The Animals
Love Letters between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy
-
- £9.99
-
- £9.99
Publisher Description
Christopher Isherwood was a celebrated English writer when he met the Californian teenager Don Bachardy on a Santa Monica beach in 1952. They spent their first night together on Valentine’s Day 1953. Defying the conventions, the two men began living as an openly gay couple in an otherwise closeted Hollywood. The Animals provides a loving testimony of an extraordinary relationship that lasted until Chris’s death in 1986 – and survived affairs (on both sides) and a thirty-year-age-gap.
In romantic letters to one another, the couple created the private world of the Animals. Chris was Dobbin, a stubborn old workhorse; Don was the playful young white cat, Kitty. But Don needed to carve out his own identity – some of their longest sequences of letters were exchanged during his trips to London and New York, to pursue his career as an artist and to widen his emotional and sexual horizons.
Amidst the intimate domestic dramas, we learn of Isherwood’s continuing literary success –the royalty cheques from Cabaret, the acclaim for his pioneering novel A Single Man – and the bohemian whirl of Californian film suppers and beach life. Don, whose portraits of London theatreland were making his name, attends the world premiere of The Innocents with Truman Capote and afterwards dines with Deborah Kerr and the rest of the cast, spends weekends with Tennessee Williams, Cecil Beton, or the Earl and Countess of Harewood, and tours Egypt and Greece with a new love interest. But whatever happens in the outside world, Dobbin and Kitty always return to their ‘Basket’ and to each other. Candid, gossipy, exceptionally affectionate, The Animals is a unique interplay between two creative spirits, confident in their mutual devotion.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This collection of letters between famed writer Christopher Isherwood (1902 1986, author of Goodbye to Berlin), and his partner of over three decades, Don Bachardy, a 30-years younger portrait painter, offers considerable insight into the life of this extraordinary couple. An astute introduction by Bucknell (editor of Isherwood's Diaries) sets up the correspondence, which spans February 1956 to April 1970. Throughout the chatty exchanges, the lovers drop names, discuss projects, shows, and collaborations, dish, commiserate, and even bitch. What emerges is a remarkable portrait of love in exile. Bachardy often wrote to Isherwood to discuss insecurities, doubts, and despair; both men gave each other much-needed support. The book's title comes from their imaginary identities as "the Animals": Don being the cat to Chris's horse, which prompts the lovers to open and close their letters with romantic mushiness and cutesy terms of endearment for example, "Dearest Silkmuzzle Adored Pinktongue" and "Most Treasured Plug." A little of this affection, however, goes a long way. The copious and perhaps too comprehensive notes detail everything and everyone, including affairs. Most of the correspondence is chaste; the raunchiest entry concerns "an intravenous of horse essence." This worthwhile volume may be best suited for Isherwood completists. 52 b&w illus.
