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Kathleen and Christopher: Christopher Isherwood's Letters to His Mother. Lisa Colletta, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 178. $24.95 (cloth).
Readers of Christopher Isherwood have long been familiar with the events of his life in the 1930s, a decade that resurfaces in much of his autobiographical fiction and memoirs. The recent publication of letters from Isherwood to his mother, however, invites us to reconsider what has come to be expected. "One of the few records we have of Isherwood's life at this time that isn't filtered through the lens of time and memory" (x), observes Lisa Colletta, the letters serve to remind us of the grave uncertainties that plagued Isherwood and so many others in that politically volatile decade. What is more, they illuminate his effort to hold on to some semblance of security and measure of life when, as he puts it, "the powers of hell are in the ascendant" (57): namely, his writing and his relationships with others, particularly-and perhaps surprisingly-with his mother.
Colletta's introduction successfully highlights the significance of this collection: it problematizes the generally accepted view of Isherwood's antagonistic relationship with Kathleen. As Colletta rightly claims, the letters "reveal a different, more affectionate relationship that complicates his idea of himself as the 'anti-son'" (viii). Isherwood's early work is often read in terms of this rebellion. Later work, particularly his 1954 novel The World in the Evening, is then understood to reveal a search for a mother figure, to exemplify a "mother fixation," or to represent an "ideal mother" however "uni-dimensional."1 Not only might Kathleen and Christopher complicate both biographical and critical readings of Isherwood as Colletta suggests (letter after letter opens with "My darling Mummy"), but it contributes as well to...