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The History of Literature
724 The Stranger by Albert Camus (#22 Greatest Book of All Time) | Christopher Isherwood (with Jake Poller) | Postcard from a Listener in Yunnan
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- [00:02]
Jack Wilson
The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio. Hey folks, it's Jack, here to promote something that's a little special. Not a thing and not a service, an opportunity for you to have an experience. The History of Literature Podcast is going on the road and you can join us. Our first stop is Literary England, the land of Dr. Johnson and Jane Austen and Tolkien and C.S. lewis. Oh, and Dickens. Oh, and Shakespeare. Perhaps you've heard of him. This isn't a trip where you march from site to site checking off boxes. Seen it, seen it, seen it, seen it. This is a week plus a little more traveling with me and Emma and a group of other fans of literature. All of us enjoying our conversations, our chance to learn and grow and be inspired by these writers and their works that we love so much. With special visits along the way from past guests of the show your favorites who will deepen our appreciation for what we're seeing. So please consider it. We would love to have you. You can learn more by going to John Shores Travel that's S H O R S and look for the upcoming trip to England with Jack Wilson. Or reach out to us@historyofliterature.com and we will tell you all the details. It's going to be in May of 2026, but act now to secure your spot. Space is limited and let's all spend some quality time together enjoying literature and enjoying life. Abercrombie's Viral denim sale is back and Spotify listeners get an extra 15% off with code Spotify AF. Abercrombie is known for their denim with 30 to 50% off all jeans. Find out how denim should fit. Shop the viral denim sale in the Abercrombie app online or in stores. Valid in stores and online through August 11, 2025 in US and Canada. Excludes clearance price reflects discount code. Valid in US and Canada through August 11, 2025. Exclusions apply. See details online. Hello. Today on the podcast we put on our black turtlenecks, pull out our cigarettes and look at entry number 22 on our list of the 25 greatest books of all time, the Stranger by Albert Camus. Plus a letter from a listener and a conversation with Jake Pauler, the biographer of 20th century British novelist Christopher Isherwood. All coming up today on the History of Literature. Hello. Welcome to the podcast. I'm Jack Wilson. I'm glad you're here today. Do not forget to sign up for our History of Literature podcast tour. If you're interested, you can learn more by emailing our colleague at John Shores Travel. He's over there@masahikohnshorestravel.com that's M A S A H I K ohn Shores Travel. Shores is like shores by the sea, except there's no E S H O R s. You can find Masahiko's email in our show notes as well. A tour of Literary England in the spring of 2026. You can book it, put it on your calendar. Give yourself something to look forward to next year. I'll be there on the tour in person, as will several of your favorite history of Literature podcast guests. Some real experts spending we'll all be spending some time together in the presence of past literary greatness. Maybe you're interested. Maybe you have some questions. Masahiko is your go to for answers. Or you can email me@jackwilsonauthormail.com J A C K E wilsonauthormail.com let's get started. Speaking of emails, we have one to share with you today from Are we saying the name? Yes, we are. This is from Zemo. I say it's an email, but I think of these as postcards. People, you know how much I love these. If you've been a listener, it's been a highlight of doing this. Listeners all over the world letting me know how things are going, where they are. Subject A new listener from Yunan Surprised by your latest episode, exclamation mark. Hi Jack, I'm a new listener who discovered your podcast just two months ago. What a wonderful coincidence that your latest episode was about the very book I'm currently reading, Madame Bovary. As soon as I saw the title, I immediately hit play. By the way, the love story you shared at the end of the episode was so heartwarming, it's hard to imagine the challenges you face traveling across the world to find your best friend without the Internet to book flights or even a way to contact her. That really stayed with me. Yes, I'm the old man here, telling stories about the good old days, but that's how it was. Okay, back to the email. Even more special, I'm currently staying in Yunnan, China, where my grandparents live. Your stories about traveling and exchanging books in Tibet were so thrilling and they truly resonated with me. It feels almost magical that our paths can intersect across time and place through the theme of literature. Best regards, Zemo I could not put that better myself. It feels almost magical that our paths can intersect across time and place through the theme of literature. Indeed. There we go. What an email. Thank You, Zemo. This is just perfect. Yunnan. I haven't been to Yunnan. Yunnan, do you say? I haven't been there. Actually, my trip through China into Tibetan was on a more northern route through Gulmud. But I've heard great things about it. And of course, of course, anything that reminds me of that trip I took to Tibet and the holy mountain I circled when I was there. That puts a smile on my face. It does feel magical. And the homes of grandparents can be magical, too, no matter where they live, no matter how mundane their location, but how much more magical when they live among the clouds. So, Zemo, best wishes to you. I'm glad you enjoyed that episode. And good luck to you with your own reading of Madame Bovary and with those grandparents. If you have a postcard of sorts, feel free to send it to me@jack wilsonauthormail.com j a c k e wilsonauthormail.com or you can go to historyofliterature.com and use our contact form. Send me a message that way. Next up, our list of 25 for 2025. Last time we had Madame Bovary, and guess what? We stay in France for this one. But we jump ahead almost a century and we pull out some drums and some trumpets. Yes, a fanfare. Here we go, people. Number 2022 is the stranger by Albert Camus, also translated as the Outsider. Mostly in Britain, you can debate the differences of what the title should be. The translation of this book is heavily debated, including the first line. Should it be Mother died today, or is that too familiar or too archaic? We don't call Mother's mother these days. Mom died today. That's too familiar. Maybe we keep it in the French. Maman died today. Or maybe it should be My mother died today. Or maybe it should be today my mother died. Focus on the temporality of it. We are one sentence in three or four words, and the debate rages. Why is that? Well, I have some theories. I think in some ways it's because this book is so readable and such a good book for students learning French. It's not long, it's novella length. For whatever reason, the translators become laser focused on how to get the words right with the subtle shades of meaning. They want to get it right. They want to do justice to this book. They want the subtle shades of meaning. But this is not a subtle book. All those sentences, Mother died today. Today, Mother died, et cetera. They all work for me because the context is that this guy doesn't feel it. And we get that from the next sentences and paragraphs and pages. He's a stranger, he's an outsider, he's a foreigner. All those translations work too, because he's all those things in the world, and to himself he's estranged. It's the story of a settler in French Algeria whose mother dies. He feels nothing, he shows no grief. And a few weeks after the funeral he has some issues with a woman, he helps a neighbor, gets some revenge on a woman. Etc, Etc. It's getting us a little window into him. But he feels nothing as he does this. Or he's feeling indifference, which I guess is a thing to feel. And he eventually kills an unnamed Arab. The sun was bright. That's about it. Part two of the book is the narrator in jail, detached, somewhat out of his head, mostly quiet and passive. The prosecutors make a lot of this guy being a soulless monster. He didn't even cry at his mother's funeral. Put him to death, this beast, and he's sentenced to public decapitation. He talks to a chaplain, he gets into an argument with him and he says, we're all condemned to die anyway, thanks to your God. Which I don't necessarily believe in, or I'm not even interested in, but there it is. We're all dying anyway. Ultimately, nothing matters. I won't spoil the ending for you, only to say that there's a transformation in what he feels at the end. Although I'm not trying to over promise anything. It is a transformation. And it's another passage that gets argued over by the translators trying to get the words just right. But part of their struggle is because the novel or novella is open to interpretation, which makes it great literature. The ambiguity. It invites people in, to think it through, to analyze its impact and significance and argue with it mentally. It was published in 1942, a turbulent time, and it made Camus famous. He met Jean Paul Sartre, who cast him in one of his plays, and Simone de Beauvoir. And Jean Paul and Simone enjoyed Camus Co. Very much, and his writing too. Sartre was the great theorist of existentialism, but Camus may have been its greatest practitioner, even though he rejected the label. Almost everyone involved rejected the label of existentialist, except for Sartre and de Beauvoir, which is ironic because it might be the broadest philosophical brand that we've ever had in recent memory. Anyway, existentialism as a mood, as an outlook, as a style, went way beyond Sartre and de Beauvoir and Camus. It was in art and film and politics and psychology and Theology and fashion. But for all of the traces you find of existentialism in the Beat Generation, or the films of Bergman and Kurosawa, or the poetry and angst of campus radicals in the 60s and 70s, even probably today, definitely in the 80s and 90s, still there. Or if you extend back in time and say, look at that, existentialism was there in Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard and Melville and the paintings of Edward Hopper and Edvard Munch. The core of it, existentialism can be found in the cafe floor, these three friends in the Parisian cafe, radiating out from the plays and novels and philosophical treatises of Sartre and de Beauvoir and the writings of this French Algerian, Albert Camus, we don't need to analyze the book too much more, because Camus has done it for us, and we can analyze his analysis. In 1955, after the war was over, but still very much part of the intellectual discourse, Camus wrote a preface to the Stranger, which is not long. I'll read it now. This was January 8, 1955. Quote, I summarized the Stranger a long time ago with the remark I admit was highly paradoxical. In our society, any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death. I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives. He wanders on the fringe in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as. As a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or at least one much closer to the author's intentions, will emerge. If one asks just how Meursault doesn't play the game, the reply is a simple one. He refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn't true. It is also, and above all to say more than is true and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do every day. To simplify life, he says what he is. He refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets his crime. In the approved manner, he replies that what he feels is annoyance rather than real regret, and this shade of meaning condemns him. For me, therefore, Meursault is not a piece of social wreckage, but a poor and naked man, enamored of a sun that leaves no shadows. Far from being bereft of all feeling, he is animated by a Passion that is deep because it is stubborn. A passion for the absolute and for truth. The truth is still a negative one, the truth of what we are and what we feel. But without it, no conquest of ourselves or of the world will ever be possible. One would therefore not be much mistaken to read the Stranger as the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth. I also happen to say again, paradoxically, that I had tried to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve. It will be understood, after my explanations, that I said this with no blasphemous intent and only with the slightly ironic affection an artist has the right to feel for the characters he has created, to draw in my character the only Christ we deserve. A very precise way of putting it. Is he saying Meursault is Christ a Christ for our time, A man who feels nothing, who somehow dies for our sins, who dies for the truth? The Son of God, sent down as a proto existentialist, so devoted to the truth that he refuses to pretend to feel, to feel things he doesn't want to pretend, to feel, a grief that he does not feel, categorizing it, in his view, with extreme devotion to true feeling, as an irritation or annoyance more than real regret. Did you feel bad about killing this man? Well, I didn't feel bad. I felt. I felt more annoyed. Is that devotion to the truth? It's refusing to play the game. He knows what will help him in trial, what will help him get off. But he won't say it. He won't say what he really feels. Or he will say what he really feels. He won't pretend to say something that he doesn't feel. Remember, this came out against the background of World War II, the horrors of the war and the Holocaust, where we searched for meaning, we searched for justice, for good versus evil, to understand mass murder and meaninglessness, and railed against gods who could let it happen, and men who could be so godless and found no good answers for any of it. So is this our Christ really? Don't we get a Christ in the Allies, who defeated the Nazis, the soldiers? Or maybe the prosecutors who brought the surviving monsters to justice? Can't we find our Christ there? Or someone who stood up to the Nazis and was killed for it? Why does this guy himself, kind of a moral monster, maybe, but also someone who's not part of the world, who's separate from it, detached, who's not playing the game? Why does this have to be our Christ? And Camus says, that's not what I said I didn't say he is our Christ. I didn't say he should be our Christ. I said he's the only Christ we deserve, we humans. Meursault is not better than us. He's not, let alone he's not the best of us. He's us. He is what we produce. And the Stranger is what Camus produced other books too, of course, but the Stranger is the one that made it onto the list of the 25 greatest books of all time. Let's take a quick break and come back with another man who lived through World War II, Christopher Isherwood, who was in Berlin in the period between the two wars, and he saw Berlin was in kind of a heyday, but Isherwood saw the darkness coming and he got out. You can see some of his dramatization of that story in the musical or film Cabaret if you want to know what he thought about that period, that's his dramatization of it. Base it's the musical is based on Isherwood's book Goodbye to Berlin. From that Darkness. He wound up eventually in California, which is about as sun splashed as it gets. California in the 50s and beyond, where he was friends with Dodie Smith and Aldous Huxley and drawn to some new religious practices theories we'll Hear all about Mr. Isherwood's life journey from his biographer Jake Pauler, after this. This is an ad by BetterHelp. Folks, there's a lot of noise out there and information coming at you all the time, and it's hard to know where to turn. Somehow you've got to find a way to set some boundaries and cope. You want to be the best version of yourself. That's the goal. But how do you know what will work for you? Sometimes when you're overwhelmed, it can help to talk to someone. That's what BetterHelp is for. They've served over 5 million people around the world, putting them in touch with over 30,000 therapists at the click of a button. BetterHelp has an App Store rating of 4.9 out of 5 based on over 1.7 million client reviews. 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- [23:10]
Jake Pauler
We got a lot of work to do.
- [23:11]
Jack Wilson
Alien Earth on Hulu, this Ship Collected.
- [23:15]
Jake Pauler
Monsters and Final Destination Bloodlines on HBO Max.
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Jack Wilson
Death is coming for our family. The Disney Hulu HBO Max Bundle plans starting at 16.99amonth. All these and more streaming soon. Visit Disney Hulu HBOMaxBundle.com for details. Okay, Joining me now is Jake Pauler, who teaches in the English department at Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include Aldous Huxley from Reaction's Critical Lives series, and he's here today to discuss his new book in that same series, Christopher A Critical Life. Jake Pauler, welcome to the History of Literature.
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Jake Pauler
Hi. Thank you for having me.
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Jack Wilson
So Isherwood is a fascinating figure and as you note in your book, there's a real before and after for him. When Isherwood moved to America, I'm kind of fascinated by both halves of his life. So let's start with the before. Where was Isherwood born and what kind of childhood did he have?
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Jake Pauler
Okay, so Isherwood was born into the landed Gentry in 1904. He had a family seat called Marple hall, which was basically a large Elizabethan building not far from Stockport in Cheshire. But Ishwood was born in Withersley hall, which was a much smaller house on the Ishwood estate, which where his parents lived. He had a fairly idyllic childhood. He was closest to his Nanny. Like many boys of his class and era, he had a passion for drama. At the age of seven, he was putting on Shakespeare plays in his toy theater, designed posters and advertised these plays on the. On the door of his nursery, and insisted his parents and his nanny come to the performances. Thankfully, these were fairly short, so Macbeth only lasted 15 minutes and Othello was reduced to Desdemona's murder Fish. We'd like to imagine that the servants at Marple hall were actors. And while pretending to help out in the kitchen, he would feel like a stagehand behind the scenes. Of course, once luncheon was served in the dining room, he would have to join the audience on the other side of the curtain.
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Jack Wilson
Right.
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Jake Pauler
He was also terribly precocious and began his first book at the age of six, which was called the History of My Friends. It is hilariously starchy and solemn and takes itself very seriously, as if, you know, the vagaries of his relationships at the age of six warranted the same kind of attention as world events. Right.
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Jack Wilson
The history of a bunch of other six year olds. It kind of reminds me of when my sister and I were coming back from seeing Star wars in 1977, and we said, that's the best movie of all time. And my parents just laughed because how many movies. I was, I think, six years old or something. How many movies could I possibly have seen?
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Jake Pauler
Yeah, exactly. But, you know, even as an adult, many of Ishwood's novels are really a history of his friends. So, you know, he was quite prophetic in that regard.
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Jack Wilson
Yeah. Right. Now, his father. My understanding is his father died in the war and he at one point called his mom a demon mother. But yet his childhood, as you said, sounds idyllic. When did this kind of fall apart for him?
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Jake Pauler
Yeah, I mean, and you're right, it's very much a childhood of two halves. And so the first half is terribly idyllic. Before his father's death. Death. I think he loved both his parents in his early childhood. They certainly contributed to his development as a writer. So as you mentioned, his father was an army officer. He died in the First World War, but he wasn't a typical military man. He was interested in poetry, art, was a painter, he played the piano. He drew a comic strip for Ishwood he called the Toy Draw Times, which recycled stories From Conan Doyle, H.G. wells, Robert Louis Stevenson. So I think this fired Ishwood's literary imagination. And his mother also helped him to write. She contributed to the History of My Friends. But even before that book, she began this process of mythologizing his life in a book she wrote called the Baby's Progress, which she illustrated with lots of watercolors and sketches of Isherwood and Wibbersley hall, where they lived.
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Jack Wilson
Right.
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Jake Pauler
And just as with the history of my friends, I think Ishwood eagerly took over this project from her. So all his books basically develop what I call the Ishwood mythos in my biography. So this is just the mythological version of his life that he elaborated in his novels, autobiographies and diaries. But then everything changed after Frank's death. Isher was only 10 at the time, and Kathleen never really got over his death. Yeah, Ishwood experienced the kind of Oedipal outrage that Kathleen had loved Frank more. And now that he was gone, there was nothing Ishwood could do to console her. He also resented the roles they were now expected to play. So Kathleen was cast as the holy widow in perpetual mourning, while he was the sacred son of the hero father, who's expected to work extra hard and be extra pious and patriotic. In response to his father's death, Kathleen created this cult of the past and a corresponding hatred of the present. And so each week rebelled against her. This is where the demon mother comes in. And he set himself against all the things that she loves, such as marble hall, the family seat. So he vowed to burn it down or turn it into a brothel as soon as he inherited it.
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Jack Wilson
Right. Did he keep that attitude his whole life? Was there any point. I don't want to jump ahead too much, but just with respect to his mother, did he at some point come to see her as kind of a victim of her grief, or was the wound too fresh and powerful for him to ever really come to grips with how she had behaved toward him after his father's death?
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Jake Pauler
Yeah, I think there was definitely a reconciliation when, you know, I. I guess in middle age, he came to see that, you know, he had quite a lot in common with Kathleen. And also, I think after about 20 years of mourning, she did allow herself to start enjoying life again. And they were pretty close. And. And, yeah, he recognized that they did have things in common. They. They were both inveterate diary writers. And after Kathleen died, he used her diaries to write this family memoir he called Kathleen and Frank. In Kathleen and Frank, he records one of Kathleen's diary entries in which she talks about how Isua dictated a story to her called the Adventures of Mommy and Daddy. But despite the title, it was actually chiefly about Christopher.
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Jack Wilson
Right.
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Jake Pauler
And, you know, much the same can be said about this memoir, Kathleen and Frank. You know, ostensibly it's about his parents, but actually it's really about Isherwood and the Christopher Isherwood Mitchell. So even that book is chiefly about Christopher.
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Jack Wilson
Right, okay. So let's move forward a little bit. And he goes off to university. It sounds like that would probably be a welcome change of scenery for him, given what was going on at home. And then he becomes part of the Auden Group. So what exactly who was in this group and what did they do and how did he fit into it?
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Jake Pauler
Yes, so I think each generation throws up a group of writers that distinguish themselves as edgy and original and come to be identified with a decade. So in the 1920s, it was modernist writers like Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and D.H. lawrence who defined the decade. In the 1930s, it was the Auden Group. This consisted of Auden, Steven Spender, Edward Upward, the poets Cecil Day Lewis and Louis McNeath. So, you know, the Orden Group, it sounds very official, like they sort of had meetings and mapped out who was going to write what. But actually this was just a label that was attached to them from outside. They obviously knew each other, they read each other's work, but there was no kind of concerted literary effort on their part.
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Jack Wilson
And they were all a similar age. They were all Oxbridge students. And they had in common anti fascism, I guess.
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Jake Pauler
Yeah, absolutely. So I think lots of writers in the 1930s, certainly during the Spanish Civil War, were very left leaning, if not outright communists.
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Jack Wilson
Right. So was he writing novels at this point? Was he writing poetry? Where was he in terms of his artistic development?
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Jake Pauler
Okay, well, he starts off writing modernist novels in the 20s. So his first book is called all the Conspirators. He was very indebted to Joyce at the time and just read Ulysses. And this book's full of streams of consciousness and it's not terribly successful. His next, although the Memorial is a much far superior book, he was under the influence of Virginia Woolf at this time. And the book is full of interior monologues, free indirect discourse, all these techniques you'd associate with modernism. But I think as he got older, he changed direction. So there's a turn away from modernist interiority to a sort of more outward looking stance. So this is kind of known as social realism.
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Jack Wilson
And was he somebody who had to worry about the marketplace? Was he independently wealthy throughout his adult life, or was there some point where he needed to. Right, for money?
- [34:28]
Jake Pauler
Yeah. I mean, in the 1920s, he got kicked out of Cambridge, he took a job as A secretary for Andre Mongeau, who was a violinist who ran a string quartet. He also made money as a tutor, but I think most of his income derived from an allowance from his Uncle Henry. So he was the current owner of Marple hall and the issue of the estate. So together with these sort of odd jobs, he made ends meet. And then in the 30s, he was, yes, getting much more literary recognition. But I didn't think his books were selling terribly well, you know, certainly not enough to provide him with an affluent lifestyle.
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Jack Wilson
Okay, so at what point did he go to Berlin and why did he go there and what did it mean to him?
- [35:27]
Jake Pauler
Okay, so he was a friend of W.H. auden. They met at school. And after Auden had graduated from Oxford, he spent some time in Berlin and regaled Ishwood with tales of his sexual adventures there. And Ishwood, yes, he, you know, he'd had a few sexual relationships in, with men in, in Cambridge, in London, but none of them were very successful. And this was because, as he put it, he couldn't relax sexually with a member of his own class or nation. And he acquired instead a working class foreigner. So it turned out that asking for sex and specifying what you wanted was less embarrassing in German than it was in English. So, yes, looking back on his time in Berlin, in his autobiography, Christopher and his kind famously wrote to Christopher Berlin and boy. So there was this tremendous sexual liberation for him. But, you know, he also met lots of people at that time that would be invaluable to him as a writer. He took a room in a lodging house on Nollendorf Strasse. Like the narrator of Goodbye to Berlin, who's also called Christopher Ishwood. It was run by a woman called Fraulein Thoreau, who became the model for Fraulein Schrader in Goodbye to Berlin. In this lodging house, he met Gene Ross, who was the inspiration for Sally Bowles. He also met the con man Gerald Hamilton, who was the inspiration for Mr. Norris in the Last of Mr. Norris. And then also, you know, he had the vital experience of living in Berlin during the ascendancy of Hitler and the Nazis. So this was all extremely useful for him as a writer. So he moved to Berlin in 1929, and then he left shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, taking his German boyfriend Heinz with him, because there was a lot of persecution of homosexuals under the Nazis.
- [37:41]
Jack Wilson
Right now it's interesting what you had said about. He. He seems to have felt more comfortable with himself or at least the sexual side of himself when he was in Germany. And I guess was it because the society was more liberated, that kind of between the war Berlin that we often hear so much about and kind of the, the attitudes and the artistic communities and so on, or was it sort of that Isherwood was so tied to a conception of himself and who he was in England that it was hard to kind of say, well I might not be that, I might not be what I've been presenting and the box that I've been put in, I maybe don't fit in that box. And it was hard for him to say I'm actually somebody that's different. And you might be surprised to know that I don't fit into this box.
- [38:43]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, I mean, I think it was both those things. It was liberating being in Berlin in the Weimar Republic because it was so permissive in those early days and there were lots of gay and lesbian bars and there was a real thriving queer culture in a way that there wasn't in in London for example. But then yes, there was also the fact that he could you know, kind of reinvent himself a little in Berlin. And I felt, I think as well, you know, in the 20s, he's struggling to be a writer, he's living with his mother, you know, that's all a bit infantilizing. Whereas he moves to Berlin, he feels like a real adult. He's working on his second novel, the Memorial, which is a real, literally breakthrough for him and he's teaching English and, and he's got this allowance. But yeah, it's, it's just a great adventure for him. And you know, he'd go out to the gay bars in the evening but then he'd get up early in the morning and, and write in a cafe and drink beer and smoke cigarettes and you know, I just, I think he had a great time.
- [39:54]
Jack Wilson
Yeah. And then after he left Berlin he seems to have traveled around for a bit and then he makes the move to America. So why don't we take a quick break and then we'll come back with Jake Pauler and hear more about what Christopher Isherwood did once he moved to America. Are you ready to dairy free your mind this summer? Melt away your dairy free expectations with so delicious dairy free frozen desserts. Enjoy mind blowing flavors like salted caramel cluster chocolate cookies and cream cookie dough and more. For over 35 years, so delicious has been cranking up the flavor with show stopping products that are 100% dairy free, certified vegan by Vegan Action and are so unbelievably creamy. Your taste buds will do a double take. Dairy free your mind visit so delicious. Dairy free.com prime delivery is fast. How fast are we talking? We're talking puzzle toys and lick pad delivered so fast you can get this puppy under control fast. We're talking chew toys at your door without really waiting. Fast pads, cooling mat and peg hammer fast and fast. And there's training T R E A T S faster than you can say sit fast. And now we can all relax and order these matching hoodies to get cozy and cute. Fast, fast. Free delivery.
- [41:22]
Jake Pauler
It's on prime.
- [41:38]
Jack Wilson
Okay, we're back. So, Jake, I think I have the chronology right. He went to America. What was it that led him to do that? I mean, before that, he had been to China, he had traveled around Europe, and was there something about America that was drawing him? Was it because the war was on the horizon or what exactly triggered the move?
- [41:59]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, well, there were several things. I think. I think we need to backtrack just slightly in order to kind of explain it. So he was. He left Berlin in May 1933 with his German boyfriend, Heinz Nedermeyer. But then there's this sort of odyssey period of four years where they travel around Europe because Heinz is German, he can't get a proper visa, so they can only remain in one country for a couple of months at a time. And then in 1937, Heinz has to go back to Germany. He's arrested by the Gestapo because he's avoiding conscription. And then he's. He goes to jail. So this is 37.
- [42:43]
Jack Wilson
Wow.
- [42:44]
Jake Pauler
Isherwood comes back to England, but only briefly. He then goes to China, as you mentioned, with W.H. auden. They were commissioned to write a book about the Sino Japanese War. And then he first visits America on his way back from China in 38. He and Auden have a great time in New York taking Benzedrine and meeting lots of celebrities. And I think Auden wanted to return to America. As for Ishuit, I think primarily he didn't want to fight against the German army that had Heinz in it. So Heinz had been sent to jail for a while, but he'd then been dragooned into the German army. So this basically meant that Issued was now a pacifist by default. And so. So, yeah, that's kind of, I suppose, the. The main reason he moved to America also. He wanted to preserve his autonomy, his, you know, ability to write. But then I think it's very telling that he's crippled with writer's block in America for almost the entire period of the Second World War, as if his conscience didn't allow to write during that time.
- [44:05]
Jack Wilson
Right. And I was reading your book, that he was criticized by British critics as being cowardly for fleeing the Second World War. Did those criticisms bother him, or had he already internalized that feeling? You know, did he defend himself, or. Or do you think he kind of absorbed all of that?
- [44:26]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, I think he was definitely stung by these criticisms and, you know, felt tremendously guilty for shunning the war in America. And as I say, you know, this is partly why he had this terrible writer's block, because he felt so conflicted about it. But in America, he sought out fellow pacifists such as the British writers Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley. They had immigrated a couple of years earlier and were now living in Los Angeles. Both Huxley and Hurd were studying Eastern spirituality at this time and had been initiated by Swami Prabhupadananda of the Vedanta Society. So this is how Isua gets involved with Vedanta. Through her, he also became involved with the Quakers. In 1941, he volunteered to work at a Quaker hospital for Jewish refugees in Pennsylvania. And then in the aftermath of Pearl harbor in America joining the war, he applied for work as a conscientious objector at a civilian public service camp. And then it was while waiting in vain for his induction notice that he finally decided to undertake monastic training at the Hollywood Vedanta Center.
- [45:44]
Jack Wilson
Right. Okay, so what exactly is Vedanta philosophy, and why do you think Isherwood was drawn to it?
- [45:53]
Jake Pauler
Okay, so I think it's probably easiest to start by contrasting Christianity to Vedanta. So Christianity is a dualistic religion in which there's a rigid distinction between the soul and the body, between God and human beings. So in Christianity, it's only the soul that's divine, whereas the body is profane, a source of temptation in terms of lust and gluttony. Whereas, Edwaita, Vedanta is monistic. This Sanskrit word, advaita, means non jewelry. So the Weightians believe that the universe and everything in it is an emanation of the Hindu godhead Brahman. So the upshot of this monistic worldview is that everything is divine. Rivers, stones, plastic bags, peanut butter. And this includes humans and the body. Whereas in Christianity, the body is profane, is sinful, etc. So for Adwaitans, the world we see around us of apparent difference in duality, for instance, self and other, mind and body, male and female, this is an illusion. That they call Maya. Vedanta teaches that the self or ego is part of this illusion because everything is Brahman. There's no getting away from Brahman. You can't be this separate self. One of the core teachings of a Dante is that the, the self they call the Atman is the same as Brahman. So the aim of meditation is to try and transcend this illusory self and partake of the universal consciousness of Brahman. This is known as mystical experience. And Vedanta can be described as a mystical religion. So during the war, Ish were trained to be a Vedanta monk, but he ultimately found the injunction to be celibate impossible to adhere to. But even though he didn't end up becoming a monk, he remained very close to his guru, Swami Pravananda. And he helped him to translate many key Hindu texts, such as the Bhagavad Gita into English. And then also all the books he wrote in America after the war bear the influence of Vedanta philosophy.
- [48:17]
Jack Wilson
Right, okay, so I can see how, I mean, the idea as you describe appeals to me and I can imagine how much more it would appeal to someone who's grown up with the idea that his impulses and his sort of entire attitude toward other human beings and his sexual relationships and so on is illegal or sinful. And it would be kind of this liberating feeling to think this, you know, that, that those rules are just getting it wrong. That that's. But I'm wondering how it changed his writing in particular. He seems so fully formed in those Berlin years. I mean, he was so goodbye to Berlin. It's such a successful, artistically successful book. How did his, his works develop after he started to take in Vedanta?
- [49:17]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, so all his American books have this sort of, you know, reflect the influence of Vedanta, but kind of perhaps it's not immediately obvious to the, the general reader. So let's maybe think about a single man and how verdant to influence that. So on the face of it, a single man would appear to be a secular novel. It charts the day in the life of George, who's a middle aged English professor. He's mourning the death of his lover, Jim. This secular story then is fitted into a Vedanta framework. So at the end of the novel, there's a coda in which the narrator likens the illusory entity of George's ego to a rock pool. During the day, the rock pool is isolated from the ocean by the ebb tide, but at night, the Waters of the ocean come flooding over the rock pool of the ego, which is then united. And I'm going to quote here with that consciousness, which is no one in particular, but which contains everyone and everything, past, present and future, and extends unbroken beyond the uttermost stars. So in this metaphor, then, the rock pool is Atman and the ocean is Brahman. And the message is that the waters of the ocean are not really other than the waters of the pool. So in other words, or Atman, the human self is the same as Brahman, the Hindu godhead. But then the ending is ambiguous because on the one hand, it seems to suggest that George will get over Jim's death and fall in love with someone else, that he will live in the present rather than being a prisoner of the past. But on the other hand, the narrator says, let's suppose that plaque has been gradually accumulating in George's arteries, and this will result in a fatal heart attack. If. If the body dies, then the rock pool of George's ego will remain in the universal consciousness of the ocean or Brahman. But it's up to the reader to decide whether George lives or dies.
- [51:26]
Jack Wilson
And how was a Single man received when it came out in the 1930s.
- [51:32]
Jake Pauler
Isherwood was figurehead for the gay liberation movement. But the book was published in 1964, so before this got going. And they were, unfortunately, you know, quite a few homophobic reviewers who paraded their disgust in print. But, you know, on the other hand, there were a few much more discerning critics who rightly held it as a masterpiece. And I think now it's. It's rightly regarded as one of his best novels.
- [52:04]
Jack Wilson
Yeah, right. So I might be trafficking in stereotypes here, and maybe this is unfair, but it's always easier for me to picture British emigres as living in Boston or New York or someplace like that, and harder for me to envision them in California. It seems like they're moving to quite a different environment. And just with the sunshine and the beach and that kind of thing was. What was his life like in America? Was he. I mean, who was he surrounded by and what did he do kind of on a daily basis?
- [52:44]
Jake Pauler
Yeah. I think Ishwait had a very comfortable life in Los Angeles. He mostly lived in Santa Monica. He enjoyed swimming in the ocean, cruising on Santa Monica State Beach. He made good money working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, although very few of his screenplays actually ended up being filmed by working in Hollywood. He had many celebrity friends that he enjoyed socializing with. These included David Hockney, Igor Stravinsky, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Greta Garbo, Aldous Huxley, Thomas Mann, Tennessee Williams, and like George in A Single man, he also taught English in several American colleges, including Los Angeles State College and Berkeley. So, yeah, I think, you know, Ishwood had a great time in Los Angeles. I mean, when he first moved to America, he and Auden lived in New York. And I think Auden really enjoyed New York, whereas Ishwood never really felt at home there. And it was because he wanted to know more about pacifism and kind of consolidate his position as a pacifist that he went to Los Angeles, which is where all this Huxley and Gerald heard were. And they were outspoken, very committed pacifists. But then when he moved to la, he just, you know, he decided he. He much preferred it there. And he really enjoyed the beach and sunbathing, swimming in the sea. So it was much more conducive for him.
- [54:19]
Jack Wilson
Right, let's talk about your book a little bit. So I'm curious. Here's a guy who, at the age of six, was already giving us some accounts that you could draw upon to try to glean what was going on in his mind and how he viewed himself in context and so on. But were his letters and his private writings reliable? Did you find. Do his novels provide any insight into him as a person, or are those kind of full of red herrings and false leads? What were you able to draw upon in order to get to the real Christopher Isherwood?
- [54:57]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, so I think the big challenge for me writing this issue with Biography was that it had to be 60,000 words or less. It's published by Reaction for their Crypto Wise series. And these books are all very slim. But on the other hand, there's this huge wealth of material you can tap into as a biographer. So for a start, there's three very large volumes of the published diaries. They're all about 800 pages long. There's another volume of diaries called the Lost Years. These are what Ishwood called the reconstructed diaries. So they're from a period after the Second World War where he led quite a dissolute life. You know, spent a lot of the war training to become a monk. And then when he stopped doing that, he obviously did a lot of drinking and had a lot of sex and wasn't keeping a diary during this, this period. So he had to reconstruct it from letters and his memory and appointments, diaries. So there's those stories. Then he wrote two autobiographies, one called Lions and shadows the other Christopher and his kind. He wrote a family memoir called Kathleen and Frank, which is all about his childhood. And then there's the biographies of Issuance. So there were two published in the 70s in his lifetime, which he hated. There's a whopping thousand page biography by Peter Parker, which was published in 2004. But when I started writing my biography back in 2021, I was thinking, look, there hasn't been a new Biograph geography for almost 20 years. But little did I know that Catherine Bucknell, who's the editor of the issue with Diaries, she was writing another huge biography that had been authorized by the Ishwood estate and that was published last year. Then I spent a month in the Huntington Library in San Marino trawling through the Christopher Ishuid archive of all his unpublished writings. So, unsurprisingly, like my first draft was twice as long as it should have been. It was 120,000 words rather than 60. So it was a kind of painful process of editing it.
- [57:23]
Jack Wilson
Well, those edits are painful for the writer, but the reader surely appreciates them.
- [57:33]
Jake Pauler
Yes, yes, I hope so. I mean, as to your earlier question about how reliable the diaries are, I think, you know, they're fairly reliable. They weren't published in his lifetime, and for the most part, he didn't revise them. But you have to bear in mind that Ishwood is a fiction writer, and thus there's going to be a certain amount of art for elaboration and presentation in the diaries. For example, he was friends with the British writer Dodie Smith. They lived together in Los Angeles. But Dadie Smith was scandalized when he gave her his wartime diaries to read because he'd faked several journal entries about herself. He borrowed details and impressions from a later date and then retrospectively applied them to her. But it's worth pointing out this wartime diary, he did think about publishing it in his lifetime, so he did revise it and polish it, whereas I think the rest of his diaries, he didn't revise it and no one was allowed to read them. So I would say they're more reliable than this sort of wartime diary. I mean, as for the novels, they can occasionally provide details that are missing from the diaries and autobiographies. Say, for example, Ishwood wasn't writing a diary, age 10, when his father died in the First World War. So we've got no firsthand account of how Ishwood reacted to it. But in his second novel, the Memorial, there's a very powerful passage that describes the grief of the protagonist, Eric Vernon, who learns about his father's death at boarding school, but gradually comes to terms with it. But then when he returns home in the holidays, he's horrified by his mother's grief and his inability to console her.
- [59:30]
Jack Wilson
Right, okay, so how well do Isherwood's novels hold up? And where should a reader start? Is Goodbye to Berlin kind of the best entry point?
- [59:45]
Jake Pauler
Yeah, absolutely. I would absolutely start with Goodbye to Berlin. I think Ishwood's great gift as a writer was for characterization. And Goodbye to Berlin is full of vivid, charming, idiosyncratic characters living in the last days of the Weimar Republic. I would also recommend Ishuid's autobiography, Lines and Shadows, that was published in 38, the year before Goodbye to Berlin. It's an account of his school days and his time at Cambridge. It's got lots of really hilarious stuff about his early unpublished fiction. For example, when he was at Cambridge with his friend Edward Upward, who was also a writer, they invented this world they called Mortmere, which was full of these grotesque characters, such as the dastardly Reynard Moxon, the owner of a brothel for necrophiles, kind of elaborated this Mortmere world in short stories and poems, and it's all tremendous fun. So in Lines and Shadows, Issued gives a very funny account of his time at Cambridge and his early fiction.
- [60:57]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [60:58]
Jake Pauler
As for the American issue, would. I would start with a single man. And then, of course, his later autobiography, Christopher and His Kind, in which he speaks frankly about his sex life in Berlin, which is conspicuously absent from Goodbye to Berlin. So that was published in 39. And so it would have been scandalous to have a openly homosexual narrator, especially one called Christopher Ishwood. But also, I think Ishwood felt that, you know, even if he had made the narrator a Goodbye to Belen homosexual, it would have detracted from the stories he was trying to tell about Sally Bowles, Otto Novak, Fraulein Schrader, and his general evocation of. Of Berlin under the shadow of fascism.
- [61:46]
Jack Wilson
Right.
- [61:47]
Jake Pauler
So, yes, Christopher and His Kind is a great book. And then finally, if you enjoy the fiction and the autobiographies, I would thoroughly recommend the diaries. So even though they're very long, I think you'll find that you wish there was another volume of 800 pages when you finish them.
- [62:06]
Jack Wilson
Right, okay. Well, and another entry point would be to start with your book, which is called Christopher A Critical Life. Jake Pauler, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.
- [62:19]
Jake Pauler
Oh, you're welcome. It's been a pleasure.
- [62:25]
Jack Wilson
Okay, there we go. That's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to Jake Pauler for joining me. We will be back soon with some more literary goodness for you. How about a fun episode with a fun person who loves Edith Wharton and Patrick o'? Brien? Well, here, speaking of two people I love, we she and I will geek out on those two. We will hear about her forays into those two worlds and I think we'll have a another entry on our list of the 25 greatest books of all time. What will land at number 21? And what else? John Milton is around the corner, lurking as he often does, and a leap back in time to old French epics. Will he'll hear all about those poems. And could a guy write an entire book just about the literature of 1925? Indeed he could and can and has. We'll hear about that. An encyclopedia of that year of literary history. How about some John Keats as we head toward autumn and Charlotte Bronte and more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time. Behind every great meal is a person with a story to tell. Hear them on Culinary Characters Unlocked, the podcast that reveals the lives behind the food. Hosted by me, David Page, Emmy Award winning journalist and creator of Diners Drive Ins and Dives as I talk with everyone from culinary legends to mom and pop standouts about the creativity, grit and and passion that shape the food we love. Follow Culinary Characters Unlocked on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind every Empire are the people history tried to forget. Lost Roman Heroes tells the stories of the remarkable characters who shaped Rome from its mythical beginnings to its final fall. Each episode blends armchair storytelling, sharp historical insight, and a bit of humor to bring these lost figures to life. From generals to scientists, from rebels to empresses, from priests to politicians, these lost Roman heroes have one thing in common. They stood up for civilization when the bad guys threatened. And in doing so, they changed the course of human history. If you're into history that's vivid, surprising and deeply human, this show's for you.