Isherwood: A Life Revealed
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.34 (571 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1400062497 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 832 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-12-16 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Suzinne Barrett said Well Written but Repetitive. I've read a good amount of Isherwood in my day and enjoyed his various stories/novellas combined to make his Berlin Stories. These I had read quite a view years ago and was seeking a more in depth look at the life of Christopher Isherwood.Peter Parker does a nice job of portraying the author, and the book really takes off in the Berlin years. He was there to enjoy Weimar Berlin in all its glory, and the resulting literary product would represent the strongest writing of his career. And therein lies the problem. A biographer is responsible for the whole arc of the subject's life, but what to do when a. Size isn't everything! Peter Parker's earnest, exhaustive and rather conventional biography fails to recognise the forest for the trees. Isherwood did, in fact, "find a home", both geographically and spiritually, although you might not recognise that from Parker, who indicated in an interview for The Telegraph that he didn't "judge" his subject.The tone of some sections makes that claim a little hard to swallow but he has saved his worst finger-wagging for a crass putdown of Isherwood's guru, Swami Prabhavananda, whom he characterises as sly and manipulative, playing up to Isherwood's vanity in order to borrow some of the
Parker portrays the frequent collaboration with the latter (highly acclaimed, at the time) as more emotionally crucial to Auden than to Isherwood. From Publishers Weekly Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood's consistently rebellious, fictional self-reinventions are put into perspective alongside his exhaustive, introspective diaries in this authoritative and lively life. With the final installment of Isherwood's voluminous diaries yet to be published, Parker's biography, written with full access to his subject's papers, will likely remain definitive. Isherwood's later memoirs, to which Parker attributes a role in the gay liberation movement, receive the same insightful critical attention from Parker (biographer of J. While Isherwood's social circle encompassed other notable exiles, from Charlie Chaplin to Thomas Mann, Isherwood's literary output stalled until the Broadway success of an adaptation of his Berlin Stories as Cabaret. Their split upon emigrating to Amer
Auden and Stephen Spender he emerged as one of the leading literary figures of the 1930s. From the bars, nightclubs, and slums of Weimar Germany–where Isherwood created The Berlin Stories and introduced the world to Sally Bowles–to homosexual communes in Greece and Portugal, to the film studios of London (the subject of his novel Prater Violet) and Hollywood, his destinations became arenas for his reinventions. He began to acknowledge his homosexuality at his English boarding school and subsequently formed a definition of “self” based on subterfuge, performance, and escape. Published in the centennial of his birth, it will be read as long as Isherwood himself is.. His father’s death in World War I devastated his mother and created a “hero-father” image that would haunt both Christopher and his unstable brother for the rest of their lives. With his lifelong friends W. Painstakingly researched and brilliantly written, Isherwood: A Life captures the fugitive reality of a man who has become a favorite artist and important symbol of an entire era in our life of letters. Based in part on Isherwood&rsqu