Category: Peter Schlesinger

Chris and Don

7/6/2019

“We seldom count a happy marriage as a real accomplishment and yet it so clearly is—it is virtually an aesthetic achievement. It requires the same sense of proportion, creativity, empathy, patience perseverance, equanimity and generosity of spirit as does the making of a novel or play. … Anyone who has ever had a happy marriage knows that it is never stable, never finished; it changes every day and is always being created or at least celebrated anew.”

Edmund White, Christopher Isherwood, Liberation, Diaries 1970-1983

"Liberation, Diaries 1970-1983"

Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, Santa Monica, 1968; Photograph by Peter Schlesinger

Christopher Isherwood died a generation before gay marriage was legalized in the United States. Nevertheless, Edmund White, in his preface to Liberation, Diaries 1970-1983, praises the thirty-year relationship of Isherwood and Don Bachardy for what it was—a marriage. In the same time period in which Elizabeth Taylor and Zsa Zsa Gabor signed as many divorce papers as they did film contracts, Isherwood and Bachardy, legally prohibited from marrying, remained together. Their relationship is currently the focus of a museum exhibition. If visiting Berlin this summer, check out "My Dearest Sweetest Love" at the Schwules Museum.

See Also: Chris & Don: A Love Story

Image Credit: Checkered Past, A Visual Diary of the '60s and '70s

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Good Advice: Loulou de La Falaise Edition

6/1/2019

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“Smile, laugh and say nice things about people. It brings good luck.”

Loulou de La Falaise, Loulou & Yves, The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent

Loulou de La Falaise and Lindy Dufferin, 1978; Photograph by Peter Schlesinger

"Loulou & Yves, The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent"

Note from Nick. Loulou & Yves, The Untold Story of Loulou de La Falaise and the House of Saint Laurent presents a fascinating portrait of one of 20th Century's great tastemakers, whose paradoxes were as legendary as her originality (and in fact, the two were inextricably linked). However, I know and admire (love) two of the supporting players in the book. The author seemed to go out of his way to misrepresent them. He got them so wrong I assume he must have an axe to grind. It caused me to wonder how accurate his other assessments were. Of course, when reading nonfiction, it is best to triangulate. As Quentin Crisp once advised about his own work, "Don't take this book or another book too seriously."

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A Delicate Balance, with Christopher Isherwood

5/30/2019

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“And again and again I have to remind myself that the whole art of life is to lean on people, to involve oneself with them quite fearlessly and yet—when the props are kicked away—remain leaning, as it were, on empty air. Like levitation.”

Christopher Isherwood, The Sixties: Diaries 1960-1969