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A review by wm94
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
5.0
a melancholic and defiant book with a beating heart. george is extremely flawed as a person, but there are so many pieces of erudite wisdom that emanate from him that it’s hard not to get swept up in his grief, in his humanity, in the life of this single man.
the title works on two levels: george is now single because he has lost his lover jim, but also it speaks to the interiority, to the inner world, of the way the book is written. in this inner world, george has some candid and most assuredly problematic views about women, minorities, politics, and surely for this book some people may be put off like i initially was, but a commitment to finish it soon overrode my misgivings and i’m glad i did.
i love the way george calls out pseudo-liberal sentimentality and forces us to really examine the differences between minorities, for it is through these differences that understanding, change, and growth can take place. it’s certainly a departure from eliding these differences into simply “we’re all human”. it’s like a big fuck you to “all lives matter”, which was pretty radical for the 60’s, and for this country’s knee jerk reaction to black lives and queer lives demanding that their lives matter just as much BECAUSE they are different. this whole “love is love is love is love” is just another way of saying “we’re all human”, too, when it fact george is oppressed and can’t grieve his partner normally like straight people were allowed to because he is gay. liberals can be poorly disguised centrists, even thinly masked conservatives sometimes, and this book has solidified in me the belief that differences do matter.
this book will forever hold a special place in my heart because it started a spectacular friendship and i can see why it was rated so highly, for its biggest strength is in its ability to illuminate the importance of reaching out to someone and trying to create connections.
the title works on two levels: george is now single because he has lost his lover jim, but also it speaks to the interiority, to the inner world, of the way the book is written. in this inner world, george has some candid and most assuredly problematic views about women, minorities, politics, and surely for this book some people may be put off like i initially was, but a commitment to finish it soon overrode my misgivings and i’m glad i did.
i love the way george calls out pseudo-liberal sentimentality and forces us to really examine the differences between minorities, for it is through these differences that understanding, change, and growth can take place. it’s certainly a departure from eliding these differences into simply “we’re all human”. it’s like a big fuck you to “all lives matter”, which was pretty radical for the 60’s, and for this country’s knee jerk reaction to black lives and queer lives demanding that their lives matter just as much BECAUSE they are different. this whole “love is love is love is love” is just another way of saying “we’re all human”, too, when it fact george is oppressed and can’t grieve his partner normally like straight people were allowed to because he is gay. liberals can be poorly disguised centrists, even thinly masked conservatives sometimes, and this book has solidified in me the belief that differences do matter.
this book will forever hold a special place in my heart because it started a spectacular friendship and i can see why it was rated so highly, for its biggest strength is in its ability to illuminate the importance of reaching out to someone and trying to create connections.