Christopher Isherwood is an abhorrent writer. I tried to read one of his books, and I put it down after the first short monologue. Some middle-age guy’s face appeared to be rotting in his bathroom mirror.
Nonetheless, I found Christopher and His Kind to be an interesting movie in a Dostoevsky-lite way. He’s still a monster, but what’s interesting is how the world is portrayed around him. The movie shows how the free-spirit, hippie Weimar culture devolves into Nazism, even though there are no clear causes or moral evaluations. The movie opens with a psychologically astute song and the climax for me was when his gigolo boyfriend becomes a Nazi storm-trooper.
Speaking about monsters…
I’m watching a documentary on Gore Vidal right now on Netflix. What surprised me is how bad a writer Vidal was. Consider the famous essay where he says that Rand’s philosophy is “nearly perfect in its immorality.” He goes on to write:
Moral values are in flux. The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep. Trolls walk the American night. Caesars are stirring in the Forum. There are storm warnings ahead. But to counter trolls and Caesars, we have such men as Lewis Mumford whose new book, The City in History, inspires.
Talk about gaudy. Victor Hugo’s metaphors make Vidal’s smell like cardboard.
