Down There on a Visit by Christopher Isherwood
ISHERWOOD, Christopher. Down There on a Visit. London: Methuen, 1962.
First edition. This book is based on material from a proposed epic that would also have incorporated The Berlin Stories. It is now widely regarded as the most accomplished of Isherwood's novels.
Divided in four chapters, with four heroes, four settings, and four narrators all named Christopher Isherwood. Set in the early 1940s California, the final chapter tells the story of Paul, a character based on Denham Fouts, the glamorous lover to millionaires and aristocrats, a figure of myth and legend in international homosexual circles, famous for being the most expensive male prostitute in the world.
Truman Capote met the fabulous Denham Fouts in Paris in the late 1940s, and spent many hours in his company in “the high-ceilinged dusk” of his apartment. A kind of Dorian Gray, Fouts fascinated Capote, eventually becoming one of the most intriguing characters in Answered Prayers.
352 pp. 8vo. Very good in dust jacket (spine faded). Jacket design by Don Bachardy.