Christopher Isherwood Diaries, Volume 3

Starred review from June 11, 2012
This third and final volume of Isherwood’s compulsively readable diaries concludes with a 136-page “glossary” of names—a testament to his connections to the literati and Hollywood glitterati. As the 1970’s commence, lover Don Bachardy has just had his screenplay for Cabaret (based on the musical drawn from Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin) rejected, and the two have begun what will be an unsuccessful stage adaptation of Isherwood’s novel, A Meeting by the River. The last diary entry dates to July 4, 1983, exactly two and a half years before Isherwood’s death from cancer. In between, he regales readers with accounts of his collaboration with Bachardy on the screenplay for Frankenstein: The True Story, the 1976 publication of Christopher and His Kind (which moved him to the forefront of the gay rights movement), and nonstop dinners, parties, and foreign travels. A master of the bon mot, he enlivens passages with witty critiques of books, acquaintances (Rudolf Nureyev “really is a macabre absurd nineteenth-century vampire”), and lifestyles (“One of the disadvantages about being so frank about one’s queerness is that everybody expects you to leer at attractive boys, so you try not to, out of perversity”). A preface by Edmund White and meticulous notes and annotations by editor Bucknell distinguish this fitting finale to a fascinating life. Agent: Sarah Chalfant, the Wylie Agency.