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At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life
by
40/99
Critics
28/99
Readers
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Scholars
27/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
28/99
Rating
29/99
Volume
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About This Book
A profound meditation on accepting, and celebrating, one's solitude. Whether seeking more time for solitude or suffering what seems a surfeit of it, readers will find the best of companions here. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion, common in his Roman Catholic childhood, that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic "solitaries" he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickinson in Amherst, to Bill Cunningham photographing the streets of New York; from Cézanne (married, but solitary nonetheless) painting Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. Each character portrait is full of intense detail, the bright wakes they've left behind illuminating Fenton Johnson's own journey from his childhood in the backwoods of Kentucky to his travels alone throughout the world and the people he has lost and found along the way. Combining memoir, social criticism, and devoted research, At the Center of All Beauty will resonate with solitaries and with anyone who might wish to carve out more space for solitude.
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Reviews
"The revelation that artists are tricky to live with hardly seems sufficient roughage for a whole book."
"Somewhat counterintuitively in a book about solitude, Johnson is a congenial and companionable guide, ushering us through the thicket of loneliness and into the clearing of solitude."
"...a more flexible and forgiving approach to the subject of solitude."
"While reminiscing on his own past, Johnson explores notions of solitude as seen in the writings of a pantheon of exalted literary and creative figures ..."
"[Fenton's] musings on solitude deliver heady and abstract concepts with engaging clarity."
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