It’s really here. The first edition of Isherwood on Writing was published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2008. It was always planned that a paperback edition would follow, but who knew it would take this long?
The excellent cover image, Isherwood just looks right at you, is courtesy of the great photographer, Michael Childers.
The long wait meant that material that had been missing from the first edition could be added to the second. The material came to light in August 2008, mere months after publication. I got an email from a scholar who had been looking through the Isherwood papers at the Huntington Library. He wondered why I hadn’t included transcripts in the book that was in the archive. My only answer was that it wasn’t there when I was doing my research in 2002. Or it was there, but hadn’t been filed or catalogued yet.
So now, I’m able to include this material, which contains Isherwood’s comments on his recently published novel, A Single Man, as well as comments on the book he had just started writing, A Meeting by the River.
Take a listen to the podcast we did about the book, the new material, and what it was like for gay men reading Isherwood in the 1960s.
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. This conversation brings the volume’s editor, James J. Berg, into conversation with fellow Isherwood scholars Chris Freeman and Claude Summers.
Get the book and listen to the podcast here.