The Lonely City, by Olivia Laing
Canongate, £16.99
“WHAT does it feel like to be lonely?” Olivia Laing asks near the beginning of this affecting, compelling, deeply humane book. “It feels like being hungry,” she continues, “like being hungry when everyone around you is readying for a feast.”
What follows for the next 280-odd pages is an exploration of that idea of loneliness as a lack. A lack of communication, a lack of intimacy, a lack of love, a lack of belonging, a lack of empathy (these lacks do not belong only to those who are lonely). And it’s an exploration of the things people to do to fill that lack, be it drugs or sex or the internet or art. It’s the art that is at the heart of Laing’s book.
Set adrift in New York after the breakdown of a relationship, Laing begins the book alone in the big city and in trying to understand what she is experiencing she seeks answers in the experiences of artists who also made their home there. So here, among many others, is the voyeuristic big-city sadness of Edward Hopper, here is Andy Warhol’s quest for comforting perfection, here is the singer Klaus Nomi wearing a ruff to hide the tell-tale purple lesions of Karposi’s Sarcoma.
Laing outlines the loneliness of their lives and the way they addressed the subject in their art. It is an account of damage done and an account of how the artists tried to mend and knit the brokenness of their lives in their work. And in the margins it is an account of how she sought to fix her own.
It is a book that gets stronger as it goes along. It accumulates attention. Perhaps that’s because Laing struggles to feel at ease with her first artist Hopper (she recognises the talent but is less sure of the man whom she later describes “a peeper, a creeper, a connoisseur of open windows”; much of this may have to do with the way Hopper treated his wife Jo).
There is more empathy for her other subjects. She even speaks up for Valerie Solanas, author of Scum and the woman who shot Warhol. Solanas died of pneumonia in April 1988. Her body wasn’t found for three days.
In some ways then, this is a reclamation of artists from the reductive glaze of celebrity (in Warhol’s case) or the dusty veil of indifference. The book finds its greatest hero in David Wojnarowicz, a gay outsider artist who became an Aids activist. In his story she tracks how otherness (in his case sexual) can lead to rejection, which can lead to loneliness, which can lead to being stigmatised. All along the line she tots up the cost. The passages where Laing traces the hysterical and frankly odious political reaction to the Aids virus are both painful and powerful, animated by anger and distress.
The big picture here is that art is not about market value. It’s a statement of humanity. This is a book that calls for acceptance of difference, for an honest accounting of the price of loneliness and a recognition that we can all feed the hunger for a touch or a word. Only connect.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here