Isherwood on Writing: The Complete Lectures in California

Isherwood’s lectures on writing and writers, now all available for the first time

In the 1960s, Christopher Isherwood gave an unprecedented series of lectures at California universities about his life and work. During this time Isherwood, who would liberate the memoir and become the founding father of modern gay writing, spoke openly for the first time about his craft—on writing for film, theater, and novels—and spirituality. Isherwood on Writing brings these free-flowing, wide-ranging public addresses together to reveal a distinctly American Isherwood at the top of his form.

This updated edition contains the long-lost conclusion to the second lecture, published here for the first time, including its discussion of A Single Man, his greatest novel, and A Meeting by the River, his final novel.

A major figure in twentieth-century fiction and the gay rights movement, Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) wrote many books, including A Single Man and Down There on a Visit.

James J. Berg won a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Studies for The Isherwood Century. He is coeditor of The American Isherwood and Isherwood in Transit, both from Minnesota.

Claude Summers is William E. Stirton Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Dearborn.