After my day of excited preparations for the Book Club, I needed a distraction. As I mentioned the other day, I recently finished The Berlin Stories, and was preparing for two other Isherwood novels. The first, Christopher and His Kind, had not yet been delivered by the online bookstore, so I picked up The Single Man in its stead. I only read 25 pages, and I look forward to reading them again soon. Isherwood has an amazing ability to portray a person’s thinking life. His description of a broken-hearted 58 year-old gay man who was trying to deal with the death of his long-term partner completely stopped me in my tracks. Here was depression in its perfectly written form. Here was emptiness and loss.

However, we’ll get back to that in a couple weeks when I do. Because, as it turns out, later that evening my other book had arrived and I couldn’t wait to begin.

Christopher and His Kind is the autobiographical account of Isherwood’s life in Berlin during the 1930s. Many stories from this period were fictionally adapted into what became Goodbye to Berlin, and now they were being explicated, analyzed, and confessed for what they really were: the coming-of-age of a brilliant gay writer. I say “gay” writer because it appears that Isherwood feels this to be (as I would) a very important distinction and catalyst for his experiences.

In the first 50 pages I have already met several of the main characters from Goodbye, and heard the erotic details I had hoped would actually exist. However, what is currently fascinating me about this book is Isherwood’s own dealing with himself. He writes in both the first and third person about himself. One lame-ass reviewer from Amazon.com saw this as a negative. I, on the other hand, am taking great inspiration from the conceit. Older Isherwood sees his youngers self as a character to be explored and flushed out with his words. It is a separate character from that other “Christopher Isherwood” who appeared in Goodby to Berlin, but not a mutually exclusive one. His injection of self into his work, and his later separation and exploration of that self is precisely what I wish I had the skill, dedication, and ability to do in my own work.

And besides, his sexuality is as much of a muse as my own is for me, but he manages to maintains the distance and perspective to make it meaningful to others. It just seems that most of my image of what my contributions as a writer could be is now somewhat obsolete as Isherwood has accomplished these things with such great panache.

And another thing: how come writers always manage to find and befriend other great writers? So far in this book Christopher is best friends with W. H. Auden, has hung out with Andre Gide, and lived with Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld at his Sex Institute. Not fair, I say, not fair at all.