Christopher Isherwood

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29856, 23 June 1962, Page 3

Christopher Isherwood

Down There On A Visit. By Christopher Isherwood. Methuen. 352 pp. After all these years Mr Isherwood's latest novel is something of a surprise. It seems to go back beyond anything he has recently written to the old pre-war Berlin days; the spirit that informs it is the one that readers gratefully recognised in “Mr Norris Changes Trains” and "Goodbye to Berlin." In the 'thirties Mr Isherwood saw himself, although he was a young man too. rather as an observer of his more raffish contemporaries than as a participant in their pranks. His attitude, however, was always sympathetic, and this fact enabled him to enter social groups that people of his particular class did not always find open to them. As a frank acquaintance puts it in the present volume,, “Why should I want to hate you? I shouldn’t think anybody ever has hated you; and you probably couldn’t hate anyone if you tried. All you know about is books and words. You’re a typical cultured limey. They always give me the creeps." To form associations on such terms is advantageous to a writer; the fascinated attention Mr Isherwood was enabled to devote to Miss Sally Bowles in Berlin, for instance, was to be richly rewarding later on. In “Down There On A Visit,” Christopher Isherwood again assumes his role of observer; and the people he studies are drawn from much the same sets as before, although the detail is fuller. The years that take much away have sharpened the writer’s perception. Some situations recall “The Memorial”; but. where there was a certain two-dimensional flatness about that early work, here there are depths and bewildering perspectives. Readers of "The London Magazine" already have some idea of what Mr Isherwood was about; for the opening episode of “Dow# There On A Visit” was printed in the number for October, 1959 What now appears, however, makes the sad story of Mr Lancaster seem nothing but a muted prelude. Take, for example, Ambrose, the subject of the second section. Ambrose is still very wealthy; but for an embarrassing variety of reasons there is no place for him in society. His life is completely disorganised. He lives in a tent on a tiny Greek island, always tipsy and often insensible, sometimes surrounded by parasites, sometimes quite alone. “ ‘But one's always alone, ducky,’ he would say. ‘Surely you know that?’ ’’ Waldemar, on the other hand, remains a Berlin street boy. cheerful, cynical, ready for anything that may turn up, a perfect opportunist. The most fearsome character, however, dominates the second part of the book. This

is Paul, an American playboy with a nature of diabolical complexity, whom the narrator endeavours to help over the whole of the war period. What emerges is a record, second to none, of the fantastic vagaries of a non-moral being. From this particular experience no-one breaks clear with much to boast of. least of all the narrator, whose honesty is sometimes startling Incidentally Mr Isherwood has been recognised for a long time now as a student of Vedanta—did he not together with Swami Prabhavananda translate the "Bhaga-vad-Gita” into English?—and this novel throws a rather interesting sidelight on the beginnings of what may be called his conversion. At any rate, after reading “Down There On A Visit,” it is reassuring to know that the author had some stability in his life at the time. So few of his associates had.