11/12/16:
I was already rereading this for a paper when it gained unfortunate relevance. Still too good.

3/31/13:
It's a rare memoir that grows with its author. The minutely shifting styles across "Mr. Lancaster," "Ambrose," "Waldemar," and "Paul" mirror Isherwood--or Christopher's--own development. Early on, Isherwood looks back on young Christopher, setting out for Germany (and not even Berlin) for the first time:

I think about him and I marvel, but I must beware of romanticizing him. I must remember that much of what looks like courage is nothing but brute ignorance. I keep forgetting that he is as blind to his own future as the dullest of the animals. As blind as I am to mine. His is an extraordinary future in many ways--far happier, luckier, and more interesting than most. And yet, if I were he and could see it ahead of me, I'm sure I should exclaim in dismay that it was more than I could possibly cope with.

How lucky we are that he couldn't see into his future. Down There on a Visit tells incredibly specific stories that are nonetheless widely (and wildly) relevant. There's Geoffrey, the straight, white, British guy who goes to an island where he is the minority and still finds a world catered to him. There's Waldemar, who hates what's happening to his country, and yet can't help but be drawn back, because it's his home. And there's Christopher:

When I got a good look at myself in the mirror at the hotel in Chalkis, I was quite startled to see what these last few months had done to me. My hair was long and matted, my beard had started to grow, I was sunburned nearly black, my face was puffy with drinking and my eyes were red. All that, of course, could soon be tidied up. But there was also a look in my eyes which hadn't been there before. By the time I got back to England, no one could have had any difficulty in recognizing me as my familiar self. Only I caught glimpses of that look now and then while shaving.
And every so often, at a loud party or while listening to bad news on the wireless or on waking up to find myself in bed with someone I scarcely knew, I would think of Ambrose out there alone. He was right, I would say to myself; I didn't belong on his island.
But now I knew that I didn't belong here, either.
Or anywhere.

First, he was almost synonymous with Berlin. Then he had to leave, and wandered to Greece and the above transformation. In London, he got caught up in the prewar anxiety, and the inside knowledge he had only made it worse. He finds pacifism because his friend Waldemar is somewhere in Germany and, given the chance to end the war by blowing the entire country sky-high, he knows he wouldn't do it. In America, even farther removed from the war, he goes on camping trips, situating his readers in time with literally parenthetical asides like this: "(It was the day the Nazis invaded Crete.)"

Is it that he doesn't belong anywhere, or that he belongs in too many places? The latter, I would say. There's the place he wants to be, the place he should be, and the place he ought to be. Sometimes, these places intersect, but other times he's torn between them and nothing feels right. Toward the end of the book, he claims he doesn't want a family. He doesn't want to be anyone's uncle. It strikes me that what he's been describing throughout the entire book is a kind of family (the kind Mona and Michael glorify in Tales of the City). Perhaps he's selling himself short, remaining purposefully aloof from these people. Perhaps not. Perhaps it's just self-preservation.

I've said before that Isherwood presents his own life remarkably insightfully. Perhaps it's the light fictionalization and the distance he imposes between himself and "Christopher." Visiting Berlin again, this time after the war, he wanders through the wreckage. "In the morning light it was all as raw and frank as the voice of history which tells you not to fool yourself; this can happen to any city; to anyone; to you."

Is his conclusion that it's better not to belong anywhere, or to anyone? That certainly seems to be his take on himself, and Paul sums the view up pretty damningly. (He's talking about smoking opium, but it's easy to make the leap.)

"You're exactly like a tourist who thinks he can take in the whole of Rome in one day. You know, you really are a tourist, to your bones. I bet you're always sending post cards with 'Down here on a visit' on them. That's the story of your life...I'll tell you what'd happen if you smoked one pipe: nothing! Nothing would happen! It's absolutely no use fooling around with this, unless you really want to know what's inside of it, what it's all about. And to do that, you have to let yourself get hooked. Deliberately. Not fighting it. Not getting scared. Not setting any time limits."

Christopher gives these words to Paul, but he doesn't bother offering a rebuttal. Between this and "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking," from Berlin Stories I am starting to think he protests too much. After all, why else write about these people and places with such love and such detail? Isherwood knows that Christopher is full of hot air. Thank goodness.

So, I picked up this book a year or two ago and absolutely loved its first story. Then, for some reason unknown to me, I set it aside and only got back to it a month ago as I was heading to Berlin because, what else would one read there, right?


Right. I re-read the beginning and was even more enthralled by Isherwood's amazing ability to say complex things in a very simple yet elegant manner, he reminded me of reading Hemingway's Moveable Feast in some ways (a book I also regard as one of my all-time favorites). The style was certainly lacking in no way, and I found myself re-reading some passages over and over, discussing them with friends and being generally stunned by his command of the English language. As far as the plot goes, the different stories had somewhat different effects as they are, for the most part, not as related to one another except for some of the recurring characters. I did wish by the end to have learned more about say, Ambrose or the Greek gang and there were some parts I found more intriguing than others (loved Mr. Lancaster's story, Paul as well, the Augustus part of it not so much), but in the end it all worked as a whole and gave me, as the reader, an insight into Christopher's evolution which seemed natural, so I didn't find the book disjointed.

All in all, I think this is a book I'll probably return to at some point as I always do to Hemingway - a book that has a lot to offer a person at any stage in life they might find themselves in. Can't wait to read more from Isherwood is all I have to say.

I normally love Mr. Isherwood's writing, but I had a hard time finishing this one because it did not capture me as much as the other works I've read.

Narrator: not interesting.
Paul: very interesting.
Author: gay (! yay! for representation in fiction!)
Author: misogynistic (...just kidding.)

Overall: liked the writing when he wasn't going on rants about how women should just be delegated to breeding farms and men should have the entire world in which to be gay and frivolous, but disappointed in general about his existence. Go ahead if you can separate the artist from the art, but when the artist's rather barbaric ideas about women pervade every inch of the fiction, I find myself unable to do that. Euegh.

80/100.

No conocía a Christopher Isherwood cuando encontré esta obra entre los libros de un mercadillo benéfico. Su portada me llamó la atención; esperaba un libro sobre la Alemania nazi. En cierto modo, trata sobre el ascenso del fascismo en Europa, del nazismo, y cómo afectó a la vida de nuestro autor. Quizás haya perdido referencias a algunas de sus obras como "The Berlin Stories", o quizás, también fuera más enriquecedora una lectura conjunta con "Christopher and his Kind", como parece señalar la entrevista final a Isherwood incluida tras la obra literaria.

Este libro está dividido en cuatro partes diferenciadas, cada una con el nombre de uno de los hombres que marcó la vida del Christopher literario. Me ha interesado bastante; comencé a leerlo y por cuestiones extraliterarias, tuve que parar, pero al volver a tomarlo, me encantó. Sin embargo, lo que más me gustó de la obra son los silencios de Isherwood.

Una lectura recomendada, sin dudarlo.

A wrap up

Of The Berlin Stories and Christopher and His Kind. The last section is the author at his best. I’m ready to watch A Single Man and finish my Isherwood project.