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"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"--… (more)
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Having spent sizeable chunks of my own life
Her main case studies are Hopper, Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger and Klaus Nomi, some of whom I had never heard of, but all of whose work emerges in this study as full of the pain and the hypersensitivity of loneliness – infused with (in a phrase she uses about Hopper) ‘an erotics of insufficient intimacy’. Unfortunately it is necessary for the reader to put these references together for themselves, as the book itself is critically short of illustrations.
I loved the memoir bits and thought the criticism bits were only OK, which meant I found the book as a whole a little uneven, though often fascinating. Although Laing has a load of interesting things to say about the artists she discusses, I couldn't shake off the feeling that they sometimes appeared to act as a cover, or safety net, for when talking about herself became too difficult. Tracing Wojnarowicz's nocturnal excursions into the New York gay scene of the 1980s, for instance, leads Laing to a moody consideration of her own sexuality – her sense that she is ‘in the wrong place, in the wrong body, in the wrong life’ – in terms that are first allusive, and finally more direct:
I'd never been comfortable with the demands of femininity, had always felt more like a boy, a gay boy, that I inhabited a gender position somewhere between the binaries of male and female, some impossible other, some impossible both. Trans, I was starting to realise, which isn't to say I was transitioning from one thing to another, but rather that I inhabited a space in the centre, which didn't exist, except there I was.
The narrative really comes alive at these points; but it isn't long before Laing ducks back behind another artist again and retreats, if that's not an unfair word, into more analytic criticism. And again – the criticism was interesting! – I just felt that the art and the memoir got in each other's way as often as they reinforced each other. Which was a shame, because I found her really excellent when concentrating on the life writing – on, for instance, the way loneliness has been mediated, yet in some ways worsened, by the modern online world – especially when it comes to the contradictory impulses that drove her on social media:
I wanted to be in contact and I wanted to retain my anonymity, my private space. I wanted to click and click and click until my synapses exploded, until I was flooded by superfluity. I wanted to hypnotise myself with data, with coloured pixels, to become vacant, to overwhelm any creeping anxious sense of who I actually was, to annihilate my feelings. At the same time I wanted to wake up, to be politically and socially engaged. And then again I wanted to declare my presence, to list my interests and objections, to notify the world that I was still there, thinking with my fingers, even if I'd almost lost the art of speech. I wanted to look and I wanted to be seen, and somehow it was easier to do both via the mediating screen.
Laing's neat summary of the internet – ‘what seemed transient was actually permanent, and what seemed free had already been bought’ – is perhaps a clue to the appeal of the artists she focuses on, who were either far outside any corporate influence or, like Warhol, were making commodification the whole point of their work. Seeing these lonely artists through Laing's gaze is enlightening – but the links and segues are so good that I spent much of the book pining for a straight-up memoir.
Olivia Laing explores the subject
It is hard to see what someone would take from this book other than this feeling is real, everywhere, and part of living for most. The relationship of artists, who are indeed usually different from most of us was puzzling to me. But it could have been I didn't see the message.
Apart from that I found some of the material here on the experience of loneliness interesting, especially its influence on artists and its portrayal in art. I've always been fascinated by Edward Hopper's paintings and therefore appreciated finding out more about him.
Olivia Laing moved to New York to be with a man with whom she had fallen in love, though shortly after her arrival there the relationship foundered. Her plans left utterly awry she had to find accommodation for herself (which she achieved through a series of sublets from friends of friends of friends, and then try to carve out a new life for herself in a city in which she was a complete outsider. She achieved that, but succumbed at times to a crushing, almost immobilising, loneliness, which led her to research what was merely suspected, and what was actually understood, about that sensation.
Her exegesis of the nature of loneliness is fascinating, and she renders the psychological analyses in a completely accessible manner. It is, however, also heartrendingly sad in places, and there were times when I simply had to stop reading for a while. Such was the power of her writing, however, that after a brief hiatus, I returned agog for more.
Along the way, she also explores the effect of loneliness on the work of several prominent artists, including Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz and Andy Warhol, all of whom suffered from crushing loneliness throughout their careers. Laing recapitulates their respective careers with a brisk but engaging analysis, and demonstrates how their early experiences of isolation, disenfranchisement and loneliness contributed to their eventual success. Laing also delivers a brief history of the emergence and eventual diagnosis of AIDS, and the marginalisation that it wrought upon the gay community in the early years after its identification.
A courageous and moving book.
Olivia Laing shares an antidote for loneliness in her absorbing 2016 reflection on disconnection The Lonely City. She catalogs multiple varieties of loneliness expressed through the art and artists whose footsteps she followed in her solitarily roaming of the streets of New
The well-documented role of connection to others, and if you like, connection to a god, shared human consciousness, the laws of the universe, or ancestors in wellness cannot be overstated. Laing’s stories of Hopper, Darger, Wojnarowicz, and Warhol provide perspective about the search for connection through art. Beginning with Hopper’s Nighthawks and ending with the dangers of the Internet Laing touches on themes useful when listening to the loneliness of our fellows. Loneliness seems to be at heart of much mental illness. So, for professional listeners, including mental health counselors, these stories can help provide a foundation for understanding the isolation of human pain.
However, there is room for additional work on this topic. While Laing does a nice job exploring the search for connection with others she leaves the connection with one's self alone. It struck me through all of these stories each of the artists were really in search of acceptance from themselves, even as they reached to others for solace. My experience of disconnection, honed over 30 years of slowly eroding self-enforced isolation, provides a foundation for empathy useful in many professional situations.
Listening to loneliness is a humbling activity with many practical applications. I am grateful to Laing for her work and for the reflections provoked while reading this book. The Lonely City is a book for those who appreciate non-conformity, art history, good writing, and connecting to disconnected selves and fellows. It has a place on the bookshelf of every counselor.
I made some notes on the first couple of chapters when I first started reading this in 2018, and at the time I enjoyed
Whatever the case may be, what began as a pretty lackluster experience, ended on a much more positive note. The accounts were interesting and pulled me in, and I actually even teared up a little at one point.
This is a pretty sharp look at loneliness and all it brings with it. There were times where I felt annoyed or agitated because the observations were less than flattering, but still so spot on. Kind of forces you to accept some uncomfortable truths.