More entertaining than the first volume—more celebrity gossip and funny anecdotes—but it’s far from cozy. Isherwood is always unquiet.
It is a sign of his candor that he never makes any of it even faintly glamorous. Unlike for example the Robert Craft memoirs of Stravinsky, which cover many of the same drunken dinners.
What’s terrifying about Isherwood is the absoluteness of his rejection of England, Europe, reputation, seriousness, …. He’s singlemindedly focused on writing, rather than being a writer.
My favorite bits are both about funerals:
Dec. 20, 1962. After Charles Laughton's very public funeral, his widow Elsa Lanchester commented “I wish it had been a grey day, it softens the face in the newsreel shots.”
Feb. 7, 1965. “While I was in New York, Lincoln [Kirstein] went over to London to see Churchill’s funeral. He found that most of the people he met didn’t want to watch it, even. But Lincoln got drunk and wandered around with a bottle of bourbon, weeping. He was one of the few who stood on the pier when the coffin was carried on to the launch on the river. I told him I have composed a last sentence for a Churchill biography: ‘The great ceremony was over at last, the huge crowds were left behind, and the coffin was carried on to the launch in the presence of one single weeping drunk American millionaire.’”