Loneliness as a Way of Life - Hardcover

Dumm; Thomas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 067403113X ISBN 13: 9780674031135

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 2008

Synopsis

"What does it mean to be lonely?" Thomas Dumm asks. His inquiry, documented in this book, takes us beyond social circumstances and into the deeper forces that shape our very existence as modern individuals. The modern individual, Dumm suggests, is fundamentally a lonely self. Through reflections on philosophy, political theory, literature, and tragic drama, he proceeds to illuminate a hidden dimension of the human condition. His book shows how loneliness shapes the contemporary division between public and private, our inability to live with each other honestly and in comity, the estranged forms that our intimate relationships assume, and the weakness of our common bonds.A reading of the relationship between Cordelia and her father in Shakespeare's "King Lear" points to the most basic dynamic of modern loneliness - how it is a response to the problem of the "missing mother." Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experience - Being, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural texts - "Moby-Dick", "Death of a Salesman", the film "Paris", "Texas", Emerson's "Experience," to name a few - with his own experiences of loneliness, as a son, as a father, and as a grieving husband and widower.Written with deceptive simplicity, "Loneliness as a Way of Life" is something rare - an intellectual study that is passionately personal. It challenges us, not to overcome our loneliness, but to learn how to re-inhabit it in a better way. To fail to do so, this book reveals, will only intensify the power that it holds over us.

About this title

Review:

The greatest writers may have shown how language itself is inadequate to the experience of loneliness. But we have written our experience of loneliness deeply into the language. That too, though, goes to underscore the point that Mr. Dumm's honest book makes: While the "lonely self will always be with us," we can at least come together in search of imaginative ways of expressing that loneliness. We can "write and read to tell each other how we are to be lonely together."--Andrew Stark"Wall Street Journal" (11/29/2008)

About the Author:

Thomas Dumm is Professor of Political Science at Amherst College. His most recent book is A Politics of the Ordinary.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 067403113X
• ISBN 13: 9780674031135
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208