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Respecting one’s privacy meant that, though everyone knows, no one talks about it to your face. That would require him to make explicit what Jim was to him, something that was just not done back then. Clearly deflecting his pain, George has not even told many people that Jim is dead. When first published in the early 60’s, this novel was hailed as an ‘instant classic’, if there is such a thing, but it was also shocking as a frank depiction of a day in the life of a gay man. It shows with his sudden bursts of anger, something Jim was able to subdue in him when he loses track in his conversations, like he is really talking about something else or his increasing distaste for the company of others, not to mention how easily he drank too much this day and tore his clothes off on a beach to swim with a student. Try as he might, George can’t escape the fact that the loss of Jim is affecting him. After some late night drunken, naked, swimming and some flirtatious conversation back at his house, the drink takes over and George wakes up the next day having to face life again. After drinking a little too much, he dips into a local bar where bumps into a student. Isherwood takes us through George’s day as he slovenly rises in the morning, drives to work, debates his students in class, before having dinner at the home of a friend, who is also dealing with loss. Though not in shock or collapsing with grief, he tries to deflect his feelings by sticking to his daily routine as best he can. George’s partner, Jim, has recently died suddenly in a car accident and George is still in an early stage of coming to terms with it. Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man is an elegant little novel that evokes much emotion through universal themes and the tragedy of those who are not free to express them.Ī Single Man covers a day in the life of George, a middle-aged literature professor and an Englishman, living in California in the early 60’s.