ABSTRACT
in a 1972 interview , Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986) was invited to select from his extensive canon the book that pleased him most. Without any hesitation, he replied, “A Single Man.” Yet when asked to explain why this—his penultimate novel published in 1964—classed as his highest accomplishment, Isherwood failed to be precise: “Because everything fits. It sort of keeps going, and it's varied…. And it's all very much out of my experience, very close to my experience…. I don’t know…. It's hard to say.” 1 Certainly, it is tempting to dismiss such a vague, if not puzzled, answer. But over the years Isherwood's most attentive readers would elaborate upon this response to prove why A Single Man is a finely honed work that comes closest to his truest-indeed, queerest—self. In his 1979 biography, for example, Brian Finney claims that “in technical terms, the book is almost flawless.” He demonstrates how ably the narrative reveals its main character George seeking but failing to hold together a conflicting “set of personalities” in the rapid course of twenty-four hours. Especially significant in this context, argues Finney, is George's homosexuality. George—a fifty-eight-year-old professor of English whose lifestyle, to some extent, resembles the writer's own—enables Isherwood “to introduce the whole question of the loneliness and alienation experienced by members of any minority group.” 2 Like many gay people to this day, George disguises his sexual identity from much of the world.
