I was drawn to this book at a time when I had been experiencing prolonged periods of perceived loneliness (as any 20-something-year-old who has moved out of their hometown does), so that when I saw it on the bookshelf in bustling Berlin I couldn’t resist. I took this home with me, sat on the balcony even though it was gloomy in that way the sky gets before a thunderstorm, and devoured it within just about 24 hours.

The first three chapters in particular resonated deeply with me, inviting me to look into some of the most iconic American artists of all time in a way I hadn’t before. I found Laing‘s analysis of Hopper‘s Nighthawks and Leonard’s Strange Fruit to be my favourite - both served to me as a reminder how intrinsic this desire of intimacy and wholeness are to humanity. I found the in-between a little trickier to appreciate, but by no means would I use it as a criticism and more a result of my lack of artistic knowledge - after all, each and every sentence was so beautifully written that I still enjoyed these.

From start („if you‘re lonely, this one‘s for you“) to finish, I found this book to not only serve as a warm and comforting hug, but also as a reminder that to long and to grieve is nothing less than to be alive.

Didn't realize it was just little biographies of artists. She's no Bill Bryson though.

English Review Below.

من الصعب تقييم كتاب مؤثر زي ده. بدأت قراءته ظنا أنه كتاب عن الوحدة في المدن الكبيرة، لكنه كتاب بالذات عن وحدة أوليفيا لانغ في مدينة نيويورك وتظهر كيف عاصر عددا من الفنانين مدينة نيويورك وعبروا عن وحدتهم وعزلتهم فيها بطرق مختلفة. تتحدث عن لوحات هوبر عن الوحدة والعزلة، أعمال أندي وارهول عن اللغة والتواصل، مرض فاليري سولاناس وجنون العظمة والتمرد، أقنعة وونافيتش ومحاولاته لإخفاء الهوية وفرض عزلة داخل العزلة، خيال هنري دارجر والغرابة والتهميش، تفرد كلاوس نومي وهوجار بعد الاختلاف ومرض الأيدز، الإنترنت وقصة أحد مهووسيه جوش هاريس وتجاربه، دعم زوي ليونارد في محاولتها لصنع الجمال من القبح وغيرهم كثيرون.

تكتب عن الوحدة والعزلة والاكتئاب والمرض وتخوض رحلة يرافقها فيها كل هؤلاء الفنانين. كتاب مؤثر وأعتقد أني هرجعله كتير، وأنصح جدا بأنكم كل ما تذكر أعمال أحد الفنانين سواء لوحات أو رسومات تدوروا عليها على الإنترنت عشان تفهموا هي بتتكلم عن إيه، لأنها بتضيف كتير للصورة العامة اللي بترسمها عن الوحدة. الكتاب كان ناقصه اللوحات دي، بس سهل تلاقوا أعمالهم كلها على الإنترنت.

It's hard to review a book like this, because it affected me completely. I went into it guessing that it's about loneliness in big cities, but it's about Olivia Laing's loneliness in New York and she shows how many different artists came to this city and tackled loneliness in their own way.

Hooper and his isolation, Warhol and the stress of language and communication, Wojnanowicz and his masks of hiding away his identity making an isolation inside his isolation, Darger's imagination after being neglected, Klaus Nomi's and Hugar's individualism and seclusion and the role of AIDS, Internet and the mind-boggling experiments of Josh Harris, the support of Zoe Leonard i making beauty out of ugliness. I would think that if Olivia Laing wrote her book today, she would've included Bo Burnham's Inside in the Internet chapter, because it really illustrates her point.

She deals with loneliness,depression, and disconnect and goes on a journey and each one of those artists helps her understand loneliness a bit more, and as the chapters go on, the artists entangle together to make a unique portrait of loneliness. I also recommend checking online for each of those artists' works to really see how each one of them illustrated his isolation.

I loved this book. I wasn't prepared for how much I enjoyed it or how affecting I found it. She explores the idea of loneliness but uses art to delve into the themes and experience of it....talking about Edward Hopper, David Wojnarowicz, Klaus Nomi, Valerie Solanas, Henry Darger and Andy Warhol. It was amazing to read her very tender and nuanced ideas about their work. She brings in tons of other ideas too, from research to ideas about AIDS activism, it's the type of book that sends you back to the library to take out more stuff. In my case I ran out to get Sarah Schulman's Gentrification of the mind and Andrew Smith's Totally Wired about the dot com boom and living online.

She ends it saying "I don't believe the cure for loneliness is meeting someone, not necessarily. I think it's about two things: learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many of the things that seem to afflict us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted." I guess it's the ideas about stigma and exclusion that I found so compelling.

Just a beautiful book! Amazing.

A beautiful blend of memoir, art analysis and sociological study, Laing looks at the experience of loneliness from her personal experience of being completely alone in New York for a period of time and at artists' expressions of loneliness: Edward Hopper & Andy Warhol, as well as outsider artists David Wojnarowicz & Henry Darger. Throughout was a lovely meditation on the experience of loneliness, which is not the same as simply being alone.

Laing makes so many noteworthy observations, but here is one:
"There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenizing, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feelings - depression, anxiety, loneliness, rage - are simply a consequence of unsettled chemistry, a problem to be fixed, rather than a response to structural injustice or, on the other hand, to the native texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz memorably put it, in a rented body, with all the attendent grief and frustration that entails."

She says, "the way that I recovered a sense of wholeness was not by meeting someone or falling in love, but rather by ... slowly absorbing ... the fact that loneliness, longing does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive."

Ai hitto miten hieno. New York, taide, AIDS, yksinäisyys, ihmiset erilaisissa marginaaleissa, arkistot... Laingin kirja on aivan todella koskettava, surumielinen ja tavallaan kuitenkin lohdullinen kokonaisuus.