Volume 44, Number 3 · February 20, 1997
The Long Littleness of Life
By Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Isherwood: Diaries, Volume One: 1939-1960
edited and introduced by Katherine Bucknell
HarperCollins/A Michael di Capua Book, 1,048 pp., $40.00
Christopher Isherwood and W.H. Auden left their country of birth—effectively forever—on January 19, 1939. Their departure for America was widely construed as an act of desertion if not of cowardice. In his Munich-era novelette Put Out More Flags, Evelyn Waugh lampooned the pair as 'Parsnip and Pimpernell.' He went slightly further than the insinuation of funk: 'What I don't see is how these two can claim to be contemporary if they run away from the biggest event in contemporary history. They were contemporary enough about Spain when no one threatened to come and bomb them—.' (For additional taunt value, Waugh put these words into the mouth of an ill-favored female Trotskyist of advanced opinions.)
Review, 6303 words
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