Christopher Isherwood: An Interview

The following interview must stand as all the introduction these collected essays will have. The reader is, I think,' fortunate in the contributors, who give pictures of Isherwood and his work which are remarkably individual, alive, and readable. My interview with Isherwood is really one conversation in two parts separated by ten months and three thousand miles. Our first talk was in Isherwood's study in his home in Santa Monica, and covered two afternoons divided by an evening in which my husband and I had dinner with Isherwood and Don Bachardy. (On the day after this dinner, I also interviewed their friend Gavin Lambert, who happened to be visiting Los Angeles; that interview is presented later in this issue.) In May, 1976, just before he flew to England, Isherwood came to New York, and the conversation was continued in my study. I tried both times to ask him questions he had not been asked before at interviews: I had studied them all. Christopher is, of course, a marvelous narrator and story teller; if you ask him a question to which he has already worked out the answer, perhaps in the book he is writing, he will present that answer with perfect aplomb as though he had just thought of it on the spot. Not that he pretends to have thought of it on the spot-but he is so stimulated by your question and his answer, that you suppose his response to have been created for this particular occasion. I think my desire for new questions and answers was occasionally inconsiderate. Still, I did manage not to ask him when he met Auden, or why he came to the United States. (Those who wish answers to these questions should consult other interviews cited in the Checklist.)