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Christopher IsherwoodChristopher Isherwood
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Don BachardyDon Bachardy
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The Animals: Love Letters between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy Kindle Edition
by Christopher Isherwood (Author), Don Bachardy (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
Book description
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Christopher Isherwood was a celebrated English writer when he met the Californian teenager Don Bachardy on a Santa Monica beach in 1952. They spent their first night together on Valentine’s Day 1953. Defying the conventions, the two men began living as an openly gay couple in an otherwise closeted Hollywood. The Animals provides a loving testimony of an extraordinary relationship that lasted until Chris’s death in 1986 – and survived affairs (on both sides) and a thirty-year-age-gap.
In romantic letters to one another, the couple created the private world of the Animals. Chris was Dobbin, a stubborn old workhorse; Don was the playful young white cat, Kitty. But Don needed to carve out his own identity – some of their longest sequences of letters were exchanged during his trips to London and New York, to pursue his career as an artist and to widen his emotional and sexual horizons.
Amidst the intimate domestic dramas, we learn of Isherwood’s continuing literary success –the royalty cheques from Cabaret, the acclaim for his pioneering novel A Single Man – and the bohemian whirl of Californian film suppers and beach life. Don, whose portraits of London theatreland were making his name, attends the world premiere of The Innocents with Truman Capote and afterwards dines with Deborah Kerr and the rest of the cast, spends weekends with Tennessee Williams, Cecil Beton, or the Earl and Countess of Harewood, and tours Egypt and Greece with a new love interest. But whatever happens in the outside world, Dobbin and Kitty always return to their ‘Basket’ and to each other. Candid, gossipy, exceptionally affectionate, The Animals is a unique interplay between two creative spirits, confident in their mutual devotion.
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Print length
528 pages
Language
English
Sticky notes
On Kindle Scribe
Publisher
Vintage Digital
Product details
ASIN : B00CYONMXC
Publisher : Vintage Digital (12 September 2013)
Language : English
File size : 2126 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Not Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
Print length : 528 pagesCustomer Reviews:
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood (1904–1986) was one of the most prominent writers of his generation. He is the author of many works of fiction, including All the Conspirators, The Memorial, Mr. Norris Changes Trains, and Goodbye to Berlin, on which the musical Cabaret was based, as well as works of nonfiction and biography.
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Don Bachardy
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Richard Lottridge
5.0 out of 5 stars Two Interesting GentlemenReviewed in the United States on 30 June 2014
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Fascinating exchange of personal letters. You keep reading because you want to know what they are going to do next.
7 people found this helpfulReport
Mummy
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating!!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 July 2015
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Very long but very intriguing!
Through this series of letters between Don Bachardy and Christopher Isherwood we get to witness the true love and devotion between the two men.
Their's is an improbable relationship but one that showed the depth and resilience of their love for each other. And it is a love that survived ups and downs over thirty long years until Christopher Isherwood's death.
Christopher met Don when he was 48 and Don was 18. They began a relationship despite the disapproval of friends and the disapproval of Don's parents but their love survived and thrived over thirty long years.
I found this fascinating and very very long. They started their relationship in the 1950s at a time when most gay people remained in the closet fearing for their livelihoods and reputations, but not so this couple. They totally defied convention.
I wanted to learn more about this couple because in the light of the reality of the age gap and the attitude towards homosexuality at the time I wouldn't have thought the relationship would survive but the two men survived against the odds and their relationship was one of compromise and great devotion. They had times when their relationship was open to others and there were times of difficulty between the two of them, but thirty years is a life time commitment.
It was a real life and enduring love.
The book reveals the relationship through a series of letters the two men wrote to each other. They had pet names for each other and referred to themselves as Dobbin, a work horse (Christopher) and Kitty, a young white cat (Don). And their world together was that of 'The Animals'.
The book reveals their love for each other, their careers and how they supported each other, and it shows how they interacted with their friends and other well known actors and actresses from the States and from Europe.
What is amazing is that the two men were obviously openly together at a time when gay men in Hollywood were closeted and hidden, many of them marrying women and having affairs with men. Don and Chris don't seem to have had any doubts about being together openly and being a couple. Perhaps Christopher Isherwood just didn't care and Don Bachardy was too young to care. Obviously being so young he must have been influenced by Isherwood and so didn't care either.
The two men wrote many letters to each other over the course of their years together especially when they travelled separately for work, or for Don's studying at art school. At those times the little world they had created imbibed them with strength and the commitment to keep going.
My favourite parts are where they present 'us against the world'. And they reveal to each other who has annoyed them or who they are not too happy with. Thankfully many of those people have passed on because I am not sure they would be so happy to see these revelations in print. I of course found it fascinating and a real fly on the wall experience. Despite the fact that these letters are about everyday bills, chores, friends, love and life they are fascinating because they show the inner life of the relationship. Also there is just such good gossip here!!
They did complain about things a lot to each other. Don visits Cairo and Europe on his own. He describe the Egyptians as Arabs and untrustworthy. Travelling through Greece he writes to Isherwood and complains that the Greeks cannot be trusted either. Ok it was 1964 and not a time known for political correctness, but still in some places they are down right rude labelling one man's wife fat and stupid, and sly!! The man passed away in 2011 so hopefully he never knew - this book was published in 2014.
When travelling to Egypt and Greece, Bachardy makes scathing comments about his travelling companions and then eventually the group go their separate ways. I was hardly suprised.
Isherwood and Bachardy created a world which only had space for the two of them despite the fact that both of them had affairs. Just like the foreign travel the affairs seemed to be a way of Don testing his relationship with Isherwood. Given the fact that both men could be quite scathing of others and adoring towards each other I am not surprised none of the affairs lasted. I don't think any of the other men would have measured up to Isherwood or Bachardy, and I am not sure Bachardy would have found it easy to kindle with someone else, the kind of singleminded, intense, focused devotion he had from Isherwood. Some of these affairs could have threatened the relationship but Don always found his way back to Christopher. In the documentary Don speaks about these times, recognising the affairs that both of them had placed strain on the relationship but he acknowledges that it was something they went through only to realise that they loved each other. Perhaps some of this was a way for Don to grow into his own person.
In any case it couldn't have been easy and it is fascinating that their relationship survived this and went from strength to strength.
I think the documentary is a very good introduction to the book. I particularly enjoyed the part in the documentary when Bachardy complains about the attitude of his father who didn't approve of his homosexuality or his relationship with Isherwood. I wanted to remind him that he was only 18 and Isherwood was 48 when their relationship started, and homosexuality was illegal at the time. Hello?? Which parent wouldn't be worried?? If my son introduced me to a partner who was 30 years his senior I would be rather alarmed. It was funny how the two of them together knew their relationship was disapproved of but they just didn't give a damn!!
At all!!
There is very little about the politics or social changes of the time in the memoirs, but there are comments about Isherwood having a different opinion on Vietnam to WH Auden who felt the US whould remain in Vietnam until the North was taken. Comments are made about associates who join the civil rights movement so there is some acknowledgement of societal events. Bachardy also defends his black housekeeper to his parents who as he desrcibes 'have deep prejudice against negroes'.
But these letters are not supposed to be political commentaries. They are love letters to fill in the gap between two lovers missing one another and to let each man know about the day to day activities of the other.
This book is very long but I didn't find it boring, just intriguing and encouraging. It is good to know that such deep love exists and that it can bridge the age gap. There are no barriers to love, only the ones which we place ourselves.
Subject: The Animals: Love Letters between Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy - Reading 1
http://youtu.be/JpgoZf-rpP0
Depicts the remarkable life of artist Don Bachardy and his relationship with the distinguished Christopher Isherwood
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6q-YnuBo00
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andrew sandler
5.0 out of 5 stars Five StarsReviewed in the United States on 29 December 2016
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Unabashedly romantic.
2 people found this helpfulReport
Miss F
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book of letters!Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 June 2017
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A wonderful exchange between two lovers. Interesting, captivating and wonderful.
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Fitz
4.0 out of 5 stars Four StarsReviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2016
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Ideal bedside reading: humane, true, humourous about life on Adelaide Rd ...
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