Christopher Isherwood is one of those writers I've always admired but ultimately taken for granted. His novels are impressive for their clean, beautiful prose and the resonance found beneath their apparent simplicity of form and content. Still, I'd never developed much of a passion for the man's works. That is, until now.

As is so often the case, a writer is never really appreciated until he or she has died. Thanks to Isherwood's longtime partner Don Bachardy and novelist James P. White, we can now reassess Isherwood's career with the excellent collection Where Joy Resides: A Christopher Isherwood Reader.

The book contains two complete novels—Prater Violet, the funniest and most realistic novel about filmmaking ever written, and the classic A Single Man—along with excerpts from other novels and volumes of autobiography and biography.

sense of isherwood's development

It is an amazingly cohesive collection. The excerpts are well-chosen and for the most part self-contained, but more important is the sense the reader gets of Isherwood's development both as a writer and a human being. Appropriately enough, Where Joy Resides begins with an introduction by Isherwood's friend and fellow enfant terrible Gore Vidal, followed by selections from Goodbye to Berlin, one of two novels collectively called The Berlin Stories and the basis of Cabaret and I Am a Camera. These were Isherwood's first literary successes, peopled with eccentric characters like the flighty Sally Bowles and recounted with cool charm by the first person narrator, a young Englishman named Christopher Isherwood.

Isherwood is famous for his mixture of fiction and autobiography. What could easily have become a tired literary contrivance is a revelation in Isherwood's capable hands. In fact, Isherwood is probably the most honest fiction writer of the 20th century. He insists on reminding readers that the created world of fiction and the world perceived in the writer's day-to-day life are intimately bound together and sometimes inextricable. Of course, it also helps when the writer has led as interesting and self-probing a life as Isherwood has.

Where Joy Resides also serves to introduce the less-initiated Isherwood reader to other aspects of his writing. While I'd enjoyed Isherwood's fiction greatly, I had always steered clear of his religious writings. Bachardy and White have shown me the error of my ways. It's hard to image a less sanctimonious or more clear-headed view of religious commitment than the one offered in the excerpts from My Guru and His Disciple, Isherwood's account of his relationship with Swami Prabhavananda.

'a single man' extraordinary

The collection ends with Isherwood's best-known novel, A Single Man, in its entirety. Anyone who has not read this extraordinary work about one day in the life of a very ordinary gay college professor should put it at the top of his or her must-read list.

A Single Man is the only fiction included in Where Joy Resides that does not feature Isherwood as a character. The objective, self-effacing narrative voice relays the facts in the present tense, yet is never cold or distant. The overall effect is one of immediacy and compassion.

I have a few minor quibbles. The notes that introduce each selection are sketchy to say the least. It would have been very helpful to use this space to identify who exactly "George" is in the excerpt from My Guru and His Disciple or to comment on the work excerpted so the unfamiliar reader would have a better feel for how the selection relates to the whole. Also, why so short a piece from Isherwood's family biography, Kathleen and Frank? And why not a few more selections from the essay collection Exhumations?

Where Joy Resides is an excellent starting place for the reader unfamiliar with or uncommitted to Christopher Isherwood. But be forewarned. Isherwood can be habit-forming and Where Joy Resides omits some of his very best work, such as Christopher and His Kind and A Meeting by the River. The reader excited by what he or she has read in this collection will soon be searching bookstore shelves for more.