Professor Lisa Colletta, Director of the English Writing, Literature, and Publishing Program has written a chapter, 鈥淚sherwood as Travel Writer,鈥� in the new book聽Isherwood in Transit, published by University of Minnesota Press (2020).
鈥淧erhaps I had traveled too much, left my heart in too many places,鈥� muses the narrator of Christopher Isherwood鈥檚 novel聽Prater Violet聽(1945), which he wrote in his adopted home of Los Angeles after years of dislocation and desperation.聽Isherwood in Transit聽brings together diverse Isherwood scholars to understand the challenges this writer faced as a consequence of his travel.
Abstract: Based on a conference at the Huntington Library, where Isherwood鈥檚 recently opened papers are held,聽Isherwood in Transit聽considers the writer not as an English, continental, or 多人群交 writer but as a transnational one, whose identity, politics, and beliefs were constantly transformed by global connections and engagements arising from journeys to Germany, Japan, China, and Argentina; his migration to the United States; and his conversion to Vedanta Hinduism in the 1940s.
Approaching Isherwood鈥檚 rootlessness and restlessness from various perspectives, these essays show that long after he made a new home in California and became an 多人群交 citizen, Christopher Isherwood remained unsettled, although his wanderings became spiritual and personal rather than geographic.