A day is a drag, really. We wake up and do the same thing every day, with the same people we care about. Until they’re taken away from us.
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood follows George, a British gay English professor, throughout a single day in the life after the death of his partner, Jim. We wake up with George as he remembers mornings with Jim, and then journey with him to the Los Angeles university where he teaches. The novel’s melancholic atmosphere even caught the attention of fashion designer Tom Ford, who created its film adaptation in 2009.
George’s day truly felt like a drag the first time I read it through. The waking up, the getting ready, the driving, the going to university and then visiting Doris and Charlotte. The action, for me, didn’t seem to actually pick up until the strange night with Kenny. While the premise of A Single Man initially drew me in, I think I expected more romantic language, reminiscing over a lost lover. Instead, I got a drained day of a British man experiencing a normal day intensely.
Normalcy
Now, with the coronavirus pandemic strengthening in the past month or so, the world has had its sense of normalcy flipped around. It’s changed the way I look at the book. How much I long for when the world starts up again, and I can go through my typical day just getting ready to go walk around campus and then visit my friends for a night out. I would be hyperaware of everyone I interacted with and what I think of them. From now on, each memory will probably be categorized into “before” or “after” the pandemic, and I think I understand George more clearly now that both of our mindsets align. Loneliness really set in.
A Single Man is definitely not for the balanced or calm minded. I only understand how tragic and full of longing each day living must be when the person you live for dies now that my own daily motivations of school and friends have been taken away. Initially, I kept reading because there really wasn’t anything else to do, but looking back I understand how important it is to track those prolonged moments and over-detailed conversations.
While Camphor Tree Lane where George lives isn’t an actual street, it might’ve looked like this one in the Palisades.
The pandemic has got me thinking about death. What if the people I cared for just stopped existing, which they sort of have. Most days I wake up feeling like I’m going to cry, though the tears usually save themselves for unpredictable outbursts of anxiety throughout the day. The other day, I cried for twenty minutes after watching a video of a girl reacting to a video of her best friend that was titled “I really wish your attempt wasn’t successful this time”. It felt like my body didn’t matter after watching it. I just couldn’t imagine losing someone you love, especially now. No one got to say goodbye. Yes, most of us will be okay and get through this, but I’m hurting more than I expected.
““It is a grey lukewarm California winter morning; the sky is low and soft with Pacific fog.” ”
I wake up and make breakfast, think of my friends, try to focus on schoolwork, get exhausted or upset with myself for not being more productive, and then I call my friends in my contact book randomly or frantically until one of them picks up. Then repeat. Most morning skies have been filled with a shy fog, a gentle introduction to the warmer afternoon sun. Recently, it’s been raining, and the grey stops any sense of time entirely. It’s a bore.
“He fixes himself a plate of poached eggs, with bacon and toast and coffee and sits down to eat them at the kitchen table. And meanwhile, around and around in head, goes to the nursery jingle his Nanny taught him when he was a child in England, all those years ago”
Since I couldn’t physically visit George’s neighborhood, I tried instead to reflect on his headspace. This morning I made eggs, a danish, and coffee for breakfast. I don’t eat bacon and didn’t have any toast on hand. The meal was simple, not unlike what I normally eat anyway. It felt routine, almost performative.
Living in The Past Like George – Pre-quarantine photos
On top of the hills overlooking the valley. George might’ve driven here.
Santa Monica beach, skinny dipping in the daylight not recommended.
The freeway, where the mind wanders, like George on his way to and from university.
It’s really no surprise George rebuilds himself as a human being every morning, because there isn’t much else to do. I think about how I should’ve treasured pre-pandemic days a bit more, and everything I would’ve done if the world wasn’t on pause. My friends and I had planned a train trip to Oceanside and the Carlsbad flower fields for early April. That would’ve been nice, but alas. I’m yearning for the beach and its sea-breeze. Each day is such an experience now. I can’t wait to drive absentmindedly like George on the freeways, through the hills. I thought of our Bookpacking trip through the hills and when we looked down into the valley. I can’t wait to notice the couple of people who always go to the gym at the same time I do, like George does.
I started noticing the smaller details of a day since this decay started. My journal has an entry of me laying on the fake grass outside my university apartment, when I still didn’t know if USC Housing was going to kick us out or not, and I wrote about the sun beaming just a bit too harshly behind the thick clouds. Given the circumstance of the world, my attention span has slowed into lava.
OveRextension
Similarly, George lived in a world where the world carried on with or without him. His life is also slowed. He must feel isolated as well, as seen in how George over explains the histories of his neighbors, students, coworkers, and few friends. George has very particular opinions about them too.
Take the character Grant Lefanu, for example - “The young physics professor who writes poetry. Grant is the very opposite of glum and he couldn’t be less defeated; George rather loves him. He is small and thin, and has glasses and large teeth and the maddish smile of genuine intellectual passion.”
George goes through these introductory scenes for each of the people who he runs into during the day, and frankly it got a bit tough trying to keep track of who’s who in some bits. But despite all these in depth backstories, paired with George’s sly judgement of the people around, there aren’t many genuine relationships. Despite all these descriptions of all these people, the overextension still doesn’t fill the sense of humanity Jim gave George before he died.
It seems as though George is the embodiment of Los Angeles’ overextension. As George takes a drive through the hills, he notices:
““… even up here, they are building dozens of new houses; the area is getting suburban. True, there are still a few uninhabited canyons, but George can’t rejoice in them; he is oppressed by the awareness of the city below. On both sides of the hills, the north and to the south, it has spawned and spread itself over the entire plain. […] Soon it will be drinking converted sea water. And yet it will die.””
Like Los Angeles’ uninhabited canyons, George knows there are people to meet and journeys he could embark on, but he can’t live in the moment fully. He’ll always know that Jim is gone, and it will weigh on him. He will know all he cares to know about the people who surround him, and yet will still feel partially empty until his death.
Where does George actually go in a day? He begins at home in the Palisades and then heads inland, zoning out as he drifts along the freeway. As he drives, there are “at least half a dozen others in these many cars around him, all slowing now as the traffic thickens, going downhill, under the bridge, up again past the Union Depot…God! Here we are, downtown, already! […] In ten minutes they will have arrived on campus. In ten minutes George will have to be George, the George they have named and recognize.”
Tennis courts at Cal State LA, where George might’ve admired the bodies of athletes before heading into his lecture.
Reading through I of course imagined the university to be like the USC campus, with our red brick walls and hidden green spaces to picnic on. But because Christopher Isherwood taught at what is now Cal State LA, my understanding is that “San Thomas State College” is modeled, if not mirrored after that school. At the edge of the Cal State LA campus lies its tennis courts, which George passes on his way to class as he’s conversing with a coworker. George describes passing downtown, and ten minutes later arrives on campus, which would seem about accurate a couple of decades ago. Today’s traffic certainly would’ve slowed George’s drive, so I doubt he would be able to cruise there as quickly.
He can trek from the beach all the way to university everyday, but still feel like he’s gotten nowhere.
Reality
George’s journey did start somewhere though, and that begins with Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy. In 2009, Bachardy noted in an Angeleno Magazine interview that “Chris got the idea for that book when he and I were having a domestic crisis. We’d been together 10 years. I was making a lot of trouble and wondering if I shouldn’t be on my own. Chris was going through a very difficult period (as well). So he killed off my character, Jim, in the book and imagined what his life would be like without me.”
George’s night out with Kenny was also perhaps inspired by Don. The lustful, fantasy-like aura of Kenny is a reflection of his age youth. Isherwood was 48 when he met 18 year old Bachardy, and despite the 30 year difference they stayed together until Isherwood’s death. Bachardy has not had any other public partners since. When George and Kenny go skinny dipping, the event is cathartic. “They turn and begin to run toward the ocean. He strips himself clumsily, tripping over his pants. Kenny, stark naked now, has plunged and is wading straight in, like a fearless native warrior, to attack the waves.”
SHOREbar, a bar at the edge of the beach where the Palisades meets Santa Monica. About where Kenny and George might’ve had their night out together.
Life without the person you love must be very difficult. I don’t think anyone really plans that far. I have always found myself to be re-centered when reminded of death. My motivation always was, no matter what happens, whatever you do in life, make it a life worth remembering by the time you die. Fill the moments with chances grabbed at, not regretful moments of what if.
This time is different through. The pandemic has cut everyone off, and I imagine the world still spinning with you in it is much more isolating. At least right now everyone is united from feeling alone. It’s very paradoxical, and partly comforting, though mostly depressing or distressing.
I should’ve gone out to the Palisades to bookpack George’s world sooner.
Annie is a Junior at the University of Southern California studying journalism, gender and sexuality, and cinema. Her work aims to emphasize intersectional narratives, especially in the lens of the climate crisis and diverse representation in media. In her free time, she eats tacos, hosts picnics, and pets her cat, Eucalyptus. Find her online at: @anniefaley