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The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

Olivia Laing (Goodreads Author)

3.90 · Rating details · 18,052 ratings · 2,067 reviews

What does it mean to be lonely? How do we live, if we're not intimately engaged with another human being? How do we connect with other people? Does technology draw us closer together or trap us behind screens?

When 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 ...more

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Hardcover, 336 pages

Published March 1st 2016 by Picador

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Feb 10, 2017 Paromjit rated it it was amazing

Shelves: netgalley, non-fiction, memoir, art

It took me some time to read this simply because I found it riveting, beautifully written, and I wanted to savour it. Olivia Laing is a British writer and critic who moved to New York to be with her American partner only to find the relationship disintegrating. She falls prey to a crippling loneliness which gives rise to this hybrid memoir and art history on the theme of loneliness; and how she finds an alleviation of her loneliness through the visual arts. Given her family history, she focuses It took me some time to read this simply because I found it riveting, beautifully written, and I wanted to savour it. Olivia Laing is a British writer and critic who moved to New York to be with her American partner only to find the relationship disintegrating. She falls prey to a crippling loneliness which gives rise to this hybrid memoir and art history on the theme of loneliness; and how she finds an alleviation of her loneliness through the visual arts. Given her family history, she focuses primarily on LGBT artists from New York's East Village with the exception of the odd Henry Darger from Chicago. She knits together a profound, moving and multilayered narrative. It covers her life, the work and lives of the artists, psychological insights and speculation, the state of being lonely specifically in a urban setting and a picture of New York through her eyes.

She looks primarily at four artists whom she is particularly drawn to. Edward Hopper whose work epitomises urban loneliness as exemplified through his most famous work Nighthawks, Andy Warhol whose life was spent hiding his sense of being apart through his entourages and equipment and the hoarded art of Henry Darger depicting the bizarre and the strange amidst a life of disintegration, violence and mental illness. Laing's particular favourite is David Wojnarowicz who experienced a particularly brutal childhood and life spent suffering as the eternal outsider. He was gay and contracted Aids. He channelled his rage at being stigmatised and silenced by a punitive rather than compassionate society by connecting with the group Act Up, to counter his loneliness until his death. His art and personal response is political to the cards life dealt him, he equates silence with death. His openness about his fear, pain, failure and grief has an honesty that allows him both to be vibrantly alive and counters loneliness.

The author looks at technology and its potent ability to connect whilst at the same time draws our attention to the solitary figure addicted to their phone and computer with its contradictory picture of the illusion of connection. There is the frustrations of social media, incessant social pressures, of people under constant surveillance and being judged rather than understood. The sense of loneliness is being compounded in our world today, with its shame and fear giving rise rise to concealment of the condition and carries heavy costs to public health.

Laing writes with empathy, humanity and curiosity pulling together disparate pieces of knowledge in her quest to understand and address loneliness. It raises as many questions as it answers. I did not always agree with the author but I did find the book intensely thought provoking and marvelled at its wide subject matter. I particularly engaged when near the end Laing says that amidst the shine '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..' She leaves us by saying 'Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city'. Laing finds her own answers but prescribes no universal panacea whilst lauding the values of kindness and solidarity. A highly recommended book which I loved reading. Thanks to Canongate for an ARC. ...more

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Mar 15, 2016 Peter Boyle rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction

What does it feel like to be lonely? It feels like being hungry: like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.

Automat

As a person who spends a fair amount of time by himself, I was drawn to the subject matter of this book. I would say that I'm very comfortable in my own company but there are periods of isolation that I don't always enjoy. God I'm making myself sound like a total recluse here! To be clear I am blessed with lots of terrific friends but as an introvert I always need plenty of personal space. However I also live in a large city nowadays and to feel an emotional disconnect despite being among the presence of thousands is not uncommon.

In this thought-provoking study, Olivia Laing reflects on a period of intense loneliness which she endured in New York after a break-up. During this difficult time she turned to art for answers and explored the interpretations of urban isolation created by some notable and other lesser known artists . They saw themselves as outsiders amid the city's multitudes and channeled their piercing, heartaching loneliness into their work.

Some of her subjects I found more interesting than others - Edward Hopper and Andy Warhol's ideas on the theme particularly intrigued me. There is a lengthy examination of Hopper's seminal Nighthawks which revealed many new observations that I had not previously considered. The others I found less interesting - the chapters on David Wojnarowicz and Henry Darger didn't grab me as much. Maybe this is down to ignorance on my part as I am less aware of their work.

The book is part memoir, part art appreciation but I actually found Laing's findings and experiences of loneliness more compelling than the artists she describes. In fact I feel like the study would have been more complete if she fully opened up on her side of things. Her own thoughts on the seeming contradiction of isolation in a huge, bustling city intrigued me most of all and I wanted to know more about her personal situation. What really happened with the man who left her stranded in New York? How did she end up overcoming her exclusion from the world? What advice would she give to a person who finds themselves in the same predicament? Loneliness is never an easy thing to admit - society tends to attach a sense of shame and failure to the condition. I believe that Laing is holding back a little about her own experience, but I feel this book presents some valuable insights into the subject and the important role that art plays in understanding it.

...more

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Apr 27, 2019 Michael rated it liked it

Shelves: 2019

My full review, as well as my other thoughts on reading, can be found on my blog.

Incisive but uneven, The Lonely City thoughtfully examines loneliness as it appears in the works of Hopper, Warhol, Wojnarowicz, and Darger. Laing mixes together biography, psychology, criticism, and cultural history, to consider how these men’s abusive upbringings and marginalized milieus informed their works’ complex representations of loneliness, connection, desire, and violence. Reminiscent of Rebecca Solnit’s w ...more

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May 04, 2015 Rebecca rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: requested-from-publisher, reviewed-for-blog, history, memoirs, best-of-2016, biographical, uncategorizable

Whereas alcoholic writers were the points of reference for her previous book, the superb The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), here outsider artists take center stage: Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger, and the many lost to AIDS in the 1980s to 1990s. It’s a testament to Laing’s skill at interweaving biography, art criticism and memoir when I say that I knew next to nothing about any of these artists to start with and have little fondness for modern art but still found her bo ...more

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Mar 21, 2017 Chrissie rated it it was ok

Shelves: bio, audible-uk, returned, 2017-read, politics, arts, great-britain, philo-psychol

Not a bad book, but not what I was looking for. I didn't realize to what extent the book would focus upon sexuality, AIDS and abused individuals. Even ordinary people, people with less serious problems than those studied in this book, are troubled by loneliness, lack of communication and meaningful contact with others.

The author wanted to get a handle on the loneliness she felt when her partner left her. She was in her mid-thirties and she felt utterly alone, alone in NYC. We are told that she w Not a bad book, but not what I was looking for. I didn't realize to what extent the book would focus upon sexuality, AIDS and abused individuals. Even ordinary people, people with less serious problems than those studied in this book, are troubled by loneliness, lack of communication and meaningful contact with others.

The author wanted to get a handle on the loneliness she felt when her partner left her. She was in her mid-thirties and she felt utterly alone, alone in NYC. We are told that she was raised in a lesbian family, but we are not told the sex of her partner. While this is a memoir of sorts, it has in fact very little specific information about the author. You may ask what sex has to do with all of this. I mention sex only because in this book it plays a central role. Sex is a key component of the entire book. Another book on loneliness might focus more on age, on one’s ethnic background, on physical or psychological disabilities and less on sex.

The author looks at four artists: Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967), Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987), David Wojnarowicz (1954 – 1992) and Henry Darger (1892 – 1973). She states that the loneliness they felt affected their art. She does not make the claim that art can be seen as a means to remedying one’s feeling of loneliness, isolation or alienation. Why these four artists? Hopper because his paintings reflect a sense of separation between individuals. Take one glance at his painting Nighthawks and you see this. Here is a link: https://www.google.fr/search?q=nighth.... Those he paints are not communicating with one another, there are no crowds and we observe through a window. Asked if his paintings are meant to express loneliness Hopper’s reply was ambiguous. Perhaps subconsciously, is the most we can get for an answer. The other three are LGBT artists, thus sharing common ground with the author’s own background. They all are from urban environments, NYC for three and Chicago for Darger. Their lives and their art forms are reviewed. All share problems relating to sexual, physical and/or mental disabilities and abuse. Yet regardless of the similarities that do exist, each one’s art is completely different from the others’. I don’t see any revolutionary conclusions that can be drawn from the study, except maybe one – that society must take an active role toward abolishing sexual discrimination and it must actively work toward helping the weak, the mentally disabled, the poor and those physically and sexually abused. It doesn’t say all that much about loneliness though, and that is what I thought was to be the central focus of the book! For me the book has a political message rather than a philosophical one.

The author queried how it could be possible to be lonely when living in an urban environment. This was for me self-evident. We all know that one can be alone in the middle of a crowd. Just because one has people around it doesn’t mean there is communication.

I cannot say I necessarily agree with all the ideas the author proposes on art, on loneliness or on social media. I grant that her ideas can be used as a starting point for further discussions.

I suppose the book might have engaged me more if I had loved the art of the artists described. Hopper’s I like but the others do little for me.

A word about the writing, the prose, the lines. If I say the writing is excellent, and it is, I don’t mean that it is lyrical. It is instead lucid, coherent, expressive and utterly clear.

The audiobook is narrated by Zara Ramm. Her reading is fluid. What is said flows into your head and you completely understand. You feel as though you are thinking the thoughts yourself, but the speed is so rapid you get exhausted and it is necessary to take breaks. You are left no time to think on your own. I prefer a slower speed. Let me point out that my view of the narration has not influenced my rating of the book.

Even if there are commonalities between the different artists, the book lacks cohesion. It is neither a memoir about the author, nor does it provide complete biographies on the four artists and I do not see how this book has helped the author resolve her own sense of loneliness. If it has, she has not explained how. It does make a political statement, mentioned above in the third paragraph.

...more

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Mar 03, 2018 Trish rated it really liked it

Recommended to Trish by: ali smith

Shelves: memoir, totally-unexpected, art, criticism, nonfiction, america, british

Ali Smith pointed me to Olivia Laing—I think she was planning to introduce her at a conference in Edinburgh. I knew nothing about Laing when I opened this book to the essay about Henry Darger, “the Chicago janitor who posthumously achieved fame as one of the world’s most celebrated outsider artists, a term coined to describe people on the margins of society, who make work without the benefit of an education in art or art history.”

It is very creepy and disturbing, the whole story of the three hu Ali Smith pointed me to Olivia Laing—I think she was planning to introduce her at a conference in Edinburgh. I knew nothing about Laing when I opened this book to the essay about Henry Darger, “the Chicago janitor who posthumously achieved fame as one of the world’s most celebrated outsider artists, a term coined to describe people on the margins of society, who make work without the benefit of an education in art or art history.”

It is very creepy and disturbing, the whole story of the three hundred paintings and thousands of pages of writing Darger left behind at his death, about sex and children and abuse and neglect. Laing’s description of it, and her close research into his life, reminded me of the work of New Yorker writer Ariel Levy: one doesn’t really want to read it, but once begun, it is hard to tear oneself away.

This book itself is about lonely people, lonely artists, herself as a lonely person. Such a repellant topic; Laing notes the psychoanalyst Fromm-Reichmann, a contemporary of Freud, writes

“Loneliness seems to be such a painful, frightening experience that people do practically everything to avoid it….Loneliness, in its quintessential form, is of a nature that is incommunicable by the one who suffers it.”

Exactly, exactly, exactly, I want to say as I turn my attention away. It makes me uncomfortable, suffering from it or not. So why, then, does Laing want to write a book about loneliness?

The truth is, if one can suffer through the sensation of skin-being-sanded while Laing chooses Edward Hopper to discuss during her own period of estrangement, alone in New York City, irreparably separated from her fiancé, her discussion of Hopper’s paintings and his life leave an indelible impression. Hopper met his wife in art school, and they each were forty-one-year-old virgins when they married one another. The chapter becomes a queerly voyeuristic biography of Hopper, his art, and his journal-writing wife whose painting was so derided by Hopper that she stopped painting and became his model.

When Laing moved from Brooklyn to the Village—she can’t have been so lonely, by the way, that she didn’t just return to England unless she likes a little bit that sensation of sandpaper-on-skin—she turned her gaze on Andy Warhol. At first Laing detested his work but after seeing him struggling to speak in a biopic once, she realized his Pop Art, the repeating images in different colors, was the attempt of a lonely boy to fit in.

"Sameness, especially for the immigrant, the shy boy agonisingly aware of his failures to fit in, is a profoundly desirable state; an antidote against the pain of being singular, alone, all one, the medieval root from which the work lonely emerges. Difference opens the possibility of wounding; alikeness protects against the smarts and slights of rejection and dismissal."

Laing does not neglect Valerie Solanas, the shooter who nearly ended Warhol’s life, who was also “drawn to the excessive and neglected.” Solanas’s work on the SCUM Manifesto puts her smack dab in the middle of a resurgent feminist movement, and yet decidedly outside the mainstream headed by Betty Friedan.

Laing provides context to and critiques of the work of Warhol contemporaries, photographer/artists Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujar, and demonstrates how their work fits in with the alienation developed through loneliness. Laing’s searing chapter on the AIDS epidemic reminds us how the scourge played out in New York, and how it enveloped Warhol and his milieu.

The discussion of “Strange Fruit (for David)”, an art installation created by Zoe Leonard for Wojnarowicz in 1998, is somehow eye-opening, and mind-changing. The creepiness of that avant garde art scene melts to reveal the humanity and real pain in the expression of this art.

So Laing’s own journey through loneliness becomes a meditation on loneliness expressed through the art of others.

"It was the rawness and vulnerability of [Wojnarowicz’s] expression that proved so healing to my own feelings of isolation: the willingness to admit to failure or grief, to let himself be touched, to acknowledge desire, anger, pain, to be emotionally alive. His self-exposure was in itself a cure for loneliness, dissolving the sense of difference that comes when one believes one’s feelings or desires to be uniquely shameful."

Laing’s skill on this difficult subject of outsider art keeps us curious and bearing our discomfort as she leads us to a deeper understanding of our human condition.

"Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city…the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each other. We are in this together…What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open…"

...more

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Mar 14, 2016 Frances rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: lonely people

Shelves: favorites, women-authors, best-among-favorites

I will always be lonely.

And this book just validated that feeling some us have had and still having and will continue to have, for the rest of our lives.

While some may think that it is a weakness, artists mentioned in this book (which I never knew existed, thanks Olivia) used loneliness as their means of doing their artworks to its best. At the time that technology hasn't reached its peak yet, these people turned their pain into something beautiful—art. Instead of looking for a way to dismiss t ...more

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Jan 27, 2018 Thomas rated it liked it

Shelves: biography-or-memoir, nonfiction

3.5 stars

I would give the last three pages of this book 20 stars if I could, for exploring the under-discussed topic of loneliness with such wisdom and compassion. In The Lonely City, Olivia Laing writes about her experience with loneliness after moving to New York City. She blends her time in New York with analyses and biographies of various artists, including Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and more. I loved portions of this book because Laing opens herself up to such a probing, 3.5 stars

I would give the last three pages of this book 20 stars if I could, for exploring the under-discussed topic of loneliness with such wisdom and compassion. In The Lonely City, Olivia Laing writes about her experience with loneliness after moving to New York City. She blends her time in New York with analyses and biographies of various artists, including Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, and more. I loved portions of this book because Laing opens herself up to such a probing, poignant examination of being lonely. After graduating from undergrad last May, I get the sense that we all try to act as happy as we can, such as by portraying images of perfection and satisfaction on social media even when we feel sad or distraught. I know I have felt and still feel isolated and lonely at times. Through her smart thinking and honest self-disclosure in The Lonely City, Laing shows that it is okay not to be okay, to feel lonely or lacking. In fact, we can learn a lot from not being okay. This brilliant quote exemplifies this message:

"There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness, of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling - 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 attendant grief and frustration that entails."

I only give this book 3.5 stars instead of 5 stars because Laing's sections about artists felt like tangents at times. I understand that she drew inspiration and meaning from these artists' work, and I love the idea of using art to cope with and honor loneliness. But I wish these sections had been more integrated with her own story, instead of separate chunks pulling us away from the narrative. I wanted to know more about her recent breakup after moving to NYC, her past experiences with loneliness, or her relationship with writing and loneliness. I appreciated the chapters that dealt with the AIDS crisis and social media, as Laing connected these parts with the overarching themes of the book well. Specifically, I appreciated how Laing writes that instead of rushing into romantic relationships to escape loneliness (an unfortunate pattern I have seen way too many people enact), we can befriend ourselves instead and focus on fighting for social justice:

"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."

Overall, recommended to anyone who has ever felt lonely - so all of us, I suppose - and wants to explore that feeling. Artists and art lovers would get an additional kick out of this book. I am grateful to Laing for this kind, intelligent discourse on loneliness, a topic I hope we can all engage with with more compassion to ourselves and others. People partake in such maladaptive actions to hide away from or deal with loneliness (e.g., abusing substances, staying in abusive or dissatisfying relationships, etc.) and Laing offers great alternatives in The Lonely City, with a focus on befriending yourself, creating and appreciating art, and advocating for social justice. I will end this review with one more brilliant quote:

"Loneliness is personal, and it is also political. Loneliness is collective; it is a city. As to how to inhabit it, there are no rules and nor is there any need to feel shame, only to remember that the pursuit of individual happiness does not trump or excuse our obligations to each another. We are in this together, this accumulation of scars, this world of objects, this physical and temporary heaven that so often takes on the countenance of hell. What matters is kindness; what matters is solidarity. What matters is staying alert, staying open, because if we know anything from what has gone before us, it is that the time for feeling will not last." ...more

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May 15, 2019 7jane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to 7jane by: ONTD

Music: House Of Love - "Loneliness Is A Gun"

At first, you might think this is just the author talking about her loneliness when she spent some time in New York City somewhere around 2000s. Then you realise that it's not only about that, but how artists dealt with their loneliness through art and different gadgets, from Edward Hopper to Josh Harris. It's true that Laing chooses mostly white, mostly male, examples of them, but I somehow feel it doesn't matter too much, since the books variety of m Music: House Of Love - "Loneliness Is A Gun"

At first, you might think this is just the author talking about her loneliness when she spent some time in New York City somewhere around 2000s. Then you realise that it's not only about that, but how artists dealt with their loneliness through art and different gadgets, from Edward Hopper to Josh Harris. It's true that Laing chooses mostly white, mostly male, examples of them, but I somehow feel it doesn't matter too much, since the books variety of material is still quite good in other ways. I seem to have chosen another book based in New York since my book before this was also there most of the time (Ling Ma's "Severance"). For the author, investigating on the artist gave her comfort in her loneliness; for the artists, art gave them relief and a way to express this, express themselves, to make a mark, to be a way to change society. Some were more approved than others, some were only known after their death (being outside artists).

The loneliness here is big city loneliness. Some of the artists here area listed early, some come along as you read. Some appear briefly, some stay on, especially Andy Warhol. All sorts of angles about loneliness are talked about: loneliness as a hunger, loneliness because you are different, loneliness because you are ill (mentally, having HIV etc.), loneliness because you are difficult or hard to figure out or just reclusive. The psychology of it is mentioned, it's ways of damage are mentioned. Loneliness because you are an immigrant, you don't talk quite good English, you don't want to be forced into a gender (here some comment on the film "Vertigo" and the forcing within it).

You do sometimes feel the need for sameness. To be liked. To get likes, comments. To be watched on film, Youtube, on stage. You use machines to protect you, to get you through people, to make people be with you talking, performing. Different subjects flow in and out: Rimbaud masks, the experience of visiting the sex scene at Chelsea pier (and the consequences in first waves of HIV), the marks of childhood causing further loneliness ways in adulthood. Online 'company, online loneliness, online as control, online being watched and a watcher. The film "Her".
- this, the last two sentences above, the point in the book brought reality of mine firmly in front of me... and like many, I've had: loneliness in school, lack of friends, lack of understanding social rules, lack of current friends etc. etc. etc.

"Loss in the cousin of loneliness", and we lose some of the people as the book comes towards the end, but we realise what art brings to lonely people, to the artists. To inform, to be remembered. To move us to certain emotions, like that piece of fruits stitched back together, like those Warhol boxes of hoarded stuff. There's the memory. There's the art that makes us less alone, both the watcher and the maker of them. Art is useful - we are useful. Some way, some day(s).

...more

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Oct 15, 2016 Helene Jeppesen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was my first non-fiction book for a long time, and I was very curious both about the subject of loneliness, but also to see what was hidden behind the beautiful cover.
Basically, Olivia Laing explores how it is to be lonely in a city surrounded by people. She has lived in New York City for a certain period of time herself, and during that time she felt extremely lonely.
This non-fiction book isn't just about her personal experiences, though, because it also dives into other artists' experie ...more

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May 07, 2019 Warwick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: united-states, new-york, mister-b, art-design, criticism

In her mid-30s, Olivia Laing moved from England to New York to live with a new boyfriend. The relationship didn't work out, and she found herself stranded on her own in an unfamiliar city, dealing with an almost crippling lack of daily human interaction.

Having spent sizeable chunks of my own life being lonely in unfamiliar cities, I immediately liked the idea as well as the melancholy tone of this book. Laing has all kinds of interesting insights to offer on how loneliness manifests itself – but In her mid-30s, Olivia Laing moved from England to New York to live with a new boyfriend. The relationship didn't work out, and she found herself stranded on her own in an unfamiliar city, dealing with an almost crippling lack of daily human interaction.

Having spent sizeable chunks of my own life being lonely in unfamiliar cities, I immediately liked the idea as well as the melancholy tone of this book. Laing has all kinds of interesting insights to offer on how loneliness manifests itself – but it should be noted that while The Lonely City presents itself as a memoir of this time in her life, under the hood it's really a book of art criticism, examining the life and work of visual artists (mostly) who addressed loneliness as a subject.

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’. You can look at my updates for some visuals on their stuff – 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. ...more

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Feb 27, 2016 Blair rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, read-on-kindle, biography-or-memoir, netgalley, 2016-release

The subtitle of The Lonely City, 'Adventures in the Art of Being Alone', has a double meaning: as well as being a book about the experience of loneliness itself, this is a book about the role of loneliness in art. The starting point is Olivia Laing's own period of intense loneliness, living in New York after the end of a relationship, bringing to life the so-often-true cliche of being alone in a crowd, isolated and displaced in the centre of one of the world's most populous cities. She makes a s The subtitle of The Lonely City, 'Adventures in the Art of Being Alone', has a double meaning: as well as being a book about the experience of loneliness itself, this is a book about the role of loneliness in art. The starting point is Olivia Laing's own period of intense loneliness, living in New York after the end of a relationship, bringing to life the so-often-true cliche of being alone in a crowd, isolated and displaced in the centre of one of the world's most populous cities. She makes a study of several artists and photographers, chiefly Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz and Henry Darger, and also talks peripherally about the work of Valerie Solanas, Josh Harris, Zoë Leonard, Peter Hujar and others. The resulting reflections touch on everything from the evolving role of the internet in society to Laing's own gender identity.

I loved The Lonely City, but it's unusually hard to pin down what's so good about it, partly because it's just such a patchwork of genre components - creative non-fiction, memoir, art history, psychology and sociotechnological commentary are all thrown into the mix. Rather than making the book seem like a hodgepodge of nothing much, this makes it stronger, and like the best of this type of writing, it made me keen to find out more about some of the subjects it touches on. The depth of Laing's research is apparent, but it's the personal ruminations that hit home the hardest. There is a clear line drawn - repeatedly - between solitude and loneliness, a distinction that isn't made often enough. Laing also writes incisively about how an online existence can alleviate and/or crystallise individuals' isolation, avoiding the tedious 'the internet is making everyone lonelier' proselytising that typically pervades writing about that particular subject. Along with her openness about her own thoughts and feelings, these points make Laing's observations feel fresh.

When I came to New York I was in pieces, and though it sounds perverse, the way I recovered a sense of wholeness was not by meeting someone or falling in love, but rather by handling the things that other people had made, slowly absorbing by way of this contact the fact that loneliness, longing, does not mean one has failed, but simply that one is alive.

Recently, when I (briefly) reviewed Emma Jane Unsworth's Animals, I mentioned that I felt so relieved and validated by the ending that I was overwhelmed by a feeling of wanting to actually thank the author for it. I had the same feeling upon finishing The Lonely City. Laing emphasises how much solace she found in the work of her beloved artists, but doesn't suggest this ought to be seen as some sort of cure; there are no solid conclusions about how one 'should' experience, or seek to combat, loneliness. Despite this - actually more likely because of it - The Lonely City is an incredibly reassuring read for anyone who has ever been lonely or struggled with their own experience of solitude.

I received an advance review copy of The Lonely City from the publisher through NetGalley. ...more

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Nov 30, 2019 Vartika rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Vartika by: Mahika Chaturvedi

Shelves: favourites

I first read this book some time after moving to a new, 'flashy' city, one that made me feel isolated and lonesome despite being surrounded by some part of its 12-million-strong population at all times. Olivia Laing wrote The Lonely City after a similar move to the city of New York, except she moved towards a love that didn't work out, while I had to move away from one that can't help but.
Now, a few months later, the island of isolation calcifying around this global pandemic and a crisis of i I first read this book some time after moving to a new, 'flashy' city, one that made me feel isolated and lonesome despite being surrounded by some part of its 12-million-strong population at all times. Olivia Laing wrote The Lonely City after a similar move to the city of New York, except she moved towards a love that didn't work out, while I had to move away from one that can't help but.
Now, a few months later, the island of isolation calcifying around this global pandemic and a crisis of intimacy looming right before my 22nd birthday has driven me to this book again. Just as the first time, it moved me — often to tears and always to a sense of calming reflection.

A unique and riveting piece that offers solidarity for solitude, The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone is part memoir and part meditation on a pervasive sense of loneliness and what it says about the world we grow to live in each day. Laing explores here different mores of loneliness and seclusion through the lives and art of artists like Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Darger and Klaus Nomi; alongside many others weaving in and out; highlighting gentrification as the fountainhead of loneliness as we experience it today. From Hopper's Nighthawks to Darger's Realms, from Valerie Solanas' self-published manifesto, Josh Harris' experiments with the blurring lines of the real and the social and Greta Garbo's solitary walks through the streets of NYC, to AIDS and Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" (as well as Zoe Leonard's eponymous artistic tribute to Wojnarowicz); Laing walks through and appreciates the experience of loneliness and the human need for intimacy, understanding, and contact comfort without voiding it of its pathos, its raw edges, or its sense of hope.

This book takes one on a journey from the loneliness as a private hell behind glass walls and devices to inhabiting the trauma and communal sense of alienation that accompanied the experience and injustice of AIDS, while at the same time making space for the misunderstood and the disregarded — such as Jo Hopper, whose own career ended in submission to that of her husband; or Valerie Solanas and Henry Darger, whose unceasing creativity was a refuge from the mistreatment and harassment of the outside world — as well as infamously contradictory people like Andy Warhol. Laing looks at loneliness as something that is both a curse and a mark of defiance. The Lonely City is also a map, in both space and time, of New York; a portrait of the city through its loners, whose lives filled with its exhilarating charm and distance in equal measures. In including here her own experience of getting lost and lonely, Laing's nuanced mapping of the pains of solitude and loss through music, art and biography in this book lends to it a sense of catharsis.

What touched and resonated with me the most, however, was the sheer brilliance of the chapters in the latter half of this book which talk about the growing loneliness in a world of instant messaging, screens and fragmented personalities. These open an empathetic discussion on the sensitivity and shame that make the lonely unreachable and even repulsive, and exploring the personal, political and collective aspects of this feeling. In one particularly insightful passage, she writes:

"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 naive texture of embodiment, of doing time, as David Wojnarowicz put it, in a rented body, with all the attendant grief and frustration that entails."

Beautiful, lucid and deeply poignant, the emotions and insight that flare throughout every reading of The Lonely City remind me of Fernando Pessoa, my favourite literary 'outsider', and the only one whose sense of abandonment and disquiet could touch and resonate with my own — until now, that is.

This book makes me feel a little less lost — I hold this book and it feels like being held. When the feeling of being alone in a crowd beckons once more; as it soon will; I will pick it up again. ...more

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Mar 23, 2016 Laura Ilkiw rated it it was ok

While Liang's writing and research are impressive, this didn't come across as a cohesive work for me. The loneliness theme felt forced, and every time it was introduced I often felt that the artists discussed weren't in fact lonely but simply dedicated to their craft. In addition, I was put off by the amount of content that seemed to be directly pulled from Wojnarowicz's " Close to the Knives". I'd like to read this book in the future, and Liang seems to have simply summarized the plot points an ...more

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Jan 04, 2021 julieta rated it really liked it

I really enjoyed this book. It's about loneliness, and through lives of different artists, most of who I knew very little about, she speaks of the need in all people in general, to feel a part of something. Wonderful read. ...more

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Aug 07, 2016 Laura Leaney rated it liked it

I live alone, and by alone I discount two barnacle-like cats who obviously think I'm the tops. So I was attracted by Olivia Laing's title, especially the subtitle "Adventures in the Art of Being Alone." I thought, hmm, is there an art to it? Am I missing something that might make me feel less isolated from the teeming world? And at first I believed the book might be headed in the direction I assumed, towards artful solitary living.

Despite the great writing, I was left slightly disappointed. The ...more

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Mar 19, 2016 Kristen rated it did not like it

Shelves: 2016

This had an interesting premise and started out promising, with the author reflecting on her own experience lonely in NYC after moving there from overseas. In the first couple chapters, it was somewhat interesting, albeit depressing, to learn more about some well-known artists and how loneliness shaped them and their work.

By the third chapter, however, I gave up. When another artist's biography quickly devolved into a list of the many specific horrible ways he was abused by his parents, I had e ...more

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Mar 11, 2017 Scott Burrus rated it it was amazing

Powerful, relevant, timely and resonates with where our society finds itself, especially in urban communities. Great quote, "learning how to befriend yourself and understanding that many things that seem to affect us as individuals are in fact a result of larger forces of stigma and exclusion, which can and should be resisted. Loneliness is personal, and it is political. Loneliness is collective, it is a city." Another great aspect of this book was how the author not only weaved in contemporary ...more

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Feb 02, 2017 Penny rated it it was amazing

A pretty rare 5 star rating for me but this was a terrific book, very poignant and moving but at the same time it was educational and informative - and beautifully written.
After a love affair goes suddenly and badly wrong, Laing finds herself living in a small sublet apartment in New York. Nothing new about a writer describing the feeling of being alone in the midst of a bustling city. And yet Laing's meditations are wonderful and lead in so many directions - for example the use of a mask to hid ...more

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Aug 01, 2018 unknown pokemon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-time-favorites, lgbtqia, 2018-favorites

"Loneliness is by no means a wholly worthless experience, but rather one that cuts right to the heart of what we value and what we need. Many marvellous things have emerged from the lonely city: things forged in loneliness, but also things that function to redeem it."

Rating: 5/5 stars.

I had an intense inner debate about which quote should open this review because god damn it, there were so many possibilities and at the same time, none truly showed how wonderful this book was.

I'm in awe with Oli ...more

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Mar 17, 2016 Satkar Ulama rated it it was ok

This book had me at its title. And lost me at chapter three. While the readers' reviews and introduction chapter promise me a fun discussion about loneliness from the perspective of psychology and philosophy, this book is more about artists' lives than the concepts of loneliness itself. Laing tries to interpret loneliness by analyzing, say, Andy Warhol's paintings and his appearance on TV and so on. I expected empirical research findings of loneliness instead of short memoirs, though. This is a ...more

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Mar 19, 2016 Jim Coughenour rated it really liked it

Shelves: essaysforautodidacts, art, memoir

Olivia Laing launches her book with the idea that “loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality,” which may be true and worth avoiding whenever possible. A longtime bachelor myself, I tend to distinguish between loneliness and solitude. (For me the difference depends on having a cat.) But I’m happy to be convinced, à la Laing, that the saving grace is art.

The Lonely City begins as an earnest exercise in ekphrasis. In the wake of endless monographs on Edwa Olivia Laing launches her book with the idea that “loneliness might be taking you towards an otherwise unreachable experience of reality,” which may be true and worth avoiding whenever possible. A longtime bachelor myself, I tend to distinguish between loneliness and solitude. (For me the difference depends on having a cat.) But I’m happy to be convinced, à la Laing, that the saving grace is art.

The Lonely City begins as an earnest exercise in ekphrasis. In the wake of endless monographs on Edward Hopper, Laing points out the unmissable loneliness of the paintings, particularly of solitary women in urban rooms – all of which, it turns out, may be portraits of Hopper’s wife, an artist whose career he aborted. Laing cites various psychological studies to illumine the afflictions of being alone, disconnected, phobic, and more interestingly (as the book continues) her own experience as a woman alone and adrift in New York City, remarkably adept at enhancing her isolation.

I read the first couple chapters – on Hopper and Andy Warhol (and Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot him) – with a cold heart. Warhol has always struck me as an icon of frigidity. Everything shifted for me in the chapter on David Wojnarowicz, whom I remember from the days of ACT UP and his reading at A Different Light in San Francisco. He was an artist in extremis, tragic, inventive, angry. The fragments of his work become a method for Laing to engage her own loneliness, and evoke some surprising reflections.

Reading David’s diaries was like coming up for air after being a long time underwater. There is no substitute for touch, no substitute for love, but reading about someone else’s commitment to discovering and admitting their desires was so deeply moving that I sometimes found I was physically shaking as I read.

Laing evokes phantasmagoria of gay life in the 70s and 80s – Wojnarowicz recalls the piers and dives of Manhattan, but that erotic carnival existed in some form across the urban centers of the Western world. Laing quotes Samuel Delany, who describes that time and place as “a space at a libidinal saturation impossible to describe to someone who has not known it.” Did this world assuage the loneliness of gay men? I would say that it certainly transformed it. Laing’s reaction is sharp:

God I was sick of carrying around a woman’s body, or rather everything that attaches to it… Sometimes you want to be made meat; I mean to surrender to the body, its hungers, its need for contact, but that doesn’t mean you necessarily want to be served bloody or braised. And at other times, like Wojnarowicz’s Rimbaud, you want to cruise, to pass unnoticed, to take your pick of the city’s sights.

A few pages later she pushes harder.

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.”

I don’t think this is odd or perverse or damaged; I think it is a genuine state of perception, of the kaleidoscopic consciousness of the artist. And loneliness is constitutive of this state.

I read the rest of Laing’s book in this light; she’d won my commitment. There are several more disturbing, desperate stories – the outsider artist Henry Darger and Klaus Sperber, aka Klaus Nomi. Laing opens the chapter on Nomi with a nod to Arthur Russell and Justin Vivian Bond (whom I recall from the 90s in her original incarnation as Kiki) – I’m on Laing’s frequency now. She circles back to Hopper, Warhol and Wojnarowicz and now I’m receptive, even to Andy. She immerses herself in their worlds, physically when possible, picking up their diaries, artworks, detritus. Given that she centered herself in New York City among dead gay artists, there was no escaping the liminal apocalypse of AIDS, which I now recall as an extraordinary time of fear, grief, unexpected compassion, courage, and rage. But also a time of incandescent illumination: the proximity of death, watching beautiful talented friends disappear from our lives, leaving holes in the fabric. And silence. And whatever you call what remains of those once vital scuzzy urban centers, now insulated by wealth and conformity against all outsiders.

Art, as Laing implies from the start, is the presence of the absence, not as a deconstructionist cliché but as something closer to Walter Benjamin’s ideas of “aura” and “ruin.” She concludes with the observation that

There are so many things that art can’t do… all the same [art has] some odd negotiating ability between people, including people who never meet and yet who infiltrate and enrich each other’s lives.

This is not the bromide it appears; she’s demonstrated how the process works throughout her book. It’s an experience the luckiest among us have had – being able, because of our loneliness, to find company in a book or a painting or a film or a piece of music, among friends, among artists who’ve turned their pain into art. Laing reaches for an unreachable reality and, here and there, hands it back to us.
...more

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Mar 23, 2020 Lotte rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: a-non-fiction, ge-memoir, reviewed, t-mental-health, 2016-release, 2020-read

The Lonely City is a mix between memoir, biography and cultural criticism. Using her own personal experiences of loneliness and alienation living in New York as a jumping-off point, Olivia Laing explores the lives and works of various artists whose experiences with loneliness have shaped their art — Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol and David Wojnarowicz, to name a few. In trying to build "a map of loneliness" pieced together from her own experiences and those of others, she wants to dismantle the sham ...more

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Mar 19, 2017 Annie rated it liked it

For me, if I am in the right city, even if I am utterly alone there, I can be blissfully happy. Because the city feeds me, the city becomes my friend, and I feel too full of myself and life to even want anything else.

Montreal, for me, is the greatest friend I’ll ever have. She’s still home, and I miss her so very much. Glasgow. Glasgow is another city that, for me, makes it impossible to even remember what it feels like to be lonely. Berlin, too. And, to a lesser extent, London.

Then there are ...more

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May 02, 2016 Jake Goretzki rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2016

So there I was, all braced for this to be a slightly tiresome, stream of conscious outpouring on Sontag/Derrida/de Frou Frou/Kugelschreiber and the heuristics of contemporary post-feminist discourse, in Brooklyn and some fantastic coffee shops - or summat. What a pleasant surprise to find instead a readable, thoughtful journey through the worlds of a range of canonical artists - the focus very much on the material and the artist. And that this is art - Edward Hopper, Warhol, Klaus Nomi, Basquiat So there I was, all braced for this to be a slightly tiresome, stream of conscious outpouring on Sontag/Derrida/de Frou Frou/Kugelschreiber and the heuristics of contemporary post-feminist discourse, in Brooklyn and some fantastic coffee shops - or summat. What a pleasant surprise to find instead a readable, thoughtful journey through the worlds of a range of canonical artists - the focus very much on the material and the artist. And that this is art - Edward Hopper, Warhol, Klaus Nomi, Basquiat - that we mortals can know and see (including stuff on Youtube)...well, I sure wasn’t expecting that.

Think of this as a thoughtful guided tour or set of documentaries on US 20th century art and the study of isolation. They’re all working with, processing and medicating against the social isolation of the modern age.

Laing has chosen some absolute crackers: Warhol is never not fascinating (he comes out of this much less of a twat than I’m used to); Edward Hopper is glorious, and how fitting that he was such a fucked up man (I mean, your wife! You git!). Henry Darger is an absolute revelation to me - I’d never heard of him and that giant obsessive, semi-pornographic mountain of work (are we absolutely sure he wasn’t a Scout leader?). The chapter on Klaus Nomi and the dawn of the AIDS epidemic was especially touching and troubling; particularly disturbing that period where we’re pretty much talking about something even his own peers considered leprosy (and that’s ‘the good guys’ talking, e.g. Warhol).

I also loved the chapter on Josh Harris (another I’d never heard of) and the early harbingers of the mass loneliness and illusory, modulated communion that our screen lives now offer (some good inspiration here for anyone looking to learn about technology-led social isolation). This, for me, helped tie the book up and relate our artists to the wider malaise and question of our times: what are social media and the connected world doing to our heads (and how do we deal with that isolation?).

It’s always a sign for me of reading a fine book when I come away with a list of must-watches and must-reads - and this one’s about twelve books and five galleries long. Don’t judge a book by its cover. Or its writer’s biography. Or its title. This is splendid work. ...more

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Jun 30, 2017 Jesse rated it really liked it

Recommended to Jesse by: Caitlin

Shelves: cultural-theory-and-criticism, read-in-2017, women-writers, cityscapes-and-the-urban, art-history-and-criticism, memoir-and-autobiography, visual-arts

Sometimes a book will serendipitously meander into your life at the exact moment you need it, and that's exactly what happened with this one. Threading together art history, cultural analysis, and autobiography, Laing's book is a unique hybrid that documents artists and artwork that address loneliness and isolation through a prism of personal loneliness and isolation that she herself experienced while briefly living in New York City. The book became my companion during a period of personal solit ...more

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Jan 11, 2016 Dan (aka Utterbiblio) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A beautifully written thought piece on loneliness that is a must read for anyone who identifies with the concept of being lonely. As a mental health sufferer (depression, anxiety, OCD) I have to face feeling lonely every day. What Olivia Laing does here, is look at the factors of life that can cause us to feel this way - whether it's from our childhood situations lingering with us or whether it's our modern addiction to the connectivity of electronic devices.

Throughout the book Laing looks at se ...more

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Feb 26, 2016 Eric Anderson rated it it was amazing

It’s difficult to write about books that affect me the most. Of course I was drawn to this non-fiction book because the title is so in line with my blog’s title. As well as being a platform for me to ponder what I’m reading, I like to think of my blog as an ongoing exploration on the conflicted relationship I have to literature – how it can make me feel so connected to our larger shared humanity. At the same time, it makes me physically alone and reading itself can serve as a self-imposed barrie ...more

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Mar 01, 2016 Book Riot Community added it

Shelves: new-books-liberty-s-recs

Laing, the author of the wonderful The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking, is back with a part cultural criticism, part memoir on the subject of loneliness. What is loneliness? What constitutes being alone? Laing takes a look at lives in the era of electronic connections, and shares her personal experiences of being lonely in NYC, the city that never sleeps, and how she used art to explore the concept of loneliness, and learn what things bring people together. Fascinating and poignant. ...more

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Jul 17, 2016 Jess Kibler rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

It took me AGES to finish this book, not because I didn't like it but because I did so, so much. While reading it, I'd stop periodically to marvel at the density of research--so clearly presented--packed into each gorgeous sentence. I'd reread entire pages so I could feel the rhythm of them again. On the bus, I'd stop reading to stare out the window a bit, watch my own city go by, and then suddenly I'd be at my destination, the time passed thinking about the ideas on loneliness and art and selfh ...more

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About Olivia Laing

Olivia Laing

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Olivia Laing is a writer and critic. Her first book, To the River (2011) is the story of a midsummer journey down the river Virginia Woolf drowned in. It was a book of the year in the Evening Standard, Independent and Financial Times and was shortlisted for the 2012 Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year.

Her second, The Trip to Echo Spring (2013), explores the liquid links between w ...more

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“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.” — 116 likes

“There is a gentrification that is happening to cities, and there is a gentrification that is happening to the emotions too, with a similarly homogenising, whitening, deadening effect. Amidst the glossiness of late capitalism, we are fed the notion that all difficult feeling - 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 attendant grief and frustration that entails.” — 99 likes

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