A Single Man
One of my former professors e-mailed me a link to an article in The Chronicle about the mid-century U.S. teacher and novelist Christopher Isherwood. According to the article, Isherwood “wrote passionately and from a highly subjective point of view about the world around him.” I’ve never read his works, yet I am attracted to, according to the article at least, the attentiveness with which he attends everyday experiences. Slowing down and paying attention informs not only my reading practices, but the ways in which I interact with other people. It’s an ethical relationship, according to some, and I believe very much in the ethics of reading and listening to texts, music, students, and other people in my life closely. In Isherwood I hope to find a kindred spirit, not only because of his queerness (or, less asynchronously, his gayness), but because I find these kinds of close reading, writing, and listening practices are often taken up by self-identified queer scholars. I’m not saying queers are more ethical. I’ve met plenty who are not. But I am interested in scholarly conversations about reparative and paranoid reading practices taken up by queer scholars.
I’m not interested in rehearsing those debates here. I can’t say much more about Isherwood’s writing without having read his texts. I do expect reading lush writing about “the mundane.” I wonder if Ford’s adaptation will do the details justice, though my thinking here has already been tainted by the Chronicle article. If nothing else, I’m sure the costuming will be amazing.
