“Loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive”
I’ve been a keen reader of Olivia Laing, since discovering her first book, To the River, an account of a walk along the length of the River Ouse. Laing inhabits a new kind of academic writing, which to me seems to warrant the epithet ‘holistic’ It also seems somehow to be a particularly feminine approach, though not all female academics employ it, and there are also male writers in the canon.
To explain, this ‘holism’ is different from the kind of distancing, objective, detached ‘scientific’ approach which has been part of, for example, literary criticism. The ‘scientific’ view of literature divorces the writer from the writing – ‘the biographical fallacy’ and dissects text, or history, or landscape or whatever is being analysed and assessed, as if there is an 100% objective reality to what is being observed. The fact that the viewer themselves has a subjective response, a subjective viewpoint which influences what they see, that they have a relationship with the observed, is ignored. Subjective response is always in there. Sometimes we are prepared to acknowledge it, and I must admit I like a writer who owns their bias, where they come from, as Laing always does.
What writers like Laing are doing as they engage with their own particular field of interest and enquiry, is to enter into their relationship with the material. This is poles away from arm’s length. Other writers in this kind of territory include Helen MacDonald, author of H is for Hawk, Kathleen Jamie in her nature writings.
Nighthawks by Edward Hopper, 1942
Laing’s writing is deeply, sometimes laceratingly, personal and revealing. However it is much more than mere autobiography or confession. Subjective experience and objective analysis flow in and out of each other. Laing’s subject – whether her walking along the Ouse, exploring the landscape, history, geography whilst walking out a personal emotional time and place, or her second book The Trip To Echo Spring : Why Writers Drink, which looks at 6 American writers, has, for me, an extremely satisfying result. Because Laing does not distance herself from her subject matter, rather, she holds the relational space between the other, and herself observing the other, I find myself drawn close into relationship with the examined life she is observing.
Loneliness, in its quintessential form, is of a 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
Henry Darger
In The Lonely City, taking as a starting point her own sense of being an outsider, of loneliness, acknowledging this uncomfortable feeling, part, surely of the human condition, she explores how this sense of loneliness, isolation has been a particularly profound springboard for creativity in the work of a group of visual artists. She has particularly focussed on American artists, mainly painters – Edward Hopper, but also mixed media artists – Andy Warhol – and into the work of photographers, film makers, performance artists. She is particularly looking at work in the second half of the twentieth century.
what Hopper’s urban scenes also replicate is one of the central experiences of being lonely: the way a feeling of separation, of being walled off or penned in, combines with a sense of near unbearable exposure…………an uncertainty about being seen – looked over, maybe; but maybe also overlooked, as in ignored, unseen, unregarded, undesired
Nan Goldin – Dieter with Tulips 1984
I was struck by the prevalence of a sense of being ‘aliens from another planet’ in the artists she was exploring – some of whom were familiar to me, such us Hopper and Warhol, most of whom I was introduced to, for example Henry Darger, David Wojnarowicz. Unsurprisingly, a different sexual orientation, ethnicity, or even an outside the norm family structure, a tendency to introspection and reflectivity when society is functioning in at out-there, high achieving jockish way, can lead to this. Of particular interest to me is her exploration of how some of this sense of not belonging and alienation arises very early in childhood – and some would say can begin in the womb. She weaves in some of the work by John Bowlby on attachment theory, Melanie Klein’s work on infant psychology, and some account of the distressing scientific experiments done on infantile attachment with rhesus monkeys and other mammals.
It might sound as if leaping around from her own loneliness following a relationship breakdown, to exploring the strange world of countertenor Klaus Nomi, unfortunately having a beautiful operatic voice a decade or so before countertenors became loved mainstream opera stars, to analysis of AIDS and the attitudes towards gays in the eighties, political activism, psychoanalytical theory, not to mention the analysis of particular artworks in the framework of all this, might be a hotchpotch. Be reassured, it isn’t. Think instead, a remarkably rich and glowing tapestry, a strong, flexible web.
And, talking of webs…………..I do think a book like this could not have been enjoyed and savoured so satisfyingly more than about a decade ago. The ability to go and search for artworks, you-tube clips of interviews, performances, added immeasurably to the experience
David Wojnarowicz collage
One might think that this would be a depressing, despairing read, accounts of lonely, (even if visible and famous, like Warhol) misunderstood (though highly creative) creative lives. In fact, Laing reminds us how often creative works, perhaps born out of rage, despair or suffering, or from the riches of an interior life of the imagination, totally at odds with what the creator presents to the world (Henry Darger) can illuminate and enrich not only the creator themselves, but those of us who see, or read, or hear and receive that felt, shared, awakening sense of ‘meaning’ that the arts can give. Art itself as a kind of healing, whole-ing not just to the makers.
This is a strange story, perhaps better understood as a parable, a way of articulating what it’s like to inhabit a particular kind of being. It’s about wanting and not wanting: about needing people to pour themselves out into you and then needing them to stop, to restore the boundaries of the self, to maintain separation and control. It’s about having a personality that both longs for and fears being subsumed into another ego; being swamped or flooded, ingesting or being infected by the mess and drama of someone else’s life, as if their words were literally agents of transformation.
This is the push and pull of intimacy
(from a section examining Warhol, and examining the author’s response to Warhol’s life and Warhol’s work)
This is a book which touches on many ideas, feelings, and disciplines of study. I suspect each reader will find individual aspects of it specifically speak more or less loudly to them. It’s a very rich book indeed :
There are so many things that art can’t do. It can’t bring the dead back to life, it can’t mend arguments between friends, or cure AIDS, or halt the pace of climate change. All the same, it does have some extraordinary functions, some odd, negotiating ability between people, including people who never meet and yet who infiltrate each other’s lives. It does have a capacity to create intimacy; it does have a way of healing wounds, and better yet of making it apparent that not all wounds need healing and not all scars are ugly
And that, to my mind, is just one stunning example of gold, bread, water, diamonds. Rich, rich, needed
As you can probably guess, I was almost overwhelmed by all this book contains, and wanted to include visual after visual of every discussed artist. However, readers must, as I did, find their own immersive journey.
The Lonely City comes highly recommended by me!
I was delighted to receive this as an advance digital copy from the publishers, via Netgalley It is available, according to the Amazons, 3rd March in the UK, and 1st March in the USA
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Amazon UK
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Amazon USA
Lady Fancifull 
After reading your review it reminds me of how people either put themselves into a box or others do it for them. Not all, and these artists are definitely who they are. Thank you for making my Monday morning.
Thank you Susan. I found the richness of individuals (sometimes unlikely ones, like Darger) which Laing celebrates, utterly wonderful. It is the opposite of a reductive culture. It’s marvellously fitting in to my reread of To The Lighthouse which i’m doing for HeavenAli’s Woolfalong, the same feeling of skimming along the surface of a wave and suddenly an up rush from the deeps, of surprise and delight!
You have described it perfectly. I sometimes wonder what we have lost in the best of living by being conventional.
I have this in my ‘upcoming reads’ – it sounds like an introspective, calming, thoughtful read and I will bear in mind your recommendation to keep checking and seeing the things she mentions in the book.
It was brilliant looking at the artworks she was describing.
Sounds absolutely fascinating and really absorbing. I remember reading good things about “Echo Springs” when it came out and this perhaps sounds even better. I shall look out for it!
I think it IS better than Echo Spring – not least because she looks at some women artists too!
I loved Laing’s Trip to Echo Spring, so this new one will be high on my list once it comes out in paperback. (I’m not a big reader of hardbacks unless they’re very small and light, otherwise the very act of holding them up at eye level plays havoc with the muscles in my upper back!) Looking forward to it even more after your very thoughtful review.
Thank you Jacqui. I preferred this one to Echo Spring, so I’m sure it will be worth the wait if you can’t go for the weight!
This sounds so interesting, I will read it as you suggest, seeking out the art in question to enrich the reading. The final quote you pulled out is wonderful – I like the thought of art reaching out between individuals.
Thank you Madame Bibi
Oh, how I love that last quote. I may need to add this to the pile. Some of what you mention here makes one wonder if this feeling of alienation that starts in the womb is at all similar to the type of genetic changes being discussed in trauma survivors in the NY TImes today. Changes that get transferred to theor children and so on.
Do you have a link to an online version of that article? It sounds interesting. I understand that an extreme in the womb experience – perhaps, for example a near death experience for the baby, or I guess the mother experiencing prolonged trauma in pregnancy, floods the infant with high levels of adrenal hormones – its almost as if then ‘arousal’ is set too high. This CAN be overcome/soothed and settle, but perhaps a predisposition to high sensitvity is set. If then the early environment is’nt able to offer security and safety so that the infant learns how to self soothe…………….
What was I thinking? It wasn’t the NYTimes, it was The Guardian. Here’s the link: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/aug/21/study-of-holocaust-survivors-finds-trauma-passed-on-to-childrens-genes
If you Google genetic mutation and trauma, you’ll see that it’s been in the news off and on for a handful of years. This was the first I’d heard that there was evidence of this happening.
Oh, and there’s an amazing TED talk by a doctor in San Francisco that’s related to this idea, that trauma in childhood directly affects our health throughout our lives. https://www.ted.com/talks/nadine_burke_harris_how_childhood_trauma_affects_health_across_a_lifetime/transcript?language=en
Thank you so much Jilanne. Absolutely fascinating and very pertinent to my work!
And yet more big thanks, this is so interesting to many areas of my work, and my own personal interests and philosophising
Any time I can be of service, dahlink, let me know! Makes me curious as to what your work is.
I’ve been meaning to read Olivia Laing for ages and ages, and you have given me the push I needed. To write so well and to communicate so effectively about art and such human emotions takes a very special writer indeed.
Yet again you have sent me scurrying to find a book ….
Jane, we undoubtedly have a virtuous tit for tatting going on! I’m delighted you are scurrying, I do think you will love this book. Laing’s voice is one to treasure, authentic, honest, empathetic, sensitive, inspired and inspiring. She speaks with great intensity but does not loudly or brashly shout at the reader, instead, leaves space for you to come into the dialogue. I really felt as if this voice were talking WITH me, not AT me, and accompanying me on a journey, pointing out things for my attention, but prepared to wait whilst I noticed other things
I have enjoyed reading writers’ exploration of their own experience leading to an analysis of literature and wider culture (such as Sara Maitland’s Book of Silence). I’m interested that Laing takes her exploration into the visual arts (and as you say, we have the opportunity, as never before, to track that from our own armchairs). I look forward to this journey.
Yes, there is a similar willingness to explore themselves without self-indulgence and see a kind of universal arising from their own experience. And both are gorgeous writers, also.