The Self-Indulgent Musings of a Writer and a Critic

A new book of diaries just resurfaced. This time, it is the diaries of English-American writer, Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), simply titled The Sixties: Diaries, volume 2, 1960-1969. Every time something like this comes along, both the literary critics and fans alike line up (metaphorically speaking of course) to get the piece of a possible juicy gossip as they salivate from page to page.

I find this rather dull, uneventful. The “juicy gossip” part that is. Some things should remain private for everyone’s sake. Besides, writers’ power tends to diminish once we learn that they pick their noses or visit the toilet five times a day or eat one pea at a time or never use utensils…Ok, so I am exaggerating. This trivial stuff is well, trivial. But when I found out, for example, that one of my favorite writers, Iris Murdoch has led a rather sloppy and non-virtuous life, I was disappointed. It took me a few years to detach Iris Murdoch the writer from Iris Murdoch the woman in order to get back into her novels, which I enjoy very much. So, right from the beginning, I am always skeptical of the pseudo-confessional nature of writer’s work, which usually is more akin to Rousseau’s Confessions than St. Augustine’s.

James Fenton has written a review of Isherwood’s diaries for Times Literary Supplement . These diaries seem to be linked to Isherwood’s partner, Don Bachardy and as Fenton implies, the state of male homosexual relations in the 1960s. Isherwood and Bachardy met when Isherwood was forty-eight and Bachardy but a mere boy, eighteen years old. It would appear that they formed a relationship from that very meeting. I must say, this fact was rather disturbing: setting aside the fact that this was a homosexual relationship, one must a question what kind of connection did this start out to be with such tremendous age difference? Isherwood could have very easily been Bachardy’s father.

Fenton does not ask that question but he does wonder at the possibility that Isherwood was perhaps controlling:

“He [Isherwood] offers him [Bachardy], or seems to offer him, the right to burn the journal. Is he serious about this? Is the fate of the “old black book” a matter of indifference to him? Or is he daring the young man to destroy something infinitely precious? What is his tone of voice here? Angry, mocking, goading by any chance? Is he not saying: you may destroy my portrait of you, but at what price? Isn’t there something cruel at work here? And might there not have been something cruel at work at other times in their unequal relationship, something the reader misses because it has been cleverly concealed?”

There is something strange here. Something, which literary critics like Fenton (and others) always seem to miss when speaking about their “poetic gods,” whose deviance or abnormality ought not to be criticized. This “something” is the plain fact that Isherwood and Bachardy are incapable of being in a loving relationship. Is there love here at all? No. “Angry. Mocking. Goading.” No, this is not healthy nor balanced. And yet, we ought to keep going in celebration of the imbalanced mind, whose self-indulgence is the only “gift” given to the reader. No, thanks.

Using the description from Isherwood’s 1964 novel, A Single Man, Fenton wants to tell his readers that times have changed when it comes to homosexuality. In the novel, Isherwood writes about an adult man, who strips along side a twelve year old boy and begins to do to sit ups and they both end the exercise panting at the same “ecstatic” moment. The narrator in the novel calls this experience “delightful,” a “physical democracy.” Fenton tells us that Isherwood elevates this experience to a kind of physical ideal. He also tells us that there is no doubt that editor might be disturbed by such a passage, but he does not deny Isherwood striving towards “ideal” nor does he deem it to be false.

Disturbing indeed. What is missing from this review? Could it be the fact that Fenton never asks why it might be disturbing to the editor or anyone else? These are precisely the questions we are not asking today that deal with homosexuality: what is the experience of homosexuality? What does it entail? What is the biology, if you will (a word liberally minded critics tend to use a lot when reducing a human being to a cluster of cells) of (in this case, male) homosexual act?

Fenton takes an opportunity to use the review of Isherwood’s diaries to make the case for normalization of homosexuality in today’s age. Things were different in the 60s, he tells us. Monogamy in a homosexual relationship during the 60s was unheard of. “Gay promiscuity” was the result of societal anti-homosexual attitudes. Now, “we” have come so far, Fenton claims. These are quite simply silly statements.

What is really happening today is that the rhetoric about homosexuality has changed, which attempts in every way to normalize the behavior. The “nature” of male homosexual relationship has not changed. What we’re experiencing is a push of homosexual private lives into the homosexualization of public policies. In order to achieve such a goal, the rhetoric is bound to change and get sanitized. We will not be hearing about the nature of the actual physical homosexual act.

So, let’s be honest here, Mr. Fenton. Not many are asking the questions about homosexuality and those that are asking are quickly silenced or their words are labeled “hate speech.” Why is it so difficult to ask straight-forward and honest questions? And why is it, at the same time, so difficult to answer them? Without honesty, we are bound to live in the fake world of plastic smiles and cheap sentimentality. Somehow, I don’t see how that will resolve any questions.