The Sixties

by Christopher Isherwood

  Since it was no good my sitting with Charles, I had time on my hands and so I drove up to the Griffith Park Observatory to watch the sun set. Astonishing, how empty and wild the hills still seem. As I stood there I felt, as I have felt so often, why don’t I spend more time in awareness, instead of stewing in this daze? How precious these last years ought to be to me, and how I ought to spend them alone—alone inside myself, no matter who is around.

  Supper with John Zeigel. He still seems terribly shaken. He described how the highway patrolmen came in the middle of the night to bring him the news of Ed’s death. Before they told him, they said, “Don’t you want to sit down?” “Then,” said John, “I knew.” He is disgusted by [Ed’s friend] who came from the East to see him and expressed nothing but concern about his share of Ed’s money. John says that Ed was about to change his will when he was killed. He wanted to cut [the friend] out of it again.

  November 11. Mark Schorer has written back and says that I can get a Regents’ Lectureship (most probably) at Berkeley from April 15 to May 15. This might not be a bad arrangement, because it looks as if Don will be away quite a bit, anyhow, in the earlier part of the year. Certainly he’ll be at Santa Barbara for his show during part of January-February,fn400 and the Phoenix show may follow right on after that. He would have to stay at both places during the shows and maybe for a while after, to draw people on commission.

  At the moment all is peace and affection because I am leaving in an hour or two to go with Swami to Trabuco until next Wednesday. Now suddenly Don says he doesn’t know what he will do while I’m away!

  Last night, we went up to supper again with the Huxleys and Mrs. Pfeiffer and her charming adopted children. Laura is all excited about the publication of her book and I have had to write a blurb for it. Aldous told about his visit to Memphis and the southern aristocracy there. They still talk about darkies but claim that integration has been achieved without any fuss—except for public swimming pools.

  Gerald just got on the phone and told me that, during his six days at Long Beach, he gave fifteen lectures! The news that Laughton is dying sent him off into the usual philosophical meanderings.

  I have been disgraceful about work. Nothing done yesterday or today.

  November 16. Yesterday was a lost day. It was so freezing cold and I had such a shocking hangover after supper at the Larmores’—who are on the wagon!—that I wasted it feeling miserable and reading a very poor novel by David Stacton called Old Acquaintance. Only in the evening did the clouds lift and I had supper with Jo and Ben and persuaded them, I don’t know why much less how, to go to Ceylon next winter. I shall do no work today because I have chores and then we have to go to supper at Carter and Dick [Foote]’s and see their film about Bali, with, no doubt, Dick cavorting in the monkey dance.

  Laughton’s brother Frank smuggled in a Catholic priest who gave Charles the last rites. Elsa is outraged—she suspects that he has signed away some money to the church. He mumbled something about having signed—but didn’t say what, and anyhow it surely wouldn’t stand up in court. He also mumbled, “I feel I want to join the mob,” and “Catholics are all alcoholics.” Elsa wants me to see him and try to find out what did happen. She is busy shopping for cemeteries.

  Don, bitching John Zeigel (as usual): “I suppose he gave you tart blanche?”

  And, talking of bitchery, someone described Connie Wald’s new marriage as, “A funny thing happened to me on the way back from the funeral.”fn401

  The visit to Trabuco was a great success—went there on the 11th, came back on the 14th. I found I could, if not meditate, at least sit through the meditation periods without getting the jumps.

  I took a lot of notes while down there. Most of them I can’t be bothered to transcribe. But—

  Vandanananda is accused of being much too interested in girls. Also, he shocked Santa Barbara by giving a lecture in which he said, “This is the meaning of tat twam asifn402—if you’re a ballet dancer, then tat twam asi, that’s what you are—” This upset Sarada so much she went to bed!

  Swami is concerned about [one of the monks], who is always getting sick. [The boy] says he sees “little people.” Swami says these are psychic phenomena on a very low plane; they often appear just before death.

  Adrian Wolheimfn403 objects to work. Does one have to work to be spiritual, he asks. Swami tells him, all right, walk around all day thinking of God. But don’t expect to get anything to eat.

  Swami said to me, “Just think, you might have been a swami by this time.” But then he added, as he has never done before, “But perhaps you are more useful like this.”

  Franklin [Knight] says the doctor is impressed by the way Vedantists die.

  The boys seemed really quite pleased to have had me there. I must go again soon. There are seven of them at the moment—Franklin (the only brahmachari), Eddie [Acebo] the Mexican boy, Len [Worton] the British ex-sailor, Tom Battle (shy and quiet), Adrian Wolheim (rather crazy and unlikely to stay long, he hitchhiked all around India), Bill Bergfeldt the sickly boy and Tony Eckstein, a little Jewish ex-marine whom everyone likes, he is hardworking, friendly and quite bright.

  November 19 [Monday]. The last few days, the weather has switched to dry and bright, with strong gusts of wind drying up the hanging plants on the deck. At least it’s much more cheerful than the fog. This morning, at breakfast on the deck, I kept thinking that gloomy old we didn’t deserve this view. Except that we can be very amusing about our gloom. Don made me roar by saying, “The view from the brig.”

  I dread Mexico, though. There will be ghastly scenes and the most tiresome confrontations. On the beach yesterday John Zeigel showed up and was eager to arrange to meet us down there during the holidays. This would be just what the undertaker ordered.

  On Saturday night, I was having supper with Bart Johnson and a friend of his who teaches at the same school, […]. We were talking about [Katherine Anne Porter’s] Ship of Fools, and [the friend] asked what did I think of her writing? I said, “With many writers, one can instantly say how you imagine them dressed, when they’re at work—I don’t mean, literally, but ideally, symbolically, judging from their style. I see Miss Porter taking a perfumed bath and then sitting in front of the mirror for an hour, fixing her hair and making up her face, and then putting on an exquisite, very low-cut evening gown without sleeves, and then elbow gloves, and then earrings and necklaces, and rings over her gloves—and then sitting down at her desk to write.”

  I did a big swatch of work on the novel, Saturday. I am still excited about it; in fact, I sat up till nearly four, Saturday night, with Gavin, talking about it—which meant that I was too hungover to work yesterday. But it does seem to me almost infinitely promising; that is to say, it is a possible form for a masterpiece, if only I could write it like a master!

  Don has started using color in his drawings. Not coloring them, but working with brush and pencil alternately.

  November 20. A good day—perhaps the beginning of a new epoch. Castro has given way about the bombers,fn404 Kennedy has called off the blockade, the Chinese have suggested a cease-fire with withdrawal. True, this last is thought to be a trick, but still and all it is sort of good.

  Last night, I drove down to Long Beach to see Glenn Porter. He is staying with three other sailors off the Princeton in a flea-trap apartment house on Daisy Avenue, just back from the oceanfront. When I got there the scene was crazy and rather wonderful. The cheerful Jewish sailor was making love to a girl on the couch, the married (or anyhow involved) sailor was watching his wife/girl combing her/his/their little daughter’s hair. The reckless Swedish sailor was getting drinks from the kitchen. And Glenn and I talked about Rilke! They had been terribly drunk the night before, had smashed the mirror in the living room and poured beer over people descending the stairs. No—that was the previous night, I guess—because Glenn told me that, on the Sunday morning, still terribly drunk, they had driven into town—the Swede driving at ninety all the way—and made i
t to the Vedanta Society where Glenn (not the others) had heard Vandanananda’s lecture. As we talked about this and other things, a cockroach ran across the floor and was killed by the Swede. When we left to go to supper, the married sailor gave me a carton of cigarettes. His wife/girlfriend is Hungarian and speaks German; when we returned, she came out and spoke to me in German, saying she hoped we could talk German to each other another time.

  All this was so old-fashioned! The girls I saw around the place were real floozies from any play or film called The Fleet’s In. And Long Beach didn’t seem to have changed since the war. Blazing lights and big buildings along the beachfront and then miles and miles of dark tacky shut-up streets, until you get to the lighted artery of Pacific Ocean Highway.fn405

  Glenn looked marvellously well and healthier, although he spent whole weeks inside the carrier not even seeing the ocean. He said at first you got claustrophobia; now he rather loves it. But he said, without the least sarcasm, “I find it a bit difficult to write, in that house,” and he also has to endure constant prodding from his buddies to get drunk and get girls. He is a strange boy. He says he hasn’t had sex for the past year. When he used to study at the Pasadena library, he often got so tense that he would go outside and climb a nearby building, but he could never get quite to the top, because there was an overhang! He assured me that he hadn’t talked much about me to his buddies, but the Jewish boy said he had, and added, “I was expecting a little guy with a notebook.”

  Another perfect morning. I went on the beach and in the water.

  November 22. Here’s my twenty-fourth Thanksgiving in this country. Very very much to be thankful for. Things couldn’t be going better at this particular moment. We are saved from atomic war in Cuba. The Chinese and Indians have ceased fighting, as of this morning, at least temporarily. Swami is Swami. Don is Don; and our life for the past three days has been most happy. We are both well, though both weighing more than we like—Don 142, me 151. Don did some really stunning work yesterday evening, though admittedly not in color, as he would have wished. I creep on with my novel, or novelette as I now suspect it to be, and I know there is something there. Also, we have this beautiful house—and about $34,000 in the bank—before taxes!

  About Christmas in Mexico, I feel: let His will be done. If there is no good reason not to go, I will go, and just pray that it isn’t a disaster—or rather, pray that I will be able to take it if it is a disaster.

  As for San Francisco, that still isn’t certain but I would look forward to it. And I would quite look forward to Australia, if that were to materialize.

  Today is hazy with pale sunshine. Yesterday night was the worst coastal fog I can ever remember.

  Saw Gerald yesterday. I asked him about his great phrase, “the novel written in protoplasm,” but he was vague, said it was somewhere in his handwritten material which Michael hasn’t yet revised or typed out. This led to further disclosures about Michael’s possessiveness. Because of it, Gerald isn’t sure if we can have our tape-recorded conversations together, opening the way for a memoir. If Michael is asked to do anything which isn’t entirely his project, he just puts it off sine die or “forgets” it.

  We talked about morality. How nowadays people tend to think of religion as meaning only a set of ethical standards. I said I don’t go to Swami for ethics, but for spiritual reassurance. “Does God really exist? Can you promise me he does?” Not, “Ought I, or ought I not to act in the following way?” I feel this so strongly that I can quite imagine doing something of which I know Swami disapproves—but which I believe to be right, for me—and then going and telling him about it. That simply isn’t very important. Advice on how to act—my goodness, if you want that, you can get it from a best friend, a doctor, a bank manager.

  What does matter is to make japam and pray.

  Up at Vedanta Place, Swami has become a true Kshatriya.fn406 Not only are the Chinese to be run out of the whole area; he demands Tibet. And an all-out military alliance with America and England. I think he’ll be really disappointed if this truce leads to peace … Well, there you are: that’s the other side of the coin. I disagree with Swami’s attitude, ethically; but what does it matter? Not the least bit. That’s not what our relationship is all about.

  And shall I confess? Deep down—no, not deep, about halfway down—I do feel a certain satisfaction at Kennedy’s stand on Cuba, the temporary disadvantage to Soviet Russia, the folly of the Chinese, the involvement of India with “us.” Yes, I feel it—but oh, what infantile nonsense it all is, really! Early yesterday morning, the phone rang, and it was a cable from the London Sunday Times: would I write five hundred words on what is best and what is worst in the United States? I replied no (thank you); because, the moment you try to think this out, you find that it’s easy to say what is worst but when you get around to what is best, the United States doesn’t own, isn’t responsible for, any of it. And this is true of all countries.

  Our plants seem to have survived the windstorm of a few days ago. The hanging redwood baskets on the deck are trailing profusely with that pale green delicate wispy plant (what is its name?) and the geraniums in their boxes are thriving, although one is broken, and the bottlebrush trees below the house seem all right.

  November 27. Hazy sunshine, after two more days of sea-fog. Am in a winter mood, waiting for some little nudge of spring to get me moving again. Mexico is a problem. I feel sure it would be a mistake for both Don and me to go there together; there would certainly be friction. Don can’t stand the least discomfort of travel, any delay, any boredom—and all of it would get blamed [on] me. I wish he would go alone, but he says he doesn’t want to. I would be prepared to go, but Don says he can’t possibly stay here. I am making him sound tiresome, and of course he is; but this isn’t a fair statement of his problem. He wants out—not permanently, but for at least several months. I, on my side, have resolved not to be noble, because that’s the most annihilating kind of aggression. I will not “nobly” leave this house just for his convenience. If he wants out then he must be the one to get out. On the other hand, I am ready to go when there is something interesting to go to, like San Francisco or Australia.

  None of this is as tragic as it sounds. We are still deeply fond of each other and I quite expect we shall go on living together, after a period of adjustment. Most of the freedom Don is looking for could actually be achieved right here, living with me. He doesn’t realize that yet. Okay, he can find it somewhere outside and then come back.

  The day before yesterday, Frank Wiley came by with a shipmate […]. They seem to be having a lot of fun together. You got a sense of the intensely provincial atmosphere of the carrier; they might have been two spinsters living in a nineteenth-century English village—a monosexual village, however. [The shipmate] was pleased, after several gins and bitters, because he still remembered to say “wall” instead of bulkhead. Two expressions, “out of phase” (out of whack), and “scuzzy” (spelling?) meaning horrible, tacky, a mess; used for example of girls.

  Charles is being moved back home today. He protested violently against this; I suppose he thinks Elsa is planning to murder him. Scott Schubach told us this last night, we had dinner with him and his friend […], a sweet little boy, whose face twitches. Scott is an incredible bore; he talked all evening about his lysergic acid experiences. He lives in this huge rambling house which is stuffed with antiques. He sleeps on a bed with goat feet (Venetian). Lots of classical columns, busts, inlaid cabinets, lattice work from casbahs, marble tables, Moorish cushions, drawings by [Hans] Erni, Khmer buddhas, etc., etc. He does most of the housework himself, and cooks. He must be very very rich.

  On Saturday, Stanley Miron was down here to see his folks and brought with him the sweater of John Cowan’s which [someone] gave me and I left with Stanley when I was up in San Francisco. It is very tacky and moth-eaten. Don didn’t want me to wear it, feeling that there might be some kind of a curse on it, but I thought, after all, what harm did Johnny Cowan ever d
o or wish me? So I wore it yesterday.

  Peter Quigley has written an article called “A Glimpse of Isherwood” for the Irish Times in Dublin. Here are two of the “glimpses.”

  Medium short and still boyishly well proportioned, he cuts a workmanlike figure. With his trim haircut, California suntan and much laundered “fatigue” shirt and trousers Isherwood in his fifties looks more like a retired Rommel than a widely read author.…

  At the foot of the steep driveway we stop again in the cold wind. He looks very much alone, standing with shoulders hunched and eyes peering out at the wintry light of a dying day from beneath the sun-bleached and bushy eyebrows which are characteristic of his late fifties.fn407

  November 29. After these last dull days of fog, the wind got up last night and blew in terrific gusts. One of our geraniums has been broken off and I don’t think the T.V. antenna will stand up much longer.

  Today Don is drawing Arthur Laurents who is here for a few days about movie work. He loathes this town and keeps saying so, sometimes amusingly, sometimes merely bitchily. He described a party at a producer’s house at which he got into a discussion with a girl about Dufy. “What other painters do you like,” she asked him, “I mean, in the same price bracket?” No one else who was listening seemed to find this at all funny, Arthur says.

  Yesterday evening, when I went up to Vedanta Place, Swami brought up the subject of Don’s initiation. He is ready to do this quite soon, on December 18. I’m not sure how Don feels about it; maybe a little uneasy and scared of getting himself in too deep. All he tells me is that he doesn’t want to have to meditate on Ramakrishna. I assure him that Swami won’t insist on this.

  We are still undecided about Mexico. I think Don wants to go and he can’t really understand why I don’t want to go with him. (That’s natural, because he obviously can’t be expected to understand how inevitable it is that he will make scenes, as soon as something on the journey doesn’t suit him.) And of course, as always, I feel cruel and selfish and start saying to myself why don’t I go and risk it?