Christopher Isherwood: His Era, His Gang, and the Legacy of the Truly Strong Man

by David Garrett Izzo

A reevaluation of Isherwood's literary achievements in the light of his Vedantism

In a comprehensive critical study of the literary artist, mystic, and gay-activist icon Christopher Isherwood, David Garrett Izzo draws on previously unavailable material to offer a fresh appraisal of the writer's literary milieu and his influence on twentieth-century literature and culture. The first thorough examination of Isherwood's work and life in twenty years, Izzo's analysis brings into play the Mortmere stories, by Isherwood and Edward Upward (dating from the 1920s but published only in 1994), and the Diaries, 1939–1960, published in 1996, to reposition Isherwood within a circle of British writers that included―besides Upward―W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day Lewis. Describing Isherwood as a "catalyzing influence" on the Auden generation, Izzo explores the dissemination of Isherwood's ideas through his own work and the writings of his contemporaries.

Tracing Isherwood's personal and literary evolution, Izzo details the writer's rebellion against England's class-conscious traditions, his immigration to the United States in 1939, and his study of Vedantic philosophy. Izzo chronicles Isherwood's rejection of the traditional hero and his search for a more sensitive, less vainglorious alternative, whom Isherwood dubbed the Truly Strong Man. Izzo describes Isherwood's mentorship of Auden, their shared philosophy, and the continuity of that philosophy as they both left Britain for the United States. Whereas most accounts emphasize a break between their English and American periods, Izzo focuses the many similarities shared by their early and later work. Izzo suggests that all of Isherwood's writings―British and American―reflect his quest to represent artistically the Truly Strong Man, a quest Isherwood fulfilled after meeting his Vedantic guru Swami Prabhavananda. Proposing that the writer's American art serves as a metaphor for his spiritual philosophy, Izzo reads Isherwood's American novels in light of his Vedantism and places his autobiographical work from the final years of his life in the context of his adopted religious beliefs.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2001

About the author

David Garrett Izzo is an English Professor emeritus who has published three novels, three plays, five short stories, and 17 poems, as well as 16 books and 60 essays of literary scholarship. David has published extensively on the Perennial Spiritual Philosophy of Mysticism (Vedanta) as applied to literature. He is inspired by Aldous Huxley, as well as Bruce Springsteen, his wife Carol and their five cats: Huxley, Max, Princess, Phoebe, and Luca. Two of his novels are fantasies with cats as characters: Maximus in Catland (compared to C.S. Lewis) and Purring Heights. The third is a historical novel about Huxley and peers, Details and reviews at www.davidgarrettizzo.com

January 2017
Poems: (see photo)
Permutations Among the
Nightingales
Winner of the Vibrant Poetic Voices Award
Shade Seekers Press No. 2

Advance Praise:

With remarkable elan, David Garrett Izzo unfolds the secret origami of our minds and constitutions in his new book, Permutations among the Nightingales. It’s a fierce collection of philosophical raps, tributes to culture heroes, and the naked autobiography of a man to whom life has given both great pain and great pleasure. Reading Izzo’s poems, you wind up in unexpected places, for he is one of the great secrets of American literature.
Kevin Killian, November 2016.

(Kevin Killian is an American poet, author, editor, and playwright. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which he co-edited with Peter Gizzi, won the American Book Award for poetry in 2009.)

The poems in David Izzo’s Permutations Among the Nightingales are full-voiced and whole-hearted. They range from quiet meditations--on teaching, on power, on poetry--to unabashed celebrations of the poet’s heroes—Springsteen, Auden, Huxley, and less famous exemplars of the twin arts of seeing clearly and living consciously. In a time when much poetry is guarded and cautious, these brave poems don’t flinch from expressing the big emotions—heartbreak, gratitude, rage, tenderness.
April Lindner, December 2016

(April Lindner’s first collection of poetry, won the Walt McDonald First Book Prize, Skin (2002). In 2010, she published a young adult novel, Jane. She teaches at St Joseph’s University, Pennsylvania.)