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Synopsis

Best known for Berlin Stories—the inspiration for the Tony and Academy Award—winning musical Cabaret, Christopher Isherwood's mercurial, impressionable style, as reflected in this omnibus of his fiction, essays and memoirs, was a perfect vehicle for capturing a generation's loss of innocence and the impact of historical traumas on personal consciousness. Included in Where Joy Resides are two complete novelettes: Prater Violet (1945), which features the witty, expansive Viennese film director Friedrich Bergmann, given to dark, apocalyptic broodings; and, A Single Man (1964), which recounts one day in the life of an unhinged Los Angeles college teacher, combines brutal introspection and precise observations of Americans' "symbolic" lifestyles. Episodes from three other novels, Goodbye to Berlin (1939), Down There on a Visit (1962), and Lions and Shadows (1938) are also included. In perceptive essays, Isherwood calls Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island a "superpotboiler" and refutes the notion that Katherine Mansfield was a "feminine" writer. Where Joy Resides includes reminiscences of Isherwood's father, killed in WW I; an account of his friendship with W.H. Auden; and encounters with his California guru, Swami Prabhavananda (My Guru and His Disciple).