Olivia Laing

"You can be lonely anywhere, but there is a particular flavor to the loneliness that comes from living in a city, surrounded by thousands of strangers. The Lonely City is a roving cultural history of urban loneliness, centered on the ultimate city: Manhattan, that teeming island of gneiss, concrete, and glass. What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately involved with another human being? How do we connect with other people, particularly if our sexuality or physical body is considered deviant or damaged? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens? Olivia Laing explores these questions by travelling deep into the work and lives of some of the century's most original artists, among them Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Edward Hopper, Henry Darger and Klaus Nomi. Part memoir, part biography, part dazzling work of cultural criticism, The Lonely City is not just a map, but a celebration of the state of loneliness. It's a voyage out to a strange and sometimes lovely island, adrift from the larger continent of human experience, but visited by many - millions, say - of souls"--

Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

The Lonely City

This almost exact thing happened to me recently and I felt the s(h)ame.

Dora Tominic

Of these latter, desolating states, she comments: 'Loneliness, in its quintessential form, is of nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it. Nor, unlike other non-communicable emotional experiences, can it be shared via empathy. It may well be that the second person's empathic abilities are obstructed by the anxiety-arousing quality of the mere emanations of the first person's loneliness.'

When I read those lines, I remembered sitting, years back, outside a train station in the south of England, waiting for my father. It was a sunny day, and I had a book I was enjoying. After a while, an elderly man sat down next to me and tried repeatedly to strike up conversation. I didn't want to talk and after a brief exchange of pleasentries I began to respond more tersely until eventually, still smiling, he got up and wandered away. I've never stopped feeling ashamed about my unkindness, and nor have I ever forgotten how it felt to have force field of his loneliness pressed against me: an overwhelming, unmeetable need for attention and affection, to be heard and touched and seen.

the incommunicability of loneliness; how common it is in art yet how difficult it is to admit to the sinking nature of it to someone. maybe if we could talk about loneliness more; we would be feeling it less. the empathy we have towards loneliness isn't actual empathy, it's a recalling of past experiences, a dive into that dark memory. we are societal animals, yet loneliness is an epidemic that  travels through cities and sinks into souls. it isn't loud, but happiness is, company is. loneliness is quiet, therefore less visible, although definitely more common than happiness in our concrete society. that's why we see it the most in art. because what cannot be conveyed in sheer words can be conveyed through the eye of the soul; which is art, in all of its forms.

deniz

Loneliness feels like such a shameful experience, so counter to the lives we are supposed to lead, that it becomes increasingly inadmissible, a taboo state whose confession seems destined to cause others to turn and flee.

If I could catch the feeling, I would: the feeling of the singing of the real world, as one is driven by loneliness and silence from the habitable world.

A very very special one. How can I make my brother read this?

Disclaimer: this is not a review.

A very very special one. How can I make my brother read this?

Colton Ray

This is a well-written book that unfortunately was not what I was looking for. I was interested to learn more about the cultural and social aspects of loneliness or even the author's personal bouts with it in order to gain a new perspective on this human state. However, this really was a collection of biographies of famous artists and their connections to New York City. 

The entire affair felt very unfocused and tangential as well as bleakly depressing. After the initial chapters, Laing disappears entirely, as does much of her theorizing on the actual topic, as she drifts through the seminal and abusive events in these artists' lives - which I might have found more worthwhile if I gave much of a care about them. All in all, I was probably the victim of bad marketing and misleading expectations.

Rosa

while interesting, i didn't realize ahead of time that this would be an art book... i had seen the excerpts on tumblr about the loneliness laing felt and i would've liked to see more of that too!

Jun Angelo Cabuguas

fantastic, but i don’t think 40 page chapters are for me

Ann Gabrielle

Cassie B

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 GORDON BURN PRIZECHOSEN AS 'BOOK OF THE YEAR' BYObserverGuardianTelegraphIrish TimesNew StatesmanTimes Literary SupplementHeraldWhen Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by this most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving fluidly between the works and lives of some of the city's most compelling artists, Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.

taryn

heleen de boever

Jeannette Ordas

Read a bit like a thesis but very readable and enjoyable. I knew about most of the artists in the book, but was introduced into a couple that I can't wait to learn more about. If you like art and new york city, this book is for you!

Alexandra Sklar

Was really looking forward to this book, and it was different that I expected. It was much heavier on the psychology and sexuality of the subjects, and each chapter was about a specific artist. I expected it to be more of her story, a memoir, filtered through the experiences of lonely creatives. It left me thinking, but it was much more sad and academic than I thought it would be.

Angel Martinez

Love how this seamlessly connected concepts from psychology and art, and how isolation and creativity tend to reinforce each other <3 I'm gonna start using what I've read here as conversation starters to appear smarter than I actually am

“So much of the pain of loneliness is to do with concealment, with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantly inhabit peak states, or to be comfortably sealed inside a unit of two, turned inward from the world at large?”

What this book masters is the gut feeling of being untied from the threads of society, of being a spectator, a watcher of the city not from its vital center but as if looking at a snow globe. 

Laing skillfully interwove her personal experiences of alienation in a big city like New York, with the different types of loneliness both suffered and enjoyed by famouse (and not) figures of the american art world such as Worhol, Hopper and Wojnarowicz; through which the reader learns about how this feeling isn't just sagnant and rotting, nor as bidimensional as we often are lead to believe but instead full of artistic fecundity.

I myself wasn't aware of how loneliness could shape a life in so many different ways and reading about such different artists, who had very different approaches to life and to art, broadenes my understanding of the human mind in general. This was also aid by the examples of researches and psychological studies done about loneliness that Laing brings in full detail in the novel.

Another element that utterly captured me, was her narration of the undeground, of the rough yet compassionate belly of the 50s-80s New York, from the queer sanctuary of the Piers to the heart wrenching destruction of it during the AIDS crisis. Laing is able to compose with masterfully chosen anectodes a vivid necklace of these times, one that the reader can't help but wear constantly the days afer finishing the book; it touches you deeply in it's desperate need of tender human contact, yet destructive tragectory.

The only element that tainted my experience with this novel was that at times the narration about a certain artist got a bit dull and anecdotal where I would have preferred a deeper insight into Laing's personal experience.

Overall a read that I would recommend absolutely.

blake

“So much of the pain of loneliness is to do with concealment, with feeling compelled to hide vulnerability, to tuck ugliness away, to cover up scars as if they are literally repulsive. But why hide? What's so shameful about wanting, about desire, about having failed to achieve satisfaction, about experiencing unhappiness? Why this need to constantly inhabit peak states, or to be comfortably sealed inside a unit of two, turned inward from the world at large?”

What this book masters is the gut feeling of being untied from the threads of society, of being a spectator, a watcher of the city not from its vital center but as if looking at a snow globe. 
Laing skillfully interwove her personal experiences of alienation in a big city like New York, with the different types of loneliness both suffered and enjoyed by famouse (and not) figures of the american art world such as Worhol, Hopper and Wojnarowicz; through which the reader learns about how this feeling isn't just sagnant and rotting, nor as bidimensional as we often are lead to believe but instead full of artistic fecundity.

I myself wasn't aware of how loneliness could shape a life in so many different ways and reading about such different artists, who had very different approaches to life and to art, broadenes my understanding of the human mind in general. This was also aid by the examples of researches and psychological studies done about loneliness that Laing brings in full detail in the novel.

Another element that utterly captured me, was her narration of the undeground, of the rough yet compassionate belly of the 50s-80s New York, from the queer sanctuary of the Piers to the heart wrenching destruction of it during the AIDS crisis. Laing is able to compose with masterfully chosen anectodes a vivid necklace of these times, one that the reader can't help but wear constantly the days afer finishing the book; it touches you deeply in it's desperate need of tender human contact, yet destructive tragectory.

The only element that tainted my experience with this novel was that at times the narration about a certain artist got a bit dull and anecdotal where I would have preferred a deeper insight into Laing's personal experience.

Overall a read that I would recommend absolutely.

Nimet Akiturkmen

This book is about loneliness, explored through personal experience but also through other artists' experiences. There's 4 key artist she writes about (and some others but her focus is mainly on those 4), my favourite being Andy Warhol. Reading parts of their journals and exploring the dark side of their art was so fascinating. Their art may be unsetteling and somewhat dark but its also hopeful, powerful and even comforting. It took me a while to finish because I did a lot of research while reading this, analyzing the paintings or photos of the artists myself (highly recommend doing this while reading this book), but it was absolutely a pleasure to read.

Emmett

“In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

What do these mixed genre memoirs/personal essays intend to achieve? In the paradigmatic works of writers such as Joan Didion and Susan Sontag, the blatancy of self-insertion is counterbalanced by the eloquent profundity of the experience, each point of pain and joy exquisitely, emphatically transformed, each moment of reaching out and touching a piece of art, or literary quotation is movingly rendered. The writer's pains, reflections and reckonings are set down in words, and the reader comes away after that illumination touched and thoughtful. Even when the writer and reader diverge in their opinions, there is enough for the reader to understand and perhaps feel for (even if they feel the writer is mistaken) what has happened. The best readable memoirs are readable. The best readable memoirs transcend the insular and personal (one is not writing just for oneself) to forge a transformative connection with their reader. Without skill and sensitivity to language necessary to master the force of feeling, there is only the callous assessment, reluctantly come to, that you are not important enough for someone to care about how you live, what you are saying, what your life is and has been, when there are dozens others who say it better. Essay writing, after all, is an art form.

This is neither riveting nor touching, nor astonishingly acute. This is not penetrating social analysis, or a history of ideas, or a seamless humbling meeting of art with lived life, or a lived life with other lives, although it aspires to be a mixture of all these things. The style is banal, prose stitched together and saved by only the interesting nature of the contents themselves. There are few, if any, metaphorical twists of the knife sculpted by style. This defect is only intermittently alleviated at instances where she does say it better. Her probing of the experience of culture shock in a place which speaks a variant of English, a disturbance that is paradoxically deeper than any ostensible signs of foreignness, is insightful and haunting. There should have been more of it.

Instead, she commits the error of lapsing frequently into mere narration, but the accumulation of facts or anecdotes is no substitute for the absence of a writer's fascinating governing voice. The narrative drags impotently, inspiring neither awe nor interest nor tenderness, which renders the writer's life story and her subjects' almost pointless. The former especially becomes intolerably dreary in the opening paragraphs to each chapter, evoking in this reader the persistent unanswered question, 'why should I care about this?' The 'storytelling' mode of preference may have been a delight in the hands of a master.

There also seems to be a disturbing undercurrent of sensationalism reflected in the artists chosen by the writer. (See: choosing Valerie Solanas over Andy Warhol; that chapter is misleading.) Connection aside, there is, one may sense, a hunger for shock value, for pain that may not be fully explained by the focus of this book on loneliness and isolation and how these artists are beloved because of their iconoclastic or unconventional lives. Despite expressions of the writer's ability to connect with them, there seems to be that longing to penetrate their lives, as if they are vicarious substitutes of the writer's own. Perhaps it is a reflection of that loneliness that longs to grasp, forming a higher unconscious design. Compounding that is that eagerly contributing tone that is so off-putting. Commenting on East Village artist David Wojnarowicz's traumatic childhood, Laing comments, 'You don't emerge from a childhood like that without baggage.' (105).

After the chapter on Andy Warhol and Valerie Solanas, the text is peppered with amateurish quips that sound like they are from a high school essay instead of an educated though fallible human being capable of critical thought. The fault here however is not in the facts themselves (this is after all a personal essay) but its phrasing. One may read a sentence as this: 'I'd always found straight society isolating and potentially dangerous.' (107) and cringe at the generalising prejudice, and its clumsy construction that impedes even the attempt to understand why the writer may feel that way; that sort of readerly understanding of circumstance despite personal disagreement, a complex emotion that the best of literature and biography inspires. The moments that the writer jumps in, cuts into, the lives of the artists featured acquire the artlessness of a complaint.

A final point of criticism is the logical flow of her arguments (although perhaps this may be excused again on the grounds of this being a personal essay, although it should not be). In the chapter 'Render Ghosts' Laing cites pop culture - mostly film references like Her - to shore up her assertion that we live in a society increasingly disconnected from real things and physicality because of technology, smartphones, faceless communication etc. It is a worn argument that mistakes art's reflection on life for life itself.

Anyone truly looking for 'adventures in the art of being alone' and finding themselves dismayed, will perhaps find what they have come for in Anneli Rufus' 'Party of One', or Susan Cain's 'Quiet'. Anne Fadiman's essays are also worth reading for the skillful way she weaves literature into her life.

Courtney Woolery

absolutely wonderful, so moving, a must read

Patty M.

This book is stunning. The amount of research and depth Olivia Laing put into creating this piece is incredible. She was able to introduce, develop, and explain the intricate connections between artists and their associations with loneliness whilst living in Manhattan. From Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol to David Wojnarowicz and Klaus Nomi, Laing delves into their personalities and their private lives and habits in order to explain their individual artistic styles. Scientific and psychological studies on loneliness are expertly incorporated into the art history aspects of this book. At once historical and biographical, The Lonely City will captivate those interested in art, Manhattan, loneliness, or a combination of the three. Despite its title, this book connects, rather than isolates.

Sameer Vasta

I had a dream last night in which I was walking through this city, but in my dream, the city was empty. In my dream, there were no people, no traffic, no conversation. The streets were deserted, the city, quiet.

I was alone; I was not, however, lonely.

Loneliness is something that is acute in cities. This truth, as explored in Olivia Laing's 
  The Lonely City
, is perhaps explained by the idea of being surrounded by people but yet being alone. Isolation is more piercing when we feel disconnected, knowing that connection and community are in front of your face, yet so far away.

I rarely feel lonely these days, even when I am alone. The cold edifice of the urban landscape feels warm to me, but I know my experience is unusual. Ms. Laing's experience is perhaps more typical: the columns of the city act as metaphorical dividers. This urban solitude has been reflected in art and media for generations. 


  The Lonely City
 is part memoir, part exploration of the art that loneliness inspires; it is a reminder that proximity does not equal connection, that density can cause isolation. It is a reminder that the city, even when completely deserted in our dreams, builds walls between us. Overcoming these literal and figurative walls is the challenge of our urban life.

(originally published on inthemargins.ca)

The Lonely City Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

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