Liberation: Diaries, Volume Three, 1970-1983 by Christopher Isherwood (PDF)

Description

Candid and revealing, the final volume of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries brings together his thoughts on life, love, and death. Beginning in the period of his life when he wrote Kathleen and Frank, his first intensely personal book, Liberation: Diaries 1970–1983 intimately and wittily records Isherwood’s immersion in the 1970s art scene in Los Angeles, New York, and London—a world peopled by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and David Hockney, as well as his Broadway writing career, which brought him in touch with John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, John Voight, Elton John, David Bowie, Joan Didion, and Armistead Maupin. With a preface by Edmund White, Liberation is a rich and engaging final memoir by one of the most celebrated writers of his generation.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Compulsively readable…a testament to his connections to the literati and Hollywood glitterati…a fitting finale to a fascinating life” — Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“Alongside sharp and often very funny assessments of those Isherwood knew, the diaries also record a wealth of domestic detail…giving a richly textured sense of what it was like to live in California during this period of social change.” — The Spectator“Christopher Isherwood continues to perform open-heart surgery on himself, without anaesthestic, and with one beady eye on the audience…a rare treat.” — The Guardian“Isherwood proves a captivating, honest diarist, his entries rich with reflection and gossip.” — Booklist“Unique literary archives…Ultimately LIBERATION is a real-time gallery of men in love at a time when the world was nowhere near catching up with them.” — Huffington Post“But the gold mine of Isherwood work has been the posthumous publication of three huge diaries amounting to almost 3,000 pages. Comprehensively and lovingly edited and annotated by Katherine Bucknell, these volumes give us the most detailed portrait of the writer…” — San Francisco Chronicle From the Back Cover In this final volume of Christopher Isherwood’s diaries, the celebrated writer greets advancing age with poignant humor and an unquenchable appetite for the new. Isherwood deepens his study of Hinduism, writes his final books, and immerses himself in the vibrant creative scenes of the 1970s. With his long-term companion, Don Bachardy, Isherwood delves into the art worlds of Los Angeles, New York, and London, where he meets Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, and Hockney. Collaborating with Bachardy on scripts for Broadway and Hollywood, he encounters John Huston, Merchant and Ivory, John Travolta, David Bowie, Jon Voight, Armistead Maupin, Elton John, and Joan Didion. This volume is a densely populated human comedy, sketched with both ruthlessness and benevolence against the background of the Vietnam War, the energy crisis, and the Nixon, Carter, and Reagan White Houses. The final installment of Isherwood’s masterwork reveals a man candidly fearful of his approaching death, and yet engaged in the vitality and energy of daily life. About the Author Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) was one of the most prominent writers of his generation. He is the author of many works of fiction, including All the Conspirators, The Memorial, Mr. Norris Changes Trains, and Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaret was based, as well as works of nonfiction and biography. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Having now read Isherwood’s diaries, except for his Lost Years, which is a reconstruction of his life from 1945-1951, I feel, in a sense, that I’ve lived life alongside him. Yes, I believe I can say I’ve lived a parallel life of voyeurism as I’ve read all three diaries (2,681 pages), covering the greater part of his life, right up to his death in 1986. I’ve more or less lived in his house with him, sometimes sharing his bed with some of the (apparently) sexiest men in the world, including his long-time companion, Don Bachardy. I’ve struggled through his writing, as he articulates what he fears are certain problems taking place in the manuscript he is working on at the time. I’ve been to every party he has, where he often, by his own admission, drinks too much—so much so, in fact, that he can’t remember exactly what has happened or whom he’s insulted. I’ve accompanied him every time he strolls along the beach in Santa Monica, California, where he lives, or squabbles with local residents or fusses over a neighbor’s nocturnally barking dog or rascally kids who have no respect for the private bridge that somehow sets their property apart from others. I am exposed to every opinionated thought he holds about other writers, artists, agents, actors, directors, composers or religious leader, and their work. Oh, yes, I’ve suffered through his anguish over not being able to participate in Hinduism as authentically as he wishes, almost daily writing something about his Swami or the monastery or his inability to meditate properly. I’ve sat on the toilet with him as he struggles with the indelicacies of an aging body. I’ve noted his weight, daily, as he records it in his diary and stews over how he can lose even more, while at the same time ingesting great quantities of empty calories found in drink and rich food. I sympathize yet am a bit impatient with his concern over his fading looks. Photos of his youth indicate a stunning gentleman, who, besides being smart, is handsome, and often wins over any body he indeed decides to win over. So as he ages, he must accept it, and does, with a certain reserved grace. In some ways he is an average person with sometimes extraordinary foibles. Though he is highly intelligent, his life seems tinged by racism and classism, perhaps a product of his time and birthright, however hard he otherwise tries to escape them. He drops out of Cambridge University after one year, yet it doesn’t seem to hurt his career. Maybe it only narrows him in some way, although god knows he travels the face of the earth enough to be capable of empathizing with a broad range of peoples.As I near the end of this document, I become a bit bored with his obsessions, particularly with death, since he knows he is going to experience a slow decline from prostate cancer (one of his biggest fears). At the same time, he is able to view his life in a larger context—he’s kept such copious records of it—and make some rather stoic and pithy statements. “I’m not in a good state. Death fears—that’s to say, pangs of foreboding—recur often. They seem to be part of a quite normal physical condition; the pangs of a dying animal, thrilling with dread of the unknown” (686). He writes these words on October 23, 1983, a little over two years before he dies. In spite of the struggle of his last years—all chronicled in this tome—he often lives with a joie de vivre that most of us only hope to experience a few times ever.

⭐Liberation is the third and final volume of the diaries of Christopher Isherwood, a total of almost three thousand pages, covering the period from 1939, the year CI came to the United States, to 1983, three years before his death, at 82 years old. There is another book, Lost Years, which covers a period of half a dozen years, between the 40’s and the 50’s.This final volume of the diaries reflects the aging process of Isherwood, marked by two fierce struggles: one for the acceptance of death, according to the teachings of his religion and his swami; the other, of not complying with the degradation of senility, which Isherwood knew could only be fought through his commitment to literature and writing. In the final pages of the book, when the author’s life was already touched by illness and the difficulties and sufferings from old age, Isherwood continues to have ideas and projects for new books, and reproaches himself for yielding to what he called laziness of old age instead of working.Liberation allows us to follow the process of writing some of the key books of the author, including Christopher And His Kind and My Guru And His Disciple, as well as its activity as an icon for the gay liberation movement, not only because he was the rare out public figures at the time, but also because he was in a stable relationship that was lived openly and without subterfuge.Furthermore, there is always reasonable doses gossip; Isherwood lived – and slept in the biblical sense of the term – with some of the greatest figures of culture, music and the visual arts, of the ballet (he had a special predilection for young dancers, strong and beautiful) as of the cinema (many aspiring actors frequented his house, as weel as some of the biggest stars in Hollywood), and of course some of the great writers of his century (Auden and Forster were his personal friends for life).But what is most striking in this diaries, is a ruthless frankness that always begins with himself (and from which only escapes with bonhomie, Don Bachardy, and only in this third volume), a perfect and elegant writing, and finally one of the most intense and poignant love stories.

⭐I have read the three previous volumes of Isherwood’s diaries (rather confusingly this is “Volume Three,” though fourth and the last in chronology and publication in this decade plus succession of gradually appearing volumes. It is true that this is the third installment of diary entries recorded contemporaneously. During a good chunk of the Forties into the early Fifties Isherwood temporarily stopped making diary entries, though he reconstructed the period’s highlights as best he could in a diary-like summary written two decades later, “The Lost Years.” This book of private musings is clearly not for everyone: it numbers around 700 pages (plus a lengthy glossary of people and concepts appearing in the diaries) and it focuses squarely on day to day life in all its minutiae. But I recommend the diaries to anyone who,like myself, has felt powerfully drawn to this fine writer and the exemplary life he created for himself and his beloved life partner, Don Bachardy. And that pellucid Isherwood writing style is a joy to re-encounter for an admirer like myself.

⭐Great. Thank you.

⭐Great, just like the previous two.

⭐product as described. fast shipping. a++++++

⭐every one should have this one!

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