Having finished Bill Deresiewicz's The Death of the Artist, which tells a sad story for anybody who loves and appreciates the work of artists of all sorts, I dove right into The End of Solitude, a collection of essays and commentary by the same author. The book covers a wide range of topics, from a take-down of Harold Bloom, to reflections on the elite capture of higher education, to the darker aspects of the Internet and unfortunately ubiquitous social media. He writes with honesty and intelligence, making you feel a little bit smarter once you put it down. It's a deeply personal book, written by a true intellectual who left the academic world to pursue his passion for art and humanity. My only quibble would be with the title, that subconsciously made me expect a book about loneliness, which it is not. Solitude is here seen as a foundation for independent thinking, something that makes Deresiewicz's work possible.
4 days ago
1 comment:
In my Jesuit high school, the handbook entitled Prep Men and Manners (which we had to copy out word by word in special grid paper when assigned to 'jug' or what others would call detention) there was a long disquisition on how 'silence was the soul of study'. Solitude and quiet were to be sought not avoided. And so it goes.
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