Isherwood’s Fiction: The Self And Technique

ISHERWOOD'S FICTION Isherwood's Fiction The Self and Technique Lisa M. Schwerdt Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 978-1-349-19988-4 ISBN 978-1-349-19986-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-19986-0 ©Lisa M. Schwerdt 1989 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1989 978-0-333-45288-2 All rights reserved. For information, write: Scholarly and Reference Division, St. Martin's Press, Inc., 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010 First published in the United States of America in 1989 ISBN 978-0-312-02789-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Schwerdt, Lisa M., 19~ Isherwood's fiction; the self and technique I Lisa M. Schwerdt. P· em. Bibliography: p. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-312-02789-6 : $35.00 (est.) 1. Isherwood, Christopher, 1904- -Technique. 2. Self in literature. I. Title. PR6017.S5Z84 1989 88-30846 823' .912-dc19 CIP For my parents Contents 1 2 3 4 Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Searching for Technique 12 All the Conspirators The Memorial 22 Developing the Namesake Narrator 49 Mr. Norris Changes Trains Lions and Shadows Goodbye to Berlin Prater Violet 56 35 72 77 94 Extending the Point of View 110 The World in the Evening Down There on a Visit 119 135 Trying New Approaches 161 A Single Man A Meeting by the River 162 177 Conclusion 187 Notes and References 194 Bibliography 203 Index 210 vii Acknowledg ements The table on page 10 is reprinted from Identity, Youth and Crisis by Erik H. Erikson by permission of W. W. Norton and Co., Inc. Copyright© 1968 by W. W. Norton and Co. Inc., and Faber & Faber Ltd. Excerpts from Christopher and His Kind by Christopher Isherwood, copyright© 1976 by Christopher Isherwood are reprinted by permisson of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., and Candida Donadio & Associates. Excerpts from Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood, copyright© 1950, 1961 by Christopher Isherwood, are reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., and Candida Donadio & Associates. This book is a revised version of my doctoral dissertation written under Professor A. A. DeVitis at Purdue University, and would not have been realised without his help, guidance, and support. I thank him for being a challenging and inspiring teacher, as well as a truly kind man, and hope that seeing the study in print repays him somewhat for all that he has given to me. I also wish to thank the other members of my committee, Professor William T. Stafford, Professor Leonora Woodman, and Dr John H. Wilms, who were helpful in clarifying my thinking and sharpening my writing of the dissertation. That task was also eased by Kathleen B. Yancey, Bob Martin, and James T. Weston; fine friends who could always be counted on for their warmth, generous spirits, and abundant good humour. I am ever grateful to my aunt, Ruth Long, and late uncle, Edwin Long, for their unselfish and unflagging faith. Finally, I thank my parents, Dilys and Henry Schwerdt, for teaching me always to try and never to give up, for encouraging me to follow my heart, but mostly for their love. ix Introduction Critics, like Virginia Woolf, who reproached our generation for writing too 4irectly out of a sense of public duty, failed to see that public events had swamped our personal lives and usurped our personal experience. -Stephen Spender Everything that you are must affect your writing. -Christopher Isherwood To a writer who incorporates the incidents of his life into the subject matter of his fiction, personal history and the historical events he has lived through become more