Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir Read Online Free PDF Page B

that ‘John the Editor’ would be that anyway. But he was always full of ideas for contributions, particularly from Auden. In October, he wrote from Brussels: ‘Wystan was here last week-end. He showed me some lyrics and oddments he had written for films, which I liked. And he said you should have them if you wanted them. Although some have already appeared in a film called Coal-Face , even the producer himself admitted that they were quite inaudible, so unless they are printed, they will be lost to mankind. I am getting on with my contribution as fast as I can.’ This first extract from what remained of ‘The Lost’ was originally to be called ‘The Kulaks’. In November a postcard arrived; ‘The Kulaks are coming, hurrah, hurrah. Hope you’ll like them.’ I certainly did like them, very much indeed. On 16 January 1936, he wrote from Sintra, when they had moved to Portugal with Stephen and his friend after Heinz’s permis de sejour in Belgium had run out: ‘About the Kulaks: it occurs to me that maybe, if the book is to be read at all in Russia, the title conveys quite a wrong impression. Do you think I should change the family name? I could do this, of course, in proof: or maybe it could be done before the MS goes to press. What about Nowack? “The Nowacks” - Nowak, perhaps is better? Yes: “The Nowaks”. (I have just been to ask Heinz, who thinks it can only be spelt Nowack: maybe you could check up on this?)’ Surprisingly enough, the story was read in Russia, where it appeared in a little paperback all by itself, titled (in Cyrillic) ‘HOBAKN’. In the same letter, he went on: ‘What are you writing now? Am very busy on my novel. I will try and do something for number three. There is another section of “The Lost” ready - about an English girl who sings in a Berlin cabaret, but I hardly think it would suit the serious tone of  New Writing. It’s rather like Anthony Hope: “The Dolly Dialogues”. It is an attempt to satirize the romance-of-prostitution racket. Good heter stuff.’
    This was, of course, the genesis of the eventually far-famed Sally Bowles. He was not, however, satisfied with it. When he had only seen the contents list of the first number of New Writing , he wrote from Sintra: ‘we are all very much excited about New Writing … .I’m afraid I couldn’t get the proposed story ready for the next number. It is finished after a fashion but there’s something radically wrong with it at present: it must be thought over.’ More than that, he wanted to see what Edward Upward thought about it. And there was also, crucially, the need to get the approval of the real-life Sally Bowles (Jean Ross).
    By the end of April, New Writing No. 1 had arrived in  Sintra. Christopher hailed it with enthusiasm:
    I must say, I think it is very handsome and one of the best six shillings-worth I have ever seen. I haven’t read everything yet, of course. Yours, which I turned to first, seems admirable. One of your most successful works …. I liked also very much Plomer’s contribution 4 and that brilliant story by Chamson § (‘My Enemy’), which makes one feel that a real artist can write about absolutely anything and still produce all the correct reflections about fascism, nationalism etc. in the reader’s mind: a very trite observation, but it always comes as a fresh surprise.
     
    He urged me to publish Edward Upward’s ‘The Railway Accident’ in No.2, as he thought it ‘one of the most magnificent pieces of narrative prose produced since the war’, and would need very little bowdlerization; but this plan fell through, chiefly, as far as I remember, owing to the author’s then reluctance. And he went on: ‘Look here, if you’d like some stuff for Number Two, I could send you some of my Berlin Diary. About five thousand words. But don’t have it if you don’t want. It is only mildly (heter) dirty and chiefly about my landlady,