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October
Une autobiographie californienne où défilent des instants de vie quotidienne, la vieillesse, la mort mais aussi la beauté, le désir.
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1982
2 people are currently reading
36 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Isherwood
165 books1,521 followersEnglish-born American writer Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood portrayed Berlin in the early 1930s in his best known works, such as
Goodbye to Berlin
(1939), the basis for the musical
Cabaret
(1966). Isherwood was a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, autobiographer, and diarist.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
With W.H. Auden he wrote three plays— The Dog Beneath the Skin (1932), The Ascent of F6 (1936), and On the Frontier (1938). Isherwood tells the story in his first autobiography, Lions and Shadows .
After Isherwood wrote joke answers on his second-year exams, Cambridge University in 1925 asked him to leave. He briefly attended medical school and progressed with his first two novels, All the Conspirators (1928) and The Memorial (1932). In 1930, he moved to Berlin, where he taught English, dabbled in Communism, and enthusiastically explored his homosexuality. His experiences provided the material for Mister Norris Changes Trains (1935) and Goodbye to Berlin (1938), still his most famous book.
In Berlin in 1932, he also began an important relationship with Heinz Neddermeyer, a young German with whom he fled the Nazis in 1933. England refused entry to Neddermeyer on his second visit in 1934, and the pair moved restlessly about Europe until the Gestapo arrested Neddermeyer in May 1937 and then finally separated them.
In 1938, Isherwood sailed with Auden to China to write Journey to a War (1939), about the Sino-Japanese conflict. They returned to England and Isherwood went on to Hollywood to look for movie-writing work. He also became a disciple of the Ramakrishna monk, Swami Prabhavananda, head of the Vedanta Society of Southern California. He decided not to take monastic vows, but he remained a Hindu for the rest of his life, serving, praying, and lecturing in the temple every week and writing a biography, Ramakrishna and His Disciples (1965).
In 1945, Isherwood published Prater Violet, fictionalizing his first movie writing job in London in 1933-1934. In Hollywood, he spent the start of the 1950s fighting his way free of a destructive five-year affair with an attractive and undisciplined American photographer, William Caskey. Caskey took the photographs for Isherwood’s travel book about South America, The Condor and The Cows (1947). Isherwood’s sixth novel, The World in the Evening (1954), written mostly during this period, was less successful than earlier ones.
In 1953, he fell in love with Don Bachardy, an eighteen-year-old college student born and raised in Los Angeles. They were to remain together until Isherwood’s death. In 1961, Isherwood and completed the final revisions to his new novel Down There on a Visit (1962). Their relationship nearly ended in 1963, and Isherwood moved out of their Santa Monica house. This dark period underpins Isherwood’s masterpiece A Single Man (1964).
Isherwood wrote another novel, A Meeting by the River (1967), about two brothers, but he gave up writing fiction and turned entirely to autobiography. In Kathleen and Frank (1971), he drew on the letters and diaries of his parents. In Christopher and His Kind (1976), he returned to the 1930s to tell, as a publicly avowed homosexual, the real story of his life in Berlin and his wanderings with Heinz Neddermeyer. The book made him a hero of gay liberation and a national celebrity all over again but now in his true, political and personal identity.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2017
Baia di Santa Monica, California. Ottobre 1979 .
Una coppia affiatata che ha scelto di passare qui gli anni della maturità. Sono insieme da quasi trent'anni.
Lui è uno scrittore inglese settantacinquenne, lavora ancora anche se il più delle volte è vinto dalla pigrizia e dal godere le piccole gioie della quotidianità e il piacere di condividerle con l'essere amato.
Lui è un pittore ritrattista americano di trent'anni più giovane, si esercita a ritrarre amici, conoscenti e vicini di casa che accettano di posare; i suoi ritratti vanno ad illustrare questo diario di vita di coppia che si snoda, giorno per giorno, per tutto quell'Ottobre del '79.
Sí, sono due lui e la coppia è quella formata da Christopher Isherwood e dal suo compagno Don Bachardy.
Nel suo diario di Ottobre Isherwood registra avvenimenti giornalieri come le visite dei vicini, le serate fuori casa, le passeggiate sulla spiaggia, la spesa, i terremoti che lì non mancano mai. Oppure parla di amici presenti o lontani ( Auden, Gore Vidal, Gerald Heard) tracciandone in poche righe ritratti pieni di acutezza, o ricorda la sua famiglia, la madre il fratello.
C'è sempre, accanto al tono divertito e attento, la gratitudine di vivere una stagione felice e la consapevolezza di questo privilegio.
E anche le divagazioni di un uomo che guarda al suo mondo ormai per lo più passato sono limpide, serene; riflessioni sull'arte, la vecchiaia, l'omosessualità, la scrittura. Il tempo che passa, che è passato ma non è finito: " L'inizio di Ottobre è un momento dell'anno felice, promettente, ispirato - è sempre stato così. Per me, che sono nato alla fine dell'estate, l'autunno è la mia primavera".
La primavera di Isherwood durerà ancora 7 anni; morirà nel 1986.
Bachardy rimane il suo compagno di vita fino alla fine; il loro incontro è uno dei temi del bellissimo Un uomo solo, che ha per sfondo lo stesso paesaggio californiano dove i due avevano scelto di vivere.
Una coppia affiatata che ha scelto di passare qui gli anni della maturità. Sono insieme da quasi trent'anni.
Lui è uno scrittore inglese settantacinquenne, lavora ancora anche se il più delle volte è vinto dalla pigrizia e dal godere le piccole gioie della quotidianità e il piacere di condividerle con l'essere amato.
Lui è un pittore ritrattista americano di trent'anni più giovane, si esercita a ritrarre amici, conoscenti e vicini di casa che accettano di posare; i suoi ritratti vanno ad illustrare questo diario di vita di coppia che si snoda, giorno per giorno, per tutto quell'Ottobre del '79.
Sí, sono due lui e la coppia è quella formata da Christopher Isherwood e dal suo compagno Don Bachardy.
Nel suo diario di Ottobre Isherwood registra avvenimenti giornalieri come le visite dei vicini, le serate fuori casa, le passeggiate sulla spiaggia, la spesa, i terremoti che lì non mancano mai. Oppure parla di amici presenti o lontani ( Auden, Gore Vidal, Gerald Heard) tracciandone in poche righe ritratti pieni di acutezza, o ricorda la sua famiglia, la madre il fratello.
C'è sempre, accanto al tono divertito e attento, la gratitudine di vivere una stagione felice e la consapevolezza di questo privilegio.
E anche le divagazioni di un uomo che guarda al suo mondo ormai per lo più passato sono limpide, serene; riflessioni sull'arte, la vecchiaia, l'omosessualità, la scrittura. Il tempo che passa, che è passato ma non è finito: " L'inizio di Ottobre è un momento dell'anno felice, promettente, ispirato - è sempre stato così. Per me, che sono nato alla fine dell'estate, l'autunno è la mia primavera".
La primavera di Isherwood durerà ancora 7 anni; morirà nel 1986.
Bachardy rimane il suo compagno di vita fino alla fine; il loro incontro è uno dei temi del bellissimo Un uomo solo, che ha per sfondo lo stesso paesaggio californiano dove i due avevano scelto di vivere.
November 18, 2016
In October of 1979, these two men who were longtime companions produced material for this art book with pages of twelve by nine inches. Isherwood wrote text for each day of the month, and Bachardy produced thirty-two portraits of their friends or associates. The text is not coordinated in any way with the drawings, nor should it be. This is one of print run of 3,000 copies, and much of the text repeats or is a variation on material that Isherwood has already covered in either his diaries or other contemporary books, such as Kathleen and Frank, a memoir of his parents.
Nuggets:
October is a project the two men designed so that they might work together (although they did also collaborate on a number of scripts). Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading the book and look forward to viewing the drawings again and again.
Nuggets:
“The beginning of October is a joyful, hopeful, inspiring time of the year for me—it always has been. For me, born so late in the summer, autumn is my spring. This is the season which I associate with fresh work-projects in their earliest, most creative phase—the phase of discovering what the project is really about, rather than how I can execute it” (8).
“Since 1973, I’ve been gradually reading through the Marchand edition of Byron’s Letters and Journals, volume by volume, as they are published. Now I’ve nearly finished volume nine, which covers October 1821 to September 1822” (15).
“There are students who are doing term-papers or these about my work or the work of my friends. They expect me to drop everything and answer pages of questions, instead of themselves looking for the answers in the library. All right, I sympathize with their laziness. But, too often, they make the crudest of all mistakes; they think they can flatter me into helping them by claiming, ‘I’ve read everything you’ve written’—a statement which could only be true of maybe twenty people in the Unites States” (17). And I’m now one of those twenty (surely more by now)! Frankly, I wouldn’t tell an author such a thing but would hope my questions or our discussion would reflect that I had read all his books.
October is a project the two men designed so that they might work together (although they did also collaborate on a number of scripts). Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading the book and look forward to viewing the drawings again and again.
October 8, 2017
"C'è un fascino speciale nei resoconti esaustivi di vite apparentemente prive di eventi." (p. 12)
January 12, 2018
"Ma l'illuminazione non ha nulla a che vedere con l'autocontrollo o con l'eroismo. L'illuminazione dà al santo una specie di sicurezza che rende irrilevante il dolore".
Want to read
April 20, 2016Incipit
Compleanno di mio fratello Richard.........
Ottobre incipitmania.com
Compleanno di mio fratello Richard.........
Ottobre incipitmania.com
July 14, 2017
A tender account of one month in Isherwood and Bachardy's late-in-life domestic bliss. It's astonishing to witness Isherwood's clarity as he aged, so comfortable in his existence with a true lover at his side.
January 24, 2025
J’aurais pu en lire 500 pages honnêtement
November 4, 2025
Letto d'un fiato sul finire di ottobre. Un diario scanzonato, pigro, in cui Isherwood ha ben pochi filtri. Come tutta la sua produzione lo consiglio!
December 31, 2013
Christopher Isherwood writes a diary entry for each day of the month of October while his life-partner, Don Bachardy, draws a portrait of a different person each day, including one of Isherwood, of course. It's a unique book that has stayed with me over the years, a collector's item, essential for anyone who admires their work.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews