Review of The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

*The Lonely City* by Olivia Laing (2016). Published by Picador.

Throughout the years, there are always writer and artists I’ve returned to again and again. These have been my comforts of sorts, and an inspiration for how my career could unfold, except adapted for the modern day.

That said, Olivia Laing’s books have been some of the ones I’ve returned to throughout the years. I collect art books in general, and have been known to browse the MoMA sale section at the museum whenever I’m in New York City and utilizing my membership there.

I first read her work in college, when I was really lost. I was attending a fashion school in New York City and was honestly pretty depressed. I knew I wanted to be an artist but was caught between wanting to go into finance or pursuing a normal career that allowed me to have the flexibility to be an artist on the side.

I was thinking about that a lot recently, and then I went to my local Savers, which is a nicer thrift store chain in the United States. I find a lot of my used books there, and if I buy books, I tend to buy them used.

Sitting on the nonfiction shelf was a copy of The Lonely City, and I knew it was fate when I picked it up. I was ready to reread it for the first time since college, and this was going to be my new obsession for the next week.

Here are my thoughts!

A reflection on being alone in New York City, as well as the artists who crossed paths with the city.

The main premise of this book is that when Olivia Laing was in her thirties, she was preparing to move to New York City. Laing is British and her home base is in England, so when she moved to New York City, she had to grapple with loneliness as a concept, despite being surrounded by people all of the time.

This is how she begins to tease out the concepts in the book. There are a lot of artists in New York City’s history, and she narrows down on a few, like Hopper, and how they engaged with the city in a solo manner. These artists also tend to work in a framework that lives and breathes NYC’s philosophy.

We move through time periods as Laing wanders through the city. We get a lot of her personal narrative about being alone mixed with these stories of art, which is how I like Laing’s work so much.

She also moves through time periods. Hopper was working towards the early to mid 1900s, but then she goes all the way up to the AIDs crisis and how it impacted so many prominent NYC artists. Drugs, too, was a reason some of the greatest artists fell, but the angle of AIDs and loneliness was one of the more interesting ones in the book.

I think what really called to me about this book though is the fact I myself fell into a crippling depression when I lived in New York City as a college student.

Moving to New York was the first time I began to really be exposed to wealth inequality in such an in your face way, as I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and most of the people I hung around were also lower middle class and grew up low income. In New York, I felt a crushing loneliness.

As Laing falls deeper into her loneliness, she finds herself in companionship with these artists. I find this beautiful, as it’s a way to connect art to the broader history of humanity, especially in such an urban setting like New York City.

It was also refreshing to get a midlife perspective on this, as a lot of the narratives surrounding NYC these days is on the younger people flocking to the city for the next best thing, the next best meal, etc.

Overall Thoughts

As I mentioned before, I really enjoyed this book. I find Laing to be admirable in how she approaches criticism, and while I did not have that kind of flexibility when I worked as a film and television critic, it reminds me of how I want to become a more holistic cultural critic.

While I myself will continue being lonely every time I’m in New York City, I find this book to be a little companion. I’m bringing it with me to India on my Fulbright, as I will be in a foreign country for a year to write and make poems about the world I’m going to be surrounded by.

Anyways, go read this book if you’re interested. You’ll probably find it worth it! It’s not perfect, but it’s a solid read.

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