SOURCE: “Tourist and Camera.” Times Literary Supplement (7 April 1966): 296.

In the following review, the anonymous critic derides Isherwood as a writer who has never reached his literary potential.

The reviewer is warned from the start. Writing of himself as a reviewer (about thirty-five reviews in three years for The Listener), Christopher Isherwood remarks: “I dare say I was no more or less dogmatic, spiteful, irresponsible and smart alecky than my colleagues or the run of people who do the job today.” That, you would think, spikes the critical guns before they can fire on this collection of stories, articles, and verses, which Mr. Isherwood himself in a reviewer mood suggests will be of most interest to those already aware of his work and of him (“I cannot pretend that it is a self-sufficient, self-explanatory artwork”).

Yet there are times when a reviewer must reject the role assigned to him...