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A review by shananaomi
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
5.0
i have no idea how i got to be 33 years old, have an entire bookshelf sagging with the gay books i've acquired over some omg 17-ish years of collecting and taking classes and i all but have a degree in queer studies, people -- and yet i'd never read any christopher isherwood novels before last month. i don't even remember anyone telling me i should and me having some snarky eh, another old gay white guy response. (i vaguely remember reading some excerpts in a magazine, possibly out, but so vaguely i don't think it counts here.)
after we saw a single man, i read berlin stories, the collection of two novels he wrote (which in part later became cabaret). then i found this book in a bookstore in austin -- i was for a moment incensed when i couldn't find it in "fiction," thinking it'd been relegated into the smaller gay section upstairs, only to find it instead shelved under "classics." (you win, book people of austin. good call.)
here's what i wish someone would have told me, spoiler-free:
this book -- published in 1964, set the year before -- is more forthright, less ashamed, more delightfully lusty and yet undeniably domesticated in its queer love than probably anything i ever read that was written at or before that time (and more so than a great many books written since). i am only shocked at my own surprise and ignorance, and in that delightful way that i always feel when so boldly reminded that we are inventing none of this whatsoever, no matter how much freer we are to live it as we want.
after we saw a single man, i read berlin stories, the collection of two novels he wrote (which in part later became cabaret). then i found this book in a bookstore in austin -- i was for a moment incensed when i couldn't find it in "fiction," thinking it'd been relegated into the smaller gay section upstairs, only to find it instead shelved under "classics." (you win, book people of austin. good call.)
here's what i wish someone would have told me, spoiler-free:
this book -- published in 1964, set the year before -- is more forthright, less ashamed, more delightfully lusty and yet undeniably domesticated in its queer love than probably anything i ever read that was written at or before that time (and more so than a great many books written since). i am only shocked at my own surprise and ignorance, and in that delightful way that i always feel when so boldly reminded that we are inventing none of this whatsoever, no matter how much freer we are to live it as we want.