Everyone I talk to lately seems to be having a difficult time—people are burned out, at capacity, upset about the general ‘state of things.’ There’s a trend on TikTok of people saying they are going to restart the year on March 1st because 2024 has already been too trying, too tiring. March 19th is the spring equinox which will usher in the start of a new astrological calendar year, so perhaps we should all just hibernate until then.
Lately, I’ve been reading a lot about loneliness, the epidemic of it in America and the necessity of friendships and physical proximity to others. While I do think there’s a certain beauty to solitude, all of the below articles point to reasons people may be feeling the doldrums of February more acutely than usual. Perhaps we aren’t seeing people or going outside as much as we could / should be, perhaps we simply want more control over our lives, more flexibility in our work-life balance, or the ability to make a difference in the politics and social constructs within our country, but find ourselves coming up short.
How to Spend Your Time ‘Poorly’: (gift article link) While Henry David Thoreau’s writing often casts him as the great American recluse, this article digs more into whether that was really the sort of life he lived. Thoreau has become a particular archetype of the rugged American: he who can do all things for himself and by himself. But at a young age he had declared, “To be alone I find it necessary to escape the present.” It was his control over his hours, and not over his company, that defined his philosophy.
You’d Be Happier Living Closer to Your Friends. Why Don’t You?: Many friendships fade because the friends become more and more spread out as life trajectories send us spiraling outwards from one another—people move ‘back home,’ or for jobs, but what if we all lived closer to the people we like? Anne Helen Peterson explores some of the roadblocks we face in making this friendship neighborhood utopia a reality.
Why Americans Suddenly Stopped Hanging Out: (gift article link) Much has been made online recently of ‘third spaces,’ places to hang out that aren’t home or work. In the 90’s and early 00’s, we had the mall, the movie theater, even the library where I would meet up with friends to do homework together. These spaces have dwindled in recent years, or are openly hostile to teens—personally, I think this has contributed to the proliferation of ‘Sephora kids,’ they need a place to be. This article explores the trends of in-person socializing, particularly among teens. For Americans in the 2020s, solitude, anxiety, and dissatisfaction seem to be rising in lockstep. Surveys show that Americans, and especially young Americans, have never been more anxious about their own lives or more depressed about the future of the country.
I’ve read some very good books this month and finally got around to A Start in Life by Anita Brookner. When I picked it up, I wasn’t aware it was the first novel she ever published, particularly because the prose makes it feel like an established author’s much later novel.
The novel begins, “Dr. Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.” Obviously, I was immediately hooked. Dr. Ruth Weiss is an academic who has produced a volume on the female characters in Balzac’s novels, met with “discreet acclaim,” and who now teaches at a university in London.
From there, Brookner works backward, beginning with Ruth’s upbringing. She was the daughter of a self-absorbed stage actress mother and a father who owned a used bookshop but was really more of an aspiring dandy. Ruth is drawn to her taciturn grandmother rather than her exuberant parents, and that suits everyone just fine. When her grandmother passes, the family more or less crumbles, and a housekeeper is hired to keep things put together, only she ends up enabling both mother and father in their eccentricities and Ruth has to cook her own dinners.
Ruth’s academic ability is noted by a sympathetic teacher who pushes for her to attend university, where she spends most of her time in solitude at the library and in museums. A romantic at heart, she wants to fall in love and does for a moment when she receives a grant to study in Paris, leaving her family with no forwarding address. However, her parent’s special brand of egotism hunts her down at her happiest—will she ever receive a true start in life?
A Start in Life is primarily about loneliness. Many of Brookner’s novels are about the interior lives of women who are misunderstood and therefore cast to the edges of more social society. Ruth is a passive character, fragile and overwhelmed by the demands of those around her as well as her own romantic nature, and Brookner parallels Ruth’s experiences to those of Balzac’s own Eugénie Grandet. I have not read much by Balzac, though this book convinced me to remedy that soon. A Start in Life is punctuated with dry wit and a delicate sadness that recalls the writing of Elizabeth Taylor or Barbara Pym, two other authors I love. I am not sure what this genre of book would be called, but if someone asked, I’d say it’s certainly my favorite.
Right now, I am reading Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop (translated from Korean)—it’s a cozy read to settle down with while it rains outside, although still pulls at that common thread of loneliness.
Abigail, I just discovered your Substack and am so inspired by it. Learning to interrupt and "be a little louder" is so, so hard yet simultaneously so simple. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Nice post!