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Olivia Laing
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The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone Kindle Edition

by Olivia Laing (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,813 ratings
Goodreads Choice Award nominee
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Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism

#1 Book of the Year from Brain Pickings

Named a best book of the year by NPR, Newsweek, Slate, Pop Sugar, Marie Claire, Elle, Publishers Weekly, and Lit Hub

A dazzling work of biography, memoir, and cultural criticism on the subject of loneliness, told through the lives of iconic artists, by the acclaimed author of The Trip to Echo Spring.

When Olivia Laing moved to New York City in her mid-thirties, she found herself inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Increasingly fascinated by the most shameful of experiences, she began to explore the lonely city by way of art. Moving from Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks to Andy Warhol’s Time Capsules, from Henry Darger’s hoarding to David Wojnarowicz’s AIDS activism, Laing conducts an electric, dazzling investigation into what it means to be alone, illuminating not only the causes of loneliness but also how it might be resisted and redeemed.

Humane, provocative, and moving, The Lonely City is a celebration of a strange and lovely state, adrift from the larger continent of human experience, but intrinsic to the very act of being alive.

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  1. Print length
    337 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Picador
  5. Publication date
    March 1, 2016
  6. File size
    4584 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Reminding us of how it feels to be lonely, this book gently affirms our connectedness.

-- "Boston Globe"

A beautiful meander of a book.

-- "New Yorker"

Laing creates a 'map of loneliness, ' tracking its often-paradoxical contours in her own life as a transplant to New York City and traces how loneliness can inspire creativity...She invents new ways to consider how isolation plays into art or even the Internet (which turns her into an obsessed teenager, albeit one who calls the screen her 'cathected silver lover'). For once, loneliness becomes a place worth lingering.

-- "Publishers Weekly"

An impressive and beguiling combination of autobiography and biography, a balancing act that Laing effortlessly performs.

-- "Elle"

Her book succeeds in offering its readers a redemptive experience comparable to the one she's describing...This triumphant book is in part an appeal for us to value the kind of loneliness that can be rendered, by the intimacy of art, both tolerable and shareable.

-- "Daily Telegraph (London)"

Every page of The Lonely City exudes a disarming, deep-down fondness for humanity.

-- "Wall Street Journal"

[An] acute, nervy and personal investigation into urban solitude...A group biography all in one, which takes a difficult, almost taboo, subject and deftly turns it over anew.

-- "New Statesman"

Laing...picks up the topic of painful urban isolation and sets it down in many smart and oddly consoling places. She makes the topic her own.

-- "New York Times"

An uncommonly observant hybrid of memoir, history, and cultural criticism.

-- "San Francisco Chronicle"

Laing joins the ever-growing pool of writers...who are transforming memoir into a daring and dynamic literary form of discovery.

-- "Booklist (starred review)"

Absorbing melding of memoir, biography, art essay, and philosophical meditation...Illuminating, enriching.

-- "Kirkus Reviews"

About the Author

Olivia Liang's first book, To the River, was published to wide acclaim and short-listed for the Ondaatje Prize and the Dolman Travel Book of the Year. She has been the deputy books editor of the Observer, and writes for the Guardian, New Statesman, and Granta, among other publications. She is a MacDowell and Yaddo fellow, and the 2014 writer-in-residence at the British Library.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00VE68J5W
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Picador; Illustrated edition (March 1, 2016)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 1, 2016
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 4584 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 337 pages
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 1,813 ratings

About the author

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Olivia Laing

Olivia Laing

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Olivia Laing is a widely acclaimed writer and critic. She's the author of seven books, including To the River, The Trip to Echo Spring, The Lonely City and Everybody. Her work has been translated into twenty-one languages. Her first novel, Crudo, was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the James Tait Black Prize. Laing writes on art and culture for the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement and New York Times, among many other publications. Her collected writing on art, Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, was published in 2021. The recipient of the 2018 Windham-Campbell Prize in nonfiction, she lives in Suffolk, England. Her next book, The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise, will be published in 2024.

Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
1,813 global ratings
Not the best book!!
2 Stars
Not the best book!!
The content is fine, but the book arrived torn and the cover does not have the real image, it is just a thin paper that covers it ... I expected more!
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Top reviews from the United States

Stanley Hoffman
5.0 out of 5 stars A must for lonely New Yorkers who have curiousity
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2016
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This book will be in my collection til the day I die. There is so much truth and depth in the writing. As someone who has not delved into the world of art history, or criticism, I found my self completely intrigued by the artists spoken about and amazed how unaware I was of most of it. I'm impressed with the author's thinking and perspective on the brutality of loneliness. It's so darkly refreshing to know how many great minds suffer in this complexly cruel world, and somehow use that pain to make works of art. I too live in NY and am saddened and appalled by the changes in this once really interesting, artistic city that has become a playground for the very wealthy and lost so much in the process. A compelling read and quite educational. I also can't stop watching Klaus Nomi sing "Lightning Strikes" on youtube.
40 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating subject and great writing
Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2020
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Perhaps one of the best books I've ever read. I think the author ran away with herself when it came to deductions. It's one of those rare books that has me digging further. It is illuminating me into artists I've never heard of before and made me realize how creative some people have been in response to the abusive childhoods. Laing is a good writer. Can't wait to read more of her writing.
2 people found this helpful
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Daisy
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating stories about creativity and loneliness
Reviewed in the United States on June 27, 2017
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I am an artist and a loner, even when surrounded by people, so the concept of this book was appealing to me. The author relates her journey of being alone in NYC after a nasty break-up, and researches the lives of artists and other loners to explore how they expressed loneliness. While the subject sounds depressing, anyone who has had moments (or lifetimes) of feeling left out and ignored will connect to some of the people in this book. She focuses primarily on four artists, the most well known being Andy Warhol and Edward Hopper. The other two are David Wojnarowicz, a photographer in New York during the late 70's who would become a vocal AIDS activist, and Henry Darger, a janitor in Chicago who created a complex fantasy world of art and writing in his cramped apartment, hidden from everyone until after his death. The section on Hopper feels like the outlier here, as he seems more of a miserable curmudgeon that someone longing for connection. There are so few interviews from him that the author is challenged to flesh out the chapter; I found myself skipping paragraphs in the this section of the book due to the lack of solid information and too much speculation on what Hopper was really feeling when he created his imagery. The writing gets so much better after this, however, as the author finds connections through the material. There is much more information available on Andy Warhol, and I gained a better understanding of his creative process and personal anguish. The chapter on Henry Darger is fascinating and a bit creepy. Was he a child-like innocent or a perverted pedophile? He never acted on his ideas, so we don't know. The story of David Wojnarowicz is the most harrowing. Unwanted, abused, and turning tricks on the streets as a young teen he lived by his wits and managed to hash out a substantial career with his photography of the tattered New York of the 70's and 80's. The author ties David's story to the gay scene in New York at that time, the AIDS epidemic and subsequent fear-mongering that tore through that community, and Warhol's last years befriending the wild and destructive artist Jean Michel Basquiat. Laing's final observations are poignant and original. Highly recommended.
54 people found this helpful
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vinegartom
5.0 out of 5 stars essential
Reviewed in the United States on March 11, 2016
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Stunningly written account not just of the author's experience with loneliness, but of how loneliness can be generative (and destructive) in the lives of artists, and how art is a sort of balm for loneliness. Laing (whose last book, TRIP TO ECHO SPRING, was also great) is a ravishing prose stylist, and her multi-pronged work bleeds memoir with criticism with a kind of fluidity and ease that really blows me away. This book is an advance for her--it's more raw, more painful and more lyrical than anything she's done, and it really gets under the skin. It was the kind of fully immersive reading experience I crave, and yes, I felt less lonely reading it. Laing is excellent company, and this book is essential reading.
4 people found this helpful
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rutanya
3.0 out of 5 stars not enough about her own experience she relies about interpretation of others
Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2024
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i thought the book would be about her own experience in coming to New York and navigating it through the emotions and or experiences she would personally share.
she starts out but then jumps to interpreting other fringe and or well known people...and interprets and according to her thoughts what she guesses at is their loneliness is through their life and work.. this began to be repetitive for me and for most of the fringe people, i don't find them interesting enough to spend chapters on. I would not recommend this book. disappointing I was hoping for real personal insights.
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S. Pennell
5.0 out of 5 stars Halfway Through and Really Warming up to this story
Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2021
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I'm glad I purchased this book rather than checked it out on Libby or from the library. I'm already dog-earing pages I want to come back to and re-think. The author very empathetically writes about some famous and almost famous New York people/persona's who are/were notable loners or alone, and not necessarily by their own choice. These multi-dimensional stories reveal the author's grasp on how to write about art and artists, human spirit, longings, and resilience, while also describing the New York City of the past (and maybe the present, since I'm only half-way through) in a visually stimulating way.

Within the various narratives, this author weaves her own life into the stories, revealing just enough about herself to help the reader understand she knows what she's talking about. The personal interjections add an authentic and knowing touch which are subtle enough to not draw attention away from the focus of those she chose to write about. It's about US, not THEM. This book is not melancholy in any way, and it actually begins to crackle alive just a little ways in as the vivid word images put down roots, then blossom, within me.
9 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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karina c.
5.0 out of 5 stars Recomendado
Reviewed in Mexico on September 7, 2022
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Es todo un encanto leer este libro. Me acompañó durante la pandemia y con el corazón roto. Es un viaje que te ayuda a entender esos momentos donde quieres retraerte y además te dice que esto está bien, que muchas personas lo pasan, que la autora lo pasó, que artistas lo han pasado, pero también te muestra un poco las consecuencias de quedarte en ese estado. Una joya de libro.
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K., Stephan
5.0 out of 5 stars Selbstreflektion zu Einsamkeit im Spiegel künstlerischer Positionen
Reviewed in Germany on March 31, 2024
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Die Verbindung von Kunst und Einsamkeit anhand ausgewählter künstlerischer Positionen und biografischen Einblicken darzustellen, macht das Thema sehr nahbar und eröffnet den Einstieg in die Auseinandersetzung. Sehr lesenswert.
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annablume
5.0 out of 5 stars Laing är en säker , djupt insiktsfull skribent
Reviewed in Sweden on December 15, 2022
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Läsaren får veta inifrån vad som hände i NY och människorna där. Stor medkänsla och stringens.,
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Angie G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Descubrimiento
Reviewed in Spain on November 20, 2022
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Me ha encantado. La autora utiliza su propia soledad para explicar cómo diversos artistas (la mayoría visuales y la mayoría norteamericanos) expresaron su propia soledad a través del arte.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars a potência criativa da solidão
Reviewed in Brazil on August 10, 2020
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uma reflexão incrível e pingente sobre a potência criativa da solidão
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