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Loneliness as a Way of Life
About This Book
"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 lonelinessâhow it is a response to the problem of the "missing mother." Dumm goes on to explore the most important dimensions of lonely experienceâBeing, Having, Loving, and Grieving. As the book unfolds, he juxtaposes new interpretations of iconic cultural textsâ Moby-Dick, Death of a Salesman, the film Paris, Texas, Emerson's "Experience, " to name a fewâwith 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 rareâan 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.
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Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Prologue: Cordeliaâs Calculus
- Chapter I. Being
- Chapter II. Having
- Chapter III. Loving
- Chapter IV. Grieving
- Epilogue: Writing
- Notes
- Index