Book Review: The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere by Pico Iyer
Fogged in by a spate of loneliness, I decided to deal with the gnawing, empty feeling by turning the negative into positive. To accomplish this, I conducted a search for books on solitude, and compiled a list of about a dozen or so. I was hoping to glean some insight into what makes solitude desirable and apply these ideas to my own situation. Of the selections available at the library, I chose to start with this one.
The Art of Stillness is a small, slim book in which a large portion consists of images or blank pages. The text is about the length of an essay or magazine article. The author Iyer is an elite intellectual and professional travel writer. In the introduction he emphasizes that he offers no answers, only questions that readers can expand upon. According to Iyer, nowhere is the place you arrive at when you “sit still long enough to turn inward.” Disasters are opportunities to start again, he claims, and we can change our lives by changing how we look at them.
I soon realized that though this book is well-written, it is not really aimed at people like me and does not offer any insights into long-term solitude. Instead, Iyer offers high-class executives and other intensely driven individuals the concept of meditative solitude as a temporary break from their other activities. Solitude for Iyer is a few weeks of respite in a monastery or retreat in the hills near Silicon Valley, an option which is beyond the means of ordinary folks. In other words, “going nowhere” is a vacation rather than an ongoing lifestyle choice.
That’s not to say that this book is devoid of value. Within its parameters, it offers insightful examples of others who have taken solitude seriously. For instance, Iyer briefly tells the story of the love affair of Thomas Merton, the famously reclusive monk and author. Although he had taken a vow of celibacy, during a hospital visit the fifty-one-year-old monk fell in love with a twenty-year old nurse. They ultimately did not consummate their relationship, and Merton chose to “marry the silence of the forest.” Another example is Matthieu Ricard, who spent almost a year in a cabin on a mountainside in Nepal; every week or so he would take a photo of the same view, but it was ever-changing due to the mutable weather and seasons. Eventually he published the results in a book called Motionless Journey.
Anecdotes such as these add nuance and flavor to a book that otherwise skims the surface of its subject but does not make any effort to explore it in depth. Iyer does not see stillness as an end in itself, but rather a means of refueling for further accomplishments. He comes across as a traveler passing by and remarking on activities he observes rather than a committed seeker. This does not render the book ineffective, but it limits its scope. Evidently the material in this book is the basis of a TED talk, and in fact The Art of Stillness is labeled “a TED Original” from TED Books. So imagine you are attending a lecture to the upper class on the theme of meditation, stillness, and going nowhere, and then you’ve got an idea of the range and length of this book.
