that it was thefirst time I had worked on a
living writer.
So I was aware that there were,in some ways, it's much easier
to write about a dead writerbecause they can't, they're not
(12:20):
gonna say anything about it. Itwas interesting that issue
would, he was scrupulous aboutnot wanting to say anything that
would influence any of mywriting about him. And at one
point while I was writing aboutit, I had mentioned, something
about a character in Goodbye toBerlin. And I'd sent him a copy
(12:42):
of that, and he wrote back. Hesays, well, this is all very
good, but, that character wasdead.
And I said, no. And I think hehad confused what he had written
to what he had experienced inBerlin. And I I thought, well,
that's interesting. He, I thinkit was Bernard or or the person
(13:05):
who's referred to as thecommunist party leader in
goodbye to Berlin. So, anyway, Ienjoyed that kind of interaction
with him, which, of course,would not have been possible
with my with ChristopherMarlowe, whom I worked on at at
the beginning of my career.
But it was true, and I and Jimmakes the point in his in the
(13:27):
introduction about how unsettledIsherwood's reputation was
there. There was still a lot ofresentment from British writers
about Isherwood and Auden, and,and he hadn't gotten the kind of
of scholarly, investigation thatthat he deserved. That was just
beginning, and I'm just so happythat I was in on that. Although
(13:51):
my my becoming interested inissue would really had to do
with the fact that it, it was anact of love. Ted and I saw so
much of ourselves in A SingleMan that that, is really why I
wanted to to write the book.
But in any case, I was aware,you know, obviously, that that
(14:14):
issue would was becoming by theway, something about the book
that I think is interesting orthe reception of the book was
that it sold very, very well inhardback. So cheap hardback as
they were then, maybe $10, butit sold very, very well. And
Unger, thought that that wasgoing to be a harbinger that it
(14:38):
would sell much better inpaperback. So they issued a
paperback right away, but it didnot sell well in paperback. And
I think the reason for that isthat Isherwood, at that point,
was more of a cult figure.
He had devoted followers whowere gonna buy the hardback, but
(14:59):
there wasn't as much of theresiduals after that because the
the hardback fulfilled the needthen. So I I thought that said
something about his status atthe time that he had people who
probably many of the people whocame to the lectures who
would've bought anything aboutIsherwood, who really wanted to
(15:22):
know about him, but it wasn'tgonna extend too much away from
that them. The other thingabout, Isherwood was that he had
not received the kind ofattention that I was hoping to
provide at that point. AlanWiles' book was so good, but it
it was marketed exclusively toan academic audience, whereas my
(15:46):
book was, also, marketed to amore general audience.
Chris Freeman (15:53):
Claude, can you tell us about reading Single Man
for the first time? That wassuch a landmark book in
retrospect.
Claude Summers (16:00):
It was a landmark book in my life too
because, as I mentioned, my,late husband, Ted, we had just
moved in together in 1963. Andas I said, he he had so many
Isherwood books, including theAuden Isherwood plays and the
(16:20):
travel book and, things likethat. I had just finished my
freshman year. Ted was agraduate student. I just
finished my freshman year, and II had read, Goodbye to Berlin.
I think that was the only, novelof his I had read. But we had
heard in '64 of the publicationof A Single Man, and we were so
(16:41):
eager to get it that we actuallyread alternating passages to
each other because we wanted toto end it at the same time. That
was just an extraordinaryexperience for us, I think, and
we always actually, when we gotmarried, part of the ceremony
was a reference to two passages,from a single man, the passage
(17:06):
about Mrs. Trump and, and andthe other passage about that
that thing about the two of themtogether, each absorbed in their
books, but always aware of theirpresence.
Chris Freeman (17:21):
And so I think that gets me to one thing I
wanted to ask you about fromyour forward, Claude, to
Isherwood on writing, which isyou talk about the difficulties
of the gay movement, right, andand its public perception,
especially, the unspokenassumption in the early sixties
that homosexuality was not atopic to be mentioned in polite
(17:41):
society. And I think we see thatin the lectures still. And I
believe in the excerpt that Jimis going to share with us in a
moment, we'll get a little tinybit of a glimpse of that. But
can you take us into yourthinking about talking about
homosexuality in the sixties?Issuerood didn't publicly come
out until Kathleen and Frank,which was published in '71.
(18:04):
So ten years earlier is whenhe's giving these lectures.
Claude Summers (18:08):
That is the great paradox. On the one hand,
it was an absolute open secretabout Ishu and being gay because
he wrote about it so often. Andhe wrote about it very
differently from other writers,you know, even all the
conspirators or the memorial orgoodbye to Berlin or the last of
(18:30):
mister Norris. He had differentways of approaching them, but
they were not sensationalistic.You know, it was sort of comic
in The Last of Mister Norris.
It was not associated with the,quote, Christopher Isherwood
character, but readers certainlywould have known that his
interest in homosexuality wasquite different from most
(18:53):
writers. But at the same time,he could not speak openly about
it in relation to himself inthese lectures, partly because,
homosexuality was such a afraught topic at the time. I
mean, you know, Ted and I was atwere as open as as we could be,
(19:14):
and all of our friends in theliterary circles we we were
involved in knew that we weregay. And we knew that they knew
that we were gay, But it wouldhave been considered impolite
for them to make that assumptionclear that we really only talked
about being gay with other gaypeople at the time. That
(19:38):
gradually was breaking down.
But at the time, we were usingsome of the same, euphemisms and
so forth that Isherwood uses inhis in his lectures, you know,
talked a lot aboutindividualism, talked a lot
about, nonconformity. But theywere really coded words for ways
(20:01):
of talking about, homosexuality.
Chris Freeman (20:04):
And you're talking about your friend.
Right? Your friend.
Claude Summers (20:07):
Exactly. My friend, Don McCarty, has has
issue with says says at onepoint in the lectures. And and
it wasn't simply I mean, therewere real consequences too we
need to remember. I mean, peopleyou could get fired from even a
university professorship. Youcould get fired for all sorts of
(20:28):
of ways.
Gay people were really underattack, especially in the
fifties and very early sixties.Things got better in that
decade, and luckily, it was ableto culminate for Chris in being
able to write in 1971 andKathleen and Frank that, that he
was gay. But those weredifficult days to to to speak
(20:52):
openly. And as I think I said inthe foreword, homosexuality is
so important to his work thatyou have to talk about it. But
he talked about it in theseroundabout ways until finally at
I and I think the the passagethat, Jim's going to play that
he he somehow is freed at last.
Chris Freeman (21:13):
Right. Well, you know, it's interesting. When I
teach single man to, you know,undergraduates at the University
of Southern California, one ofthe things I asked them is, do
you think Kenny knows thatGeorge is gay? Do you think
George's coworkers andcolleagues know that George is
gay? I kind of think probablynot, actually.
(21:36):
You know, like, the secretary'sin the English department or
whatever. You know, he wouldwant them to think he's a
bachelor Englishman, and Kenny'sjust very curious about George's
life.
James J. Berg (21:46):
Right. And being an Englishman is enough of a
othering for him in his own lifethat he passes under that
umbrella of eccentricity. Right?
Chris Freeman (21:58):
Yep. That's right. Exactly.
Claude Summers (22:00):
And in addition, I think this Englishness is very
interesting because there thereused to be a joke. You know?
He's not gay. He's just English.And that allows, someone like
George to be eccentric, andpeople don't necessarily think
that he's gay.
Chris Freeman (22:18):
Very British. So, Jim, why don't you, set up for
us, especially the context ofthis, audio clip that you're
gonna share with us from one ofthe lectures. It's so great that
we have some recordings, youknow, because it really takes us
into the room.
James J. Berg (22:35):
Yeah. And his voice is so distinctive and, you
know, and so so very British andeccentric.
Chris Freeman (22:42):
And he's such a good speaker.
James J. Berg (22:44):
He's a he's a really good speaker when he has,
you know, planned remarks. Andthis is, an example of one of
his planned, talks. So this isChristopher Isherwood delivering
the honors convocation at theUniversity of Southern
California in 1974. It's veryclose to the transcript that we
(23:07):
published in Ishiwad on writingcalled The Last Lecture. And by
the time he gives this talk,he's working on Christopher and
his kind and his retelling ofhis life in England and Germany
in the nineteen thirties.
And so this is after he's comeout in Kathleen and Frank a
little bit before he gives hisfamous talk to the Modern
(23:29):
Language Association. He beginsby talking about how he sees
writers as outsiders, and that'sa pretty prevalent theme in the
lectures overall. And then hesays that being an outsider is
not the same as being aminority. And then he goes on to
claim, membership in a minoritygroup, and he says he is a
(23:50):
homosexual.
Christopher Isherwood (23:52):
Doctor Greenlee, ladies and gentlemen,
the title of my, remarks thisevening is my last lecture. A
long time ago in 1961 when I wasteaching at Santa Barbara, One
of my colleagues, Doctor. DouweSturman, had the idea that
(24:17):
everybody from time to timeshould give a last lecture. That
is to say, the last remarks thathe would make if he knew that
this was the last lecture. I'venever given this lecture since
that time, and what I'm going tosay tonight will be quite
different, but I did try to doit at the Librero Theatre
sometime in 1961.
(24:38):
Of course, if one goes on doingit, it becomes a form of Russian
Roulette. And finally, it is thelast lecture. I don't know how
much, often tonight I'm going totry it. Quite obviously a last
lecture should be short, and, itshould be a sort of report on
(24:59):
experience, that this particularindividual has had of life,
life, and so I'll try to runthrough a whole lot of things
that occurred to me, in a kindof scrambled order. Of course,
as a writer, I am like otherwriters to some, obviously to
(25:22):
greater or less degree, anoutsider in the sense that one
withdraws, as it were, from asense of community while one is
actually doing the writing andthe the kind of focusing on the
on the material, whatever it is.
And in this sense, one alwaysfeels, when one's writing, and
(25:45):
this of course applies to theother arts, that one is not
trying to be folksy. One is nottrying to say what the other
people want you to say. One istrying to say the most
individual thing you canpossibly think of to say,
because if you don't do that,you will not give anything that
is the least original. Your onlyhope is to be, as personal as
(26:09):
possible. What stuns you aftersaying some of these things is
that people write to you andsay, how did you know that about
me?
And you find out that what youthought was your innermost
secret is actually somethingthat an enormous number of
people share with you, which isreassuring. Being an outsider in
(26:33):
this sense, however, is not thesame at all as being being a
member of a minority. It sohappens that I belong to one of
the minorities, the leastpopular one. I'm a homosexual,
and, I've, of course had to faceup to this situation throughout
(26:55):
my whole life, and have thoughtabout it a good deal. But what
I'm going to say applies to allminorities, more or less.
The great thing that keepsoccurring to me again and again
is this, we members of anyminority, of course, are
fighting for legal rights ofsome kind. We want to have less
(27:20):
discrimination against us in oneway or another, and that's
perfectly legitimate in myopinion. However, I sometimes
think that we really legitimatein my opinion. However, I
sometimes think that we reallyshould not try, we really should
not expect, everybody to loveus. I think it would be very
much better if, one understoodthat there are people who simply
(27:40):
don't like you.
They have a prejudice. Now, ofcourse, in a one to one
relationship you can overcomethat, but in general I think one
should relax about it because Iwould very much rather that
people voice their prejudice ina kind of verbal way behind
one's back than they arrive oneday drag you out of the house
(28:01):
and take you to a concentrationcamp. So, the other thing which
is also, distressing to me, butis true, is that the minorities
do tend to be in competitionwith each other, and this
sometimes prevents us from beingfrom pulling together as much as
we should.
James J. Berg (28:23):
That's the last lecture, the first few minutes
of it.
Chris Freeman (28:28):
And he first gave that in 1961. That's the thing
that kinda blows my mind becausethese are the issues that in
1962 when he was writing SingleMan I think we know from the
diaries, he started Single Manaround February of nineteen
sixty two. He allows George,especially in the classroom, but
also in the highway drivingscene, to voice these thoughts
(28:50):
about minorities and majorities,about competition, about, you
know, what would later becoalition building. That, of
course, is the key to any kindof minority rights movement is
you have to have more numbersand more support. So it's
fascinating that he was thinkingat a very sophisticated and
ahead of his time kind of way.
(29:11):
Claude, does that strike you?You lived through these times.
Does that strike you also whenyou hear those kind of remarks
of being ahead of his time?
Claude Summers (29:19):
Well, I do, but I I don't think he gave this
last lecture in '61 or '2. Ithink isn't this from about '72?
James J. Berg (29:30):
This recording is from '74.
Chris Freeman (29:32):
This would be new material, Jim, for the earlier
version. Right? So this isRight. This is not the text from
'61. This is the text from '74.
James J. Berg (29:41):
Right. And this points up, you know, very
clearly what Claude talks aboutin the preface about Ishwad
hanging back from saying thingsopenly to his audience in his
first iteration of theselectures. And then finally
coming around to saying itopenly and talking about it
openly, in the nineteenseventies after he's come out in
(30:04):
print and after he's, you know,been working on Christopher and
his Kind, which is gonna be abig a really big splash. You
know, and what he said, it comesback to what I said at the very
beginning of our conversationhere. He wrote in Kathleen and
Frank that these talks he gavewere practice runs for the real
(30:27):
true autobiographies that he wasgoing to write in the late
sixties and early seventies.
So, what became, Kathleen andFrank, Christopher and his kind,
and my guru and his disciple.He's working through in the
lectures the issues that hebrings up in those,
autobiographies.
Chris Freeman (30:46):
Right. And he can, I guess, talk about those
things in fiction in single man,but he's not really ready to
talk about them in nonfiction ashimself at that time? Jim, just
looking at the table of contentsfor issue wood on writing, part
one is called a writer and hisworld. So that was that series
of speeches talks. The secondpart is the autobiography of my
books.
(31:07):
So it is kind of part of theimportant sequence of
Isherwood's self revelations.Claude, does that make sense to
you to think of it that way?
Claude Summers (31:16):
Absolutely. I think you're exactly right. The
time had caught up with issue oror the the time had changed
enough by the nineteen seventieswith, Stonewall. Suddenly, the
gay movement was not just afringe movement. It was a little
more mainstream.
It's also, attracting a lot ofpushback as well. But by the
(31:39):
seventies, the world had changedenough that that Isherwood was
able to be more open. And he, Ithink, came to relish his role
as a kind of courage teacher, asthis figure who who wasn't
particularly interested, Ithink, in policy or things like
that. But he knew that he had arole to play, and he was happy
(32:00):
to do it. This wonderful passagethat we just heard seems to me
to be the doing that.
You know, I think this is a veryimportant evolution in
Isherwood's life and in hisworks because he is thinking in
terms of Christopher and hiskind as well. That was one of
(32:20):
the things when he addressed theMLA in the next year in in '75.
I don't remember exactly what hesaid, and I hope somehow that
lecture is has been preservedsomewhere. But it was very
similar to that. And he wascourageous.
He was funny. He was a personwho had reached the point where
(32:44):
he felt he could say what hewanted to say. That is the
plenary address he gave at theMLA that year. It was very
important to the gay and lesbiancaucus, and he had reached a
point where his his reputationwas such that we were able to
convince the MLA that that heshould be invited to speak about
(33:07):
his work. He he was doing on alarger stage what he had done,
at the convocation at at USC.
James J. Berg (33:16):
Yeah. He makes a joke in one an interview, about
his talk at the MLA. Theinterviewer says something about
how significant his talk was,and he suggests that the talk
itself wasn't so significant. Itwas that the MLA had sat still
for it.
Claude Summers (33:36):
Well, they they did more than sit still.
James J. Berg (33:39):
I mean, I think that's one of the benefits of
the talks is that you hear himin a way where he's so very self
deprecating and just sort ofdeflecting praise and deflecting
his own. And and we know fromhis diaries that he has a very
solid understanding of his ownidentity, of his own worth, and
he he doesn't have any kind ofinsecurity in that way in terms
(34:01):
of the quality of his work, butin public. And he just is so
self deprecating. But the otherthing that I wanted to say about
that clip is just that chilling,chilling line about being woken
up in the middle of the nightand put into a concentration
camp. This is something that heknows quite well from his own,
(34:24):
life in Germany before the Naziscame and had the rise of the
Nazis.
And it's only about thirty orthirty five years before this is
exactly what Jews and gays wereexperiencing in Berlin and
throughout Europe.
Chris Freeman (34:37):
Why he left?
James J. Berg (34:38):
Right. And his own lover, Heinz, was arrested
and put in a concentration camp.And it wasn't until Christopher
and his kind that he wrotedirectly about it. Remember, he
wrote about it in a fictionalway and gave it to another
character in down there on avisit. In a male female couple
where the yeah.
(34:59):
Voldemort comes to, England isturned away, and that is
directly out of his experiencewith Heinz and is told from a
memoir perspective inChristopher and his kind. And
it's just such a, horrifyingecho of the kind of rhetoric
that we're hearing today in TheUnited States about LGBTQ people
(35:22):
and how the Christian right inthis country have been attacking
us, in so many states and in somany ways.
Chris Freeman (35:31):
It's interesting what he says about people having
prejudice and that noteverybody's going to like you,
especially in the context ofwhat, you know, people refer to
as cancel culture these days. Ithink there's so much that's far
reaching in these lectures. And,again, for me, the great value
of these lectures is thatthey're not the same as the
diaries. They're not the same asthe nonfiction. So it really is
(35:55):
heretofore mostly unknowninformation, and it's very rare
to get information on a writerwho died, what, forty years ago
to get this kind of treasuretrove of material.
It's a tribute to, you know, DonBacardi and the Issue Wood
Foundation and the Huntingtonfor this incredible archive that
we still, I feel like, have notmined for all the treasure
(36:17):
that's in it. Jim, do you wannagive us a couple of just closing
thoughts about working in thearchive and sort of what you are
most proud of or think is mostsignificant about issue with on
writing and especially this newexpanded edition?
James J. Berg (36:32):
Well, working in archives is something that you
don't get a lot of training inin graduate school, at least you
and I didn't. And one of thethings that you find is that
it's just good fun. And you findstuff in it that you weren't
looking for, that you werelooking for. It's what a friend
of mine once referred to as theparadox of shopping. Research is
(36:55):
an activity which may or may notresult in any findings.
So the fun of it is there. Andyou're right, the archive,
because Christopher Isherwoodkept so much and Don Bacardi
kept it pristine, that there'sso much there. What I found I
found stuff that was very, veryfragile like cassette tapes.
(37:16):
Remember them? That had beensitting, you know, in a file in
a box in Santa Monica with thesalt air for decades and was
able through, a grant topreserve some of those on CDs.
Remember CDs? That's the kind ofstuff that it seemed like nobody
had seen since the archive wasturned over to the Huntington.
(37:38):
It's such a wealth of material,and the best thing about it was
finding Isherwood's own words,either in prints or on tape, and
helping to bring those to abroader public. And Isherwood on
Writing has had a really strongrecord of sales, in libraries
(37:59):
and around the country. And Ithink this new paperback edition
is gonna really do well.
But I also wanna give a shoutout to somebody I didn't know at
the time who found in thearchive after I had thought I
put this piece to bed that hadfound this material. And as
(38:20):
Claude pointed out, the lectureends so abruptly that you just
figured there was another pageat least somewhere. And I think
it had been misfiled or hadn'tyet been filed or sorted when I
was there. And so it points outthat particularly for humanities
scholars that there is acommunity of scholarship and
(38:40):
that we benefit more fromcooperation and collaboration
than we do from working, byourselves even if the image of
the humanities scholar is byyourself in a library with a
book. But there's definitelymore value and more fun, I
think, to the work if you'redoing it with somebody that you
(39:01):
trust and you can bounce ideasoff of and who can find stuff
that you didn't find.
Chris Freeman (39:06):
We've certainly had that experience over a few
books ourselves, haven't we,Jim?
James J. Berg (39:10):
Over a couple of decades.
Chris Freeman (39:12):
Yes. Indeed. Well, I want to thank Claude
Summers for giving us his timefrom New Orleans this morning,
afternoon, I guess, for him.And, Jim, it's always wonderful
to hear you talk about your workon Isherwood, our work together,
but also I'm so proud of you forthis. It's such an important
book, and I think this newmaterial really does bring us
(39:33):
even closer to single man as thesingular accomplishment that it
is.
So it's great that theUniversity of Minnesota is
supporting you to bring out thisnew material and to bring it out
in paper, and I think maybe asan ebook also, I hope. So I
think that's it for us. Thankyou, Claude. Thank you, Jim.
Thank you, University ofMinnesota Press.
(39:55):
Thank
Christopher Isherwood (39:58):
you.
These lectures were essentially lost to history
or filed away deep in an archiveuntil you publish this book.
Claude Summers (00:14):
My becoming interested in Isherwood really
had to do with the fact that Tedand I saw so much of ourselves
in A Single Man.
James J. Berg (00:25):
Christopher Isherwood kept so much, and Don
Bacardi kept it pristine thatthere's so much there.
Chris Freeman (00:34):
Hello, and welcome to our conversation
about Christopher Isherwood onthe occasion of the new and
expanded edition of Isherwood onwriting coming out this fall
from the University of MinnesotaPress edited by James Berg with
a forward by Claude Summers. I'mChris Freeman, and I'm here with
both Jim and Claude to have aconversation about Christopher
(00:57):
Isherwood, Isherwood on writing,and other exciting related
issues. Jim Berg and I have beenworking on Christopher Isherwood
for quite a long time. My bestcalculation is the same amount
of time from the time thatChristopher Isherwood moved to
Los Angeles and then publishedSingle Man, about twenty five
years. And Claude Summers hasbeen working on Isherwood, even
(01:19):
longer than that.
Jim Berg is also a developmentaleditor who works with academic
authors, helping them to bringtheir work to publication, and
he and I have collaborated onseveral books about issue with
including the issue withcentury, which won the Lambda
Literary Award back in February.Claude Summers is Emeritus
professor from University ofMichigan Dearborn and is a real
(01:41):
pioneer in gay and lesbianstudies, although he started his
work as a renaissance andseventeenth century scholar. But
in the late seventies, he wasworking on Christopher Isherwood
already and had, in fact, beenone of the cofounders of the gay
and lesbian caucus for themodern language association in
the early nineteen seventies.And we'll be talking about that
a little bit today becauseIsherwood was one of their first
(02:02):
keynote speakers. So I wannastart, Jim, by asking you to
tell us a little bit more aboutthe Isherwood on writing book as
an archival project and thenwhat's new in this expanded
edition.
James J. Berg (02:16):
Okay. Great. Thanks, Chris. I first saw
mention of Isherwood's lecturesin the biography he wrote of his
parents, Kathleen and Frank,which was published in the early
nineteen seventies. As I say inthe book, I marked that passage
long before I wrote a word aboutIsherwood.
Then when the Huntington Libraryin California acquired
(02:37):
Isherwood's papers many yearslater, I was one of the lucky
first scholars to see what wasactually in the collection. And
I found cassette tapes andtranscripts of many of the
lectures. I was awarded thefirst Christopher Ischwood
Fellowship at the Huntington toresearch a project on the
lectures and was given a grantfrom the Minnesota Humanities
(02:57):
Commission to publish withUniversity of Minnesota Press.
Minnesota, at that time, hadstarted publishing paperback
editions of Isherwood's novels,and the director, Doug Armato,
has done a great job ofnurturing Isherwood's legacy and
scholarship. So for this newedition, part of the interest is
simply that this is the firsttime the book has been in paper,
(03:20):
but it also includes somematerial that came to light
after the original publication,including two lectures from 1965
at at the University ofCalifornia Los Angeles in which
he talks about a single man anda meeting by the river.
Chris Freeman (03:36):
And, of course, now we recognize that a single
man is arguably the mostimportant book that Isherwood
wrote. So having this newmaterial really is, noteworthy.
James J. Berg (03:47):
Yeah. And he, he talks a little bit about how the
book came to be and what hisintentions were for the book.
And I think some of that is kindof surprising, even for those of
us who have read A Single Man anumber of times, they've read a
lot of the scholarship about it.He tells a story that we've
heard that you and I, Chris andClaude, you probably have heard
(04:10):
before about how he startedwriting A Single Man and it was
originally gonna be called TheEnglish Woman. Says he was
recently very much taken withWilla Cather's work.
To be specific, he says, mymortal enemy, a lost lady, the
song of the lark, and theprofessor's house. And then he
says, and in the way that onealways longs to do something one
(04:34):
can't, I thought how wonderfulto write a very calm, sort of
clear, uncomplicated,exceedingly simple story about a
character, a single person andher life. And then he starts
writing, an English woman andthen changes focus to be about
an English man, the Georgecharacter as we know him now.
(04:54):
And he talks about George as aperson representing an almost
laboratory specimen of middleage. He began to think what an
interesting thing middle age isand how peculiar and how most
people think it's a period ofcalm in a very beautiful, in a
rather boring way as long as onedoesn't have anything to do with
(05:14):
it.
When as a matter of fact, it'sprobably the most protean of all
ages. That's to say part of thetime when it's absolutely senile
and at other moments monstrouslyjuvenile. And it's a great age
for committing indiscretions ofall kinds. This came to me with
considerable force because thenight before, I'd happened in
(05:34):
the middle of the night to goswimming in the ocean, which led
to various situations which areneither here nor there. I love
that that linking of hispersonal life to the the very
famous and provocative scene ofGeorge swimming with his student
Kenny in the ocean.
Chris Freeman (05:53):
The ill advised swim in the ocean when he nearly
drowns and or freezes to deathbecause it's almost Christmas.
James J. Berg (05:59):
Right.
Claude Summers (06:00):
It it was an ill advised swim, but it was also, a
baptism of the surf. And I thinkthat that turns out to be well
considered, in terms of whatwhat happens afterwards. It is
so marvelous to have these newcomments that Isherwood made
(06:20):
about a single band. Because asyou say, we've come to see it as
really Isherwood's masterpiece.And somehow, without this new
material, that last lecture inthe first edition cuts off so
abruptly.
And having the new edition justadds immeasurably to it. So, I
(06:42):
am so happy that that that hasbeen added to it.
James J. Berg (06:47):
Yeah. It's so fascinating to hear him talk.
And we'll share an audio cliplater of him giving his what he
called his last lecture. Thereare a couple of other points
about a single man that he talksabout that are pretty key to the
book, but also key to the book'saudience. Right?
So he talks about his character,George, as a homosexual, which
(07:10):
is pretty significant in 1964.And he talks about, you know,
George being very involved inhis own life as a middle aged
man and to a certain degree,with the business of being And
he uses the phrase other thanthe others, which you may
recognize from the German daysof the nineteen thirties. And
(07:32):
he's very isolated from theothers. And he goes on to say,
that's why he's a homosexual.He's a foreigner and he also
belongs to another kind ofculture in some way.
That's, of course, part of beinga foreigner. He also has, by
virtue of being homosexual, theadded artistic advantage that
even the death of the personthat he was most attached to is
(07:53):
sort of socially unacceptable. Imean, he can't have an accepted
place in society even as awidower, so to speak. But on the
other hand, he is in factaccepted by society and this is,
of course, the paradox of sociallife and is even quite looked up
to and is regarded as a sort ofserious person and as a possible
(08:14):
source of wisdom. I find hisasides so fascinating sometimes.
And he says, I still feelconsiderable satisfaction over
this book, but perhaps that'llpass. And then the last thing
that I'll share is about one ofthe major questions that's that
readers have at the end of thebook is whether, spoiler alert,
(08:36):
George dies. And this is what hesays. The book is written on a
very familiar concept of a dayequaling a lifetime. And in a
certain sense, you have the agesof man all revealed in one.
And since all life ends indeath, there has to be a death
included. Now some people havesaid it would have been much
better to have had a symbolicdeath. But what I did in fact
(09:00):
was to have a kind of optionaldeath because I phrase this very
carefully in such a way that Ido not actually say that he
actually died on that particularnight or even that he was going
to die. And I think that's themost we have from Isherwood at
this time, about what is, aswe've said, his most significant
(09:21):
work perhaps and especially hismost significant American work.
Chris Freeman (09:26):
And for me, this comes down to the different
levels of what we know aboutChristopher Isherwood. We know
from the lectures certainthings. And, Jim, these lectures
were essentially lost to historyor filed away deep in an archive
until you publish this book. Soto me, they're absolutely
essential lens into Isherwood'skind of theories of writing, but
(09:51):
also he talks a lot about whathe has read, his approach to
reading. He talks a little bitabout politics, being a member
of the ACLU, and things likethat.
And, of course, he does not talka lot about being gay. And, you
know, another place where weknow so much about Isherwood
that we didn't know, you know, afew years ago from the archive
(10:12):
is from his diaries. So forexample, in the, lectures, he
doesn't really talk much aboutVirginia Woolf, but we know from
the diaries that missus Dallowaywas a key, source or
inspiration, I guess you couldsay. Claude, you've been working
on Isherwood since the latenineteen seventies, and we knew
almost nothing about him exceptwhat he had published and a few
(10:34):
interviews. So how is it for youto look back and think about
when you first wrote you wrote amonograph on him that was
published around 1980.
Isherwood was still alive. Sohow is it for you to think about
how much more we know now thanwe knew then?
Claude Summers (10:51):
I mean, we obviously know much, much more,
thankfully, to writing onIsherwood, among other things.
But I was very fortunate in thatmy late husband who died, just a
year ago, so still pretty raw.But, he had corresponded with
Isherwood when we first met inthe nineteen sixties. And on
(11:14):
several occasions, we then wereinvited to visit Chris and Don
in Santa Monica One Year after Ithink it would have been 1972
after the MLA, which was held inSan Francisco, we came down.
And, of course, they werecharming, charming people, and
(11:36):
Isha would talk so freely abouthimself, that we were really
sort of surprised.
Although at the time I waswriting the book, there wasn't
as much nearly as muchscholarship as there is now.
There had been a book by AlanWild, which was a very good
book. I mean, it still is a verygood book. There was Carolyn
(11:59):
Heilbron's little writers andtheir work pamphlet, which which
was good. What I found sointeresting about working on
Isherwood is that it was thefirst time I had worked on a
living writer.
So I was aware that there were,in some ways, it's much easier
to write about a dead writerbecause they can't, they're not
(12:20):
gonna say anything about it. Itwas interesting that issue
would, he was scrupulous aboutnot wanting to say anything that
would influence any of mywriting about him. And at one
point while I was writing aboutit, I had mentioned, something
about a character in Goodbye toBerlin. And I'd sent him a copy
(12:42):
of that, and he wrote back. Hesays, well, this is all very
good, but, that character wasdead.
And I said, no. And I think hehad confused what he had written
to what he had experienced inBerlin. And I I thought, well,
that's interesting. He, I thinkit was Bernard or or the person
(13:05):
who's referred to as thecommunist party leader in
goodbye to Berlin. So, anyway, Ienjoyed that kind of interaction
with him, which, of course,would not have been possible
with my with ChristopherMarlowe, whom I worked on at at
the beginning of my career.
But it was true, and I and Jimmakes the point in his in the
(13:27):
introduction about how unsettledIsherwood's reputation was
there. There was still a lot ofresentment from British writers
about Isherwood and Auden, and,and he hadn't gotten the kind of
of scholarly, investigation thatthat he deserved. That was just
beginning, and I'm just so happythat I was in on that. Although
(13:51):
my my becoming interested inissue would really had to do
with the fact that it, it was anact of love. Ted and I saw so
much of ourselves in A SingleMan that that, is really why I
wanted to to write the book.
But in any case, I was aware,you know, obviously, that that
(14:14):
issue would was becoming by theway, something about the book
that I think is interesting orthe reception of the book was
that it sold very, very well inhardback. So cheap hardback as
they were then, maybe $10, butit sold very, very well. And
Unger, thought that that wasgoing to be a harbinger that it
(14:38):
would sell much better inpaperback. So they issued a
paperback right away, but it didnot sell well in paperback. And
I think the reason for that isthat Isherwood, at that point,
was more of a cult figure.
He had devoted followers whowere gonna buy the hardback, but
(14:59):
there wasn't as much of theresiduals after that because the
the hardback fulfilled the needthen. So I I thought that said
something about his status atthe time that he had people who
probably many of the people whocame to the lectures who
would've bought anything aboutIsherwood, who really wanted to
(15:22):
know about him, but it wasn'tgonna extend too much away from
that them. The other thingabout, Isherwood was that he had
not received the kind ofattention that I was hoping to
provide at that point. AlanWiles' book was so good, but it
it was marketed exclusively toan academic audience, whereas my
(15:46):
book was, also, marketed to amore general audience.
Chris Freeman (15:53):
Claude, can you tell us about reading Single Man
for the first time? That wassuch a landmark book in
retrospect.
Claude Summers (16:00):
It was a landmark book in my life too
because, as I mentioned, my,late husband, Ted, we had just
moved in together in 1963. Andas I said, he he had so many
Isherwood books, including theAuden Isherwood plays and the
(16:20):
travel book and, things likethat. I had just finished my
freshman year. Ted was agraduate student. I just
finished my freshman year, and II had read, Goodbye to Berlin.
I think that was the only, novelof his I had read. But we had
heard in '64 of the publicationof A Single Man, and we were so
(16:41):
eager to get it that we actuallyread alternating passages to
each other because we wanted toto end it at the same time. That
was just an extraordinaryexperience for us, I think, and
we always actually, when we gotmarried, part of the ceremony
was a reference to two passages,from a single man, the passage
(17:06):
about Mrs. Trump and, and andthe other passage about that
that thing about the two of themtogether, each absorbed in their
books, but always aware of theirpresence.
Chris Freeman (17:21):
And so I think that gets me to one thing I
wanted to ask you about fromyour forward, Claude, to
Isherwood on writing, which isyou talk about the difficulties
of the gay movement, right, andand its public perception,
especially, the unspokenassumption in the early sixties
that homosexuality was not atopic to be mentioned in polite
(17:41):
society. And I think we see thatin the lectures still. And I
believe in the excerpt that Jimis going to share with us in a
moment, we'll get a little tinybit of a glimpse of that. But
can you take us into yourthinking about talking about
homosexuality in the sixties?Issuerood didn't publicly come
out until Kathleen and Frank,which was published in '71.
(18:04):
So ten years earlier is whenhe's giving these lectures.
Claude Summers (18:08):
That is the great paradox. On the one hand,
it was an absolute open secretabout Ishu and being gay because
he wrote about it so often. Andhe wrote about it very
differently from other writers,you know, even all the
conspirators or the memorial orgoodbye to Berlin or the last of
(18:30):
mister Norris. He had differentways of approaching them, but
they were not sensationalistic.You know, it was sort of comic
in The Last of Mister Norris.
It was not associated with the,quote, Christopher Isherwood
character, but readers certainlywould have known that his
interest in homosexuality wasquite different from most
(18:53):
writers. But at the same time,he could not speak openly about
it in relation to himself inthese lectures, partly because,
homosexuality was such a afraught topic at the time. I
mean, you know, Ted and I was atwere as open as as we could be,
(19:14):
and all of our friends in theliterary circles we we were
involved in knew that we weregay. And we knew that they knew
that we were gay, But it wouldhave been considered impolite
for them to make that assumptionclear that we really only talked
about being gay with other gaypeople at the time. That
(19:38):
gradually was breaking down.
But at the time, we were usingsome of the same, euphemisms and
so forth that Isherwood uses inhis in his lectures, you know,
talked a lot aboutindividualism, talked a lot
about, nonconformity. But theywere really coded words for ways
(20:01):
of talking about, homosexuality.
Chris Freeman (20:04):
And you're talking about your friend.
Right? Your friend.
Claude Summers (20:07):
Exactly. My friend, Don McCarty, has has
issue with says says at onepoint in the lectures. And and
it wasn't simply I mean, therewere real consequences too we
need to remember. I mean, peopleyou could get fired from even a
university professorship. Youcould get fired for all sorts of
(20:28):
of ways.
Gay people were really underattack, especially in the
fifties and very early sixties.Things got better in that
decade, and luckily, it was ableto culminate for Chris in being
able to write in 1971 andKathleen and Frank that, that he
was gay. But those weredifficult days to to to speak
(20:52):
openly. And as I think I said inthe foreword, homosexuality is
so important to his work thatyou have to talk about it. But
he talked about it in theseroundabout ways until finally at
I and I think the the passagethat, Jim's going to play that
he he somehow is freed at last.
Chris Freeman (21:13):
Right. Well, you know, it's interesting. When I
teach single man to, you know,undergraduates at the University
of Southern California, one ofthe things I asked them is, do
you think Kenny knows thatGeorge is gay? Do you think
George's coworkers andcolleagues know that George is
gay? I kind of think probablynot, actually.
(21:36):
You know, like, the secretary'sin the English department or
whatever. You know, he wouldwant them to think he's a
bachelor Englishman, and Kenny'sjust very curious about George's
life.
James J. Berg (21:46):
Right. And being an Englishman is enough of a
othering for him in his own lifethat he passes under that
umbrella of eccentricity. Right?
Chris Freeman (21:58):
Yep. That's right. Exactly.
Claude Summers (22:00):
And in addition, I think this Englishness is very
interesting because there thereused to be a joke. You know?
He's not gay. He's just English.And that allows, someone like
George to be eccentric, andpeople don't necessarily think
that he's gay.
Chris Freeman (22:18):
Very British. So, Jim, why don't you, set up for
us, especially the context ofthis, audio clip that you're
gonna share with us from one ofthe lectures. It's so great that
we have some recordings, youknow, because it really takes us
into the room.
James J. Berg (22:35):
Yeah. And his voice is so distinctive and, you
know, and so so very British andeccentric.
Chris Freeman (22:42):
And he's such a good speaker.
James J. Berg (22:44):
He's a he's a really good speaker when he has,
you know, planned remarks. Andthis is, an example of one of
his planned, talks. So this isChristopher Isherwood delivering
the honors convocation at theUniversity of Southern
California in 1974. It's veryclose to the transcript that we
(23:07):
published in Ishiwad on writingcalled The Last Lecture. And by
the time he gives this talk,he's working on Christopher and
his kind and his retelling ofhis life in England and Germany
in the nineteen thirties.
And so this is after he's comeout in Kathleen and Frank a
little bit before he gives hisfamous talk to the Modern
(23:29):
Language Association. He beginsby talking about how he sees
writers as outsiders, and that'sa pretty prevalent theme in the
lectures overall. And then hesays that being an outsider is
not the same as being aminority. And then he goes on to
claim, membership in a minoritygroup, and he says he is a
(23:50):
homosexual.
Christopher Isherwood (23:52):
Doctor Greenlee, ladies and gentlemen,
the title of my, remarks thisevening is my last lecture. A
long time ago in 1961 when I wasteaching at Santa Barbara, One
of my colleagues, Doctor. DouweSturman, had the idea that
(24:17):
everybody from time to timeshould give a last lecture. That
is to say, the last remarks thathe would make if he knew that
this was the last lecture. I'venever given this lecture since
that time, and what I'm going tosay tonight will be quite
different, but I did try to doit at the Librero Theatre
sometime in 1961.
(24:38):
Of course, if one goes on doingit, it becomes a form of Russian
Roulette. And finally, it is thelast lecture. I don't know how
much, often tonight I'm going totry it. Quite obviously a last
lecture should be short, and, itshould be a sort of report on
(24:59):
experience, that this particularindividual has had of life,
life, and so I'll try to runthrough a whole lot of things
that occurred to me, in a kindof scrambled order. Of course,
as a writer, I am like otherwriters to some, obviously to
(25:22):
greater or less degree, anoutsider in the sense that one
withdraws, as it were, from asense of community while one is
actually doing the writing andthe the kind of focusing on the
on the material, whatever it is.
And in this sense, one alwaysfeels, when one's writing, and
(25:45):
this of course applies to theother arts, that one is not
trying to be folksy. One is nottrying to say what the other
people want you to say. One istrying to say the most
individual thing you canpossibly think of to say,
because if you don't do that,you will not give anything that
is the least original. Your onlyhope is to be, as personal as
(26:09):
possible. What stuns you aftersaying some of these things is
that people write to you andsay, how did you know that about
me?
And you find out that what youthought was your innermost
secret is actually somethingthat an enormous number of
people share with you, which isreassuring. Being an outsider in
(26:33):
this sense, however, is not thesame at all as being being a
member of a minority. It sohappens that I belong to one of
the minorities, the leastpopular one. I'm a homosexual,
and, I've, of course had to faceup to this situation throughout
(26:55):
my whole life, and have thoughtabout it a good deal. But what
I'm going to say applies to allminorities, more or less.
The great thing that keepsoccurring to me again and again
is this, we members of anyminority, of course, are
fighting for legal rights ofsome kind. We want to have less
(27:20):
discrimination against us in oneway or another, and that's
perfectly legitimate in myopinion. However, I sometimes
think that we really legitimatein my opinion. However, I
sometimes think that we reallyshould not try, we really should
not expect, everybody to loveus. I think it would be very
much better if, one understoodthat there are people who simply
(27:40):
don't like you.
They have a prejudice. Now, ofcourse, in a one to one
relationship you can overcomethat, but in general I think one
should relax about it because Iwould very much rather that
people voice their prejudice ina kind of verbal way behind
one's back than they arrive oneday drag you out of the house
(28:01):
and take you to a concentrationcamp. So, the other thing which
is also, distressing to me, butis true, is that the minorities
do tend to be in competitionwith each other, and this
sometimes prevents us from beingfrom pulling together as much as
we should.
James J. Berg (28:23):
That's the last lecture, the first few minutes
of it.
Chris Freeman (28:28):
And he first gave that in 1961. That's the thing
that kinda blows my mind becausethese are the issues that in
1962 when he was writing SingleMan I think we know from the
diaries, he started Single Manaround February of nineteen
sixty two. He allows George,especially in the classroom, but
also in the highway drivingscene, to voice these thoughts
(28:50):
about minorities and majorities,about competition, about, you
know, what would later becoalition building. That, of
course, is the key to any kindof minority rights movement is
you have to have more numbersand more support. So it's
fascinating that he was thinkingat a very sophisticated and
ahead of his time kind of way.
(29:11):
Claude, does that strike you?You lived through these times.
Does that strike you also whenyou hear those kind of remarks
of being ahead of his time?
Claude Summers (29:19):
Well, I do, but I I don't think he gave this
last lecture in '61 or '2. Ithink isn't this from about '72?
James J. Berg (29:30):
This recording is from '74.
Chris Freeman (29:32):
This would be new material, Jim, for the earlier
version. Right? So this isRight. This is not the text from
'61. This is the text from '74.
James J. Berg (29:41):
Right. And this points up, you know, very
clearly what Claude talks aboutin the preface about Ishwad
hanging back from saying thingsopenly to his audience in his
first iteration of theselectures. And then finally
coming around to saying itopenly and talking about it
openly, in the nineteenseventies after he's come out in
(30:04):
print and after he's, you know,been working on Christopher and
his Kind, which is gonna be abig a really big splash. You
know, and what he said, it comesback to what I said at the very
beginning of our conversationhere. He wrote in Kathleen and
Frank that these talks he gavewere practice runs for the real
(30:27):
true autobiographies that he wasgoing to write in the late
sixties and early seventies.
So, what became, Kathleen andFrank, Christopher and his kind,
and my guru and his disciple.He's working through in the
lectures the issues that hebrings up in those,
autobiographies.
Chris Freeman (30:46):
Right. And he can, I guess, talk about those
things in fiction in single man,but he's not really ready to
talk about them in nonfiction ashimself at that time? Jim, just
looking at the table of contentsfor issue wood on writing, part
one is called a writer and hisworld. So that was that series
of speeches talks. The secondpart is the autobiography of my
books.
(31:07):
So it is kind of part of theimportant sequence of
Isherwood's self revelations.Claude, does that make sense to
you to think of it that way?
Claude Summers (31:16):
Absolutely. I think you're exactly right. The
time had caught up with issue oror the the time had changed
enough by the nineteen seventieswith, Stonewall. Suddenly, the
gay movement was not just afringe movement. It was a little
more mainstream.
It's also, attracting a lot ofpushback as well. But by the
(31:39):
seventies, the world had changedenough that that Isherwood was
able to be more open. And he, Ithink, came to relish his role
as a kind of courage teacher, asthis figure who who wasn't
particularly interested, Ithink, in policy or things like
that. But he knew that he had arole to play, and he was happy
(32:00):
to do it. This wonderful passagethat we just heard seems to me
to be the doing that.
You know, I think this is a veryimportant evolution in
Isherwood's life and in hisworks because he is thinking in
terms of Christopher and hiskind as well. That was one of
(32:20):
the things when he addressed theMLA in the next year in in '75.
I don't remember exactly what hesaid, and I hope somehow that
lecture is has been preservedsomewhere. But it was very
similar to that. And he wascourageous.
He was funny. He was a personwho had reached the point where
(32:44):
he felt he could say what hewanted to say. That is the
plenary address he gave at theMLA that year. It was very
important to the gay and lesbiancaucus, and he had reached a
point where his his reputationwas such that we were able to
convince the MLA that that heshould be invited to speak about
(33:07):
his work. He he was doing on alarger stage what he had done,
at the convocation at at USC.
James J. Berg (33:16):
Yeah. He makes a joke in one an interview, about
his talk at the MLA. Theinterviewer says something about
how significant his talk was,and he suggests that the talk
itself wasn't so significant. Itwas that the MLA had sat still
for it.
Claude Summers (33:36):
Well, they they did more than sit still.
James J. Berg (33:39):
I mean, I think that's one of the benefits of
the talks is that you hear himin a way where he's so very self
deprecating and just sort ofdeflecting praise and deflecting
his own. And and we know fromhis diaries that he has a very
solid understanding of his ownidentity, of his own worth, and
he he doesn't have any kind ofinsecurity in that way in terms
(34:01):
of the quality of his work, butin public. And he just is so
self deprecating. But the otherthing that I wanted to say about
that clip is just that chilling,chilling line about being woken
up in the middle of the nightand put into a concentration
camp. This is something that heknows quite well from his own,
(34:24):
life in Germany before the Naziscame and had the rise of the
Nazis.
And it's only about thirty orthirty five years before this is
exactly what Jews and gays wereexperiencing in Berlin and
throughout Europe.
Chris Freeman (34:37):
Why he left?
James J. Berg (34:38):
Right. And his own lover, Heinz, was arrested
and put in a concentration camp.And it wasn't until Christopher
and his kind that he wrotedirectly about it. Remember, he
wrote about it in a fictionalway and gave it to another
character in down there on avisit. In a male female couple
where the yeah.
(34:59):
Voldemort comes to, England isturned away, and that is
directly out of his experiencewith Heinz and is told from a
memoir perspective inChristopher and his kind. And
it's just such a, horrifyingecho of the kind of rhetoric
that we're hearing today in TheUnited States about LGBTQ people
(35:22):
and how the Christian right inthis country have been attacking
us, in so many states and in somany ways.
Chris Freeman (35:31):
It's interesting what he says about people having
prejudice and that noteverybody's going to like you,
especially in the context ofwhat, you know, people refer to
as cancel culture these days. Ithink there's so much that's far
reaching in these lectures. And,again, for me, the great value
of these lectures is thatthey're not the same as the
diaries. They're not the same asthe nonfiction. So it really is
(35:55):
heretofore mostly unknowninformation, and it's very rare
to get information on a writerwho died, what, forty years ago
to get this kind of treasuretrove of material.
It's a tribute to, you know, DonBacardi and the Issue Wood
Foundation and the Huntingtonfor this incredible archive that
we still, I feel like, have notmined for all the treasure
(36:17):
that's in it. Jim, do you wannagive us a couple of just closing
thoughts about working in thearchive and sort of what you are
most proud of or think is mostsignificant about issue with on
writing and especially this newexpanded edition?
James J. Berg (36:32):
Well, working in archives is something that you
don't get a lot of training inin graduate school, at least you
and I didn't. And one of thethings that you find is that
it's just good fun. And you findstuff in it that you weren't
looking for, that you werelooking for. It's what a friend
of mine once referred to as theparadox of shopping. Research is
(36:55):
an activity which may or may notresult in any findings.
So the fun of it is there. Andyou're right, the archive,
because Christopher Isherwoodkept so much and Don Bacardi
kept it pristine, that there'sso much there. What I found I
found stuff that was very, veryfragile like cassette tapes.
(37:16):
Remember them? That had beensitting, you know, in a file in
a box in Santa Monica with thesalt air for decades and was
able through, a grant topreserve some of those on CDs.
Remember CDs? That's the kind ofstuff that it seemed like nobody
had seen since the archive wasturned over to the Huntington.
(37:38):
It's such a wealth of material,and the best thing about it was
finding Isherwood's own words,either in prints or on tape, and
helping to bring those to abroader public. And Isherwood on
Writing has had a really strongrecord of sales, in libraries
(37:59):
and around the country. And Ithink this new paperback edition
is gonna really do well.
But I also wanna give a shoutout to somebody I didn't know at
the time who found in thearchive after I had thought I
put this piece to bed that hadfound this material. And as
(38:20):
Claude pointed out, the lectureends so abruptly that you just
figured there was another pageat least somewhere. And I think
it had been misfiled or hadn'tyet been filed or sorted when I
was there. And so it points outthat particularly for humanities
scholars that there is acommunity of scholarship and
(38:40):
that we benefit more fromcooperation and collaboration
than we do from working, byourselves even if the image of
the humanities scholar is byyourself in a library with a
book. But there's definitelymore value and more fun, I
think, to the work if you'redoing it with somebody that you
(39:01):
trust and you can bounce ideasoff of and who can find stuff
that you didn't find.
Chris Freeman (39:06):
We've certainly had that experience over a few
books ourselves, haven't we,Jim?
James J. Berg (39:10):
Over a couple of decades.
Chris Freeman (39:12):
Yes. Indeed. Well, I want to thank Claude
Summers for giving us his timefrom New Orleans this morning,
afternoon, I guess, for him.And, Jim, it's always wonderful
to hear you talk about your workon Isherwood, our work together,
but also I'm so proud of you forthis. It's such an important
book, and I think this newmaterial really does bring us
(39:33):
even closer to single man as thesingular accomplishment that it
is.
So it's great that theUniversity of Minnesota is
supporting you to bring out thisnew material and to bring it out
in paper, and I think maybe asan ebook also, I hope. So I
think that's it for us. Thankyou, Claude. Thank you, Jim.
Thank you, University ofMinnesota Press.
(39:55):
Thank
Christopher Isherwood (39:58):
you.
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