The Sixties : Diaries 1960-1969
Author(s): Christopher Isherwood
“Intimate and compulsively readable.” —Alfred Corn, The Nation
The second volume of acclaimed author Christopher Isherwood’s diaries takes readers to the heart of the 1960s, the decade in which Isherwood’s semiautobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin would be adapted into the Tony Award-winning musical Cabaret. Against a background of cultural paradigm shifts including the advent of space travel, pop art, and mod fashion, and seminal events like the Kennedy/Nixon election, the Marianne Faithfull/Mick Jagger romance, the rise of the Hippie movement, and the riotous explosion of America’s inner cities, The Sixties follows Isherwood’s friendships with creative powerhouses such as Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Richard Burton, and Gore Vidal, and continues the saga of his great romance with portraitist Don Bachardy.
Review(s):
“An intimate portrait of the life of a beautiful if neurotic mind… streaked with gossip, flinty observations, great good humor and—despite Isherwood’s fundamental discretion—plenty of frank talk.”
“These diaries are, in their core, a love story…thanks to [them], we bear witness to it all—and are all the richer for it.”
“A good writer…intensely self-aware…a fascinating companion…THE SIXTIES [is] accessible to everyone…a true piece of social history.”
“The diary entries in The Sixties are a mix of quotidian detail, social observation, moody reverie, gossip and self-rebuke.”
“Gossipy, funny, wide-ranging, and revealing…[Isherwood] comes across as approachable, aware, and passionately interested.”
ISBN: 9780061185007