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we_are_all_mad_here26's review against another edition
2.0
What I wanted from this book was a pleasant discussion of solitude: what it is, what it's good for, why we (or some of us) love it, how we can find more of it. And so on.
Which is not what I got from this book. Not necessarily because it wasn't there, but because my mind went completely blank by the end of sentences like this one:
I've read that at least forty to fifty times and I still am not quite sure what it says.
Which is not what I got from this book. Not necessarily because it wasn't there, but because my mind went completely blank by the end of sentences like this one:
"And - with full and necessary and sorrowful acknowledgment of institutionalized religion's evils, horrors, and omissions - perhaps the exploded and fragmented nature of the contemporary developed world owes itself to the insistence of institutionalized religion and science alike that we subscribe to doctrine and dogma in service to their aggrandizement, instead of attending to the need to bring us together to acknowledge all that is sacred, in ourselves and in our world."
I've read that at least forty to fifty times and I still am not quite sure what it says.
jumbleread's review against another edition
5.0
Lovely and wise essays about solitude. Useful for thinking about how to think about shelter at home during the pandemic.
valariesmith's review against another edition
5.0
A few years ago, I read two acclaimed books about silence and about forests from the same author (not, to be clear, Fenton Johnson). I found them both almost unreadable because they were so academic, containing endless chatter of facts and interviews and research, while providing no sense of the joy or tranquility that either silence or the forests evoke.
At the Center of All Beauty finally gives me the celebration of solitude that I so longed for in the other books. It isn't simply about how nice it is to be alone - it's about how being alone, for some of us, supports our own self-awareness and individual expression which, in turn, helps us enlarge our capacity to love and encourages us to be better friends and citizens.
But this book is so much more than that. As another reviewer said, it's hard to believe this book wasn't written specifically about, or for, me. The stories of his family and childhood home in Kentucky particularly moved me because it so paralleled my own (a large, extended, working class family, who I loved deeply but moved far away from, and the specific, inexhaustible grief of a childhood home recently gone). In this exquisite book about achieving the non-self, I found myself on every beautiful page.
I also wonder if there's a specific sense of solitude felt by those of us raised in working class families, but living in white collar worlds. I feel like some of us live with a continual feeling of being within and without, never quite at home with either group.
Thank you, Fenton Johnson, for cultivating beauty, fostering connections and reminding me how I fit in as one small part of a much larger whole.
At the Center of All Beauty finally gives me the celebration of solitude that I so longed for in the other books. It isn't simply about how nice it is to be alone - it's about how being alone, for some of us, supports our own self-awareness and individual expression which, in turn, helps us enlarge our capacity to love and encourages us to be better friends and citizens.
But this book is so much more than that. As another reviewer said, it's hard to believe this book wasn't written specifically about, or for, me. The stories of his family and childhood home in Kentucky particularly moved me because it so paralleled my own (a large, extended, working class family, who I loved deeply but moved far away from, and the specific, inexhaustible grief of a childhood home recently gone). In this exquisite book about achieving the non-self, I found myself on every beautiful page.
I also wonder if there's a specific sense of solitude felt by those of us raised in working class families, but living in white collar worlds. I feel like some of us live with a continual feeling of being within and without, never quite at home with either group.
Thank you, Fenton Johnson, for cultivating beauty, fostering connections and reminding me how I fit in as one small part of a much larger whole.
pcdbigfoot's review against another edition
4.0
Since first reading Mr Johnson's work years ago, I've really enjoyed his voice. Full of inspired examples of artists drawing on their innermost selves for great work, the author speaks of solitude as presence rather than absence. I'll contemplate this one for a while.
chrislatray's review against another edition
5.0
I don't recall ever being personally affected by a book in the way I have been by this one. I'm reminded of when a handful of introvert acquaintances urged me to read Susan Cain's Quiet. I enjoyed that book, but it didn't reach me nearly to the depth that Fenton Johnson's latest has. This one seemed to alternate between being written for me and being written about me. Johnson has perfectly articulated so many of the ways I view the world, and my place in it, that it is almost frightening. It is the kind of book that I hope many people will read, but at the same time feel protective of, as if sharing the book with too many folks means I am revealing more about myself than I am perhaps prepared to. For example, I recently published an essay in a local journal in which I fantasized about the way in which I might die. Fenton Johnson does the same thing near the end of this book (not a spoiler, I promise) and the descriptions are eerily similar. What I am trying to articulate here is that in sharing how Johnson—and the solitary artists he describes—lives his life, he is challenging me to live up to how I would prefer to live mine. Do I have the courage? I don't know if I do or not. All I can say is this book is a call to action to me, one I would hope I don't fail to answer. It is a beautiful, difficult, wonderfully lonely kind of life that I've only managed glimpses of; I can't imagine this view of the world being described more beautifully than Fenton Johnson has done here.
diemkay's review against another edition
4.0
Beautiful meditation on solitude, loneliness, celibacy, friendship and more, interwoven with the memoirs of a solitary man and stories of famous solitary creatives: Walt Whitman, Nina Simone, Eudora Welty, Henry James, Rabindranath Tagore, Paul Cezanne, and so on.
Argues that solitude is often perceived to be a negative by (primarily Western) standards that gradually turned the idea of friendship and partnership with another soul into the ownership-based, all-or-nothing, us-vs-them institution that is today, as various Church denominations tightened their grip on power and introduced stricter rules and condemnation without any resemblance to the spiritual practices they started from.
We’ve replaced the beauty that comes from contemplation and looking inward with noise, consumerism and distractions; as an acquaintance commented, to tell someone “you have a rich inner world” has now come to mean “you’re weird af”. That’s both telling and a bit sad.
True solitude doesn’t have to be lonely or void or people; similar to how Susan Cain’s book on introverts suggested that where you draw your energy from matters. “Solitaires” draw it from their silence, outsider-y-ness and different way to look at the world, far from the conforming eye.
It made me think more about how to cultivate these moments of quiet and aloneness. I resonated with the feeling that solitude and creativity are a “calling” of sorts - like you just know that you’re not “the marrying kind” or somehow not concerned by most of the things those around you care about.
I didn’t always vibe with the format of two stories interwoven in every chapter (a creative and the author) but it worked out in the end. The take-away seemed more important. The one downside was that some of the characters were harder to relate to than others, or their stories felt somehow incomplete, as if some were more researched than others, eg Paul Cezanne was clearly a favorite of the author, while Tagore perhaps less so.
Argues that solitude is often perceived to be a negative by (primarily Western) standards that gradually turned the idea of friendship and partnership with another soul into the ownership-based, all-or-nothing, us-vs-them institution that is today, as various Church denominations tightened their grip on power and introduced stricter rules and condemnation without any resemblance to the spiritual practices they started from.
We’ve replaced the beauty that comes from contemplation and looking inward with noise, consumerism and distractions; as an acquaintance commented, to tell someone “you have a rich inner world” has now come to mean “you’re weird af”. That’s both telling and a bit sad.
True solitude doesn’t have to be lonely or void or people; similar to how Susan Cain’s book on introverts suggested that where you draw your energy from matters. “Solitaires” draw it from their silence, outsider-y-ness and different way to look at the world, far from the conforming eye.
It made me think more about how to cultivate these moments of quiet and aloneness. I resonated with the feeling that solitude and creativity are a “calling” of sorts - like you just know that you’re not “the marrying kind” or somehow not concerned by most of the things those around you care about.
I didn’t always vibe with the format of two stories interwoven in every chapter (a creative and the author) but it worked out in the end. The take-away seemed more important. The one downside was that some of the characters were harder to relate to than others, or their stories felt somehow incomplete, as if some were more researched than others, eg Paul Cezanne was clearly a favorite of the author, while Tagore perhaps less so.
nigelhervey's review against another edition
5.0
Awesome book
"The artist or writer does not impose harmony on reality but—with sufficient reverence and diligence and selflessness and solitude—uncovers the harmony that is always there but that we conceal from ourselves out of a preference for material comfort and fear of the consequences a full and unreserved embrace of harmony requires. This faith in the underlying harmony roots itself in a love of and appreciation for nature, because nature, no matter how extreme the human abuse heaped on her, embodies a quiet, continual knitting and healing of life, ever dependent on death to make herself anew. 'Art is a harmony parallel to nature,' Cézanne wrote—not identical with but parallel to nature. Art of any kind, undertaken with attention and focus and as part of a commitment to discipline, is an effort at reenactment of the original creative gesture—the precipitation of the universe at the moment of its creation. That, I believe, is why we sing, paint, dance, sculpt, write; that is why any one of us sets out to create something from nothing, and why the creative impulse is essentially religious or, if you prefer, spiritual. We seek to recreate the original creative gesture, whatever or whoever set it in motion—the bringing into being of what is. We seek the center of beauty."
"The artist or writer does not impose harmony on reality but—with sufficient reverence and diligence and selflessness and solitude—uncovers the harmony that is always there but that we conceal from ourselves out of a preference for material comfort and fear of the consequences a full and unreserved embrace of harmony requires. This faith in the underlying harmony roots itself in a love of and appreciation for nature, because nature, no matter how extreme the human abuse heaped on her, embodies a quiet, continual knitting and healing of life, ever dependent on death to make herself anew. 'Art is a harmony parallel to nature,' Cézanne wrote—not identical with but parallel to nature. Art of any kind, undertaken with attention and focus and as part of a commitment to discipline, is an effort at reenactment of the original creative gesture—the precipitation of the universe at the moment of its creation. That, I believe, is why we sing, paint, dance, sculpt, write; that is why any one of us sets out to create something from nothing, and why the creative impulse is essentially religious or, if you prefer, spiritual. We seek to recreate the original creative gesture, whatever or whoever set it in motion—the bringing into being of what is. We seek the center of beauty."
abigailmn's review against another edition
3.0
This book had a lot of potential. The idea of solitude feeding creativity is an interesting topic. Yet the author tends to go on rants about his childhood and the books turns into part biography part notable artists who confine themselves to solitude. I did learn some things and enjoyed part of the book, but I did start to skip pages towards the end due to the author’s never ending ranting. I read the book to read about the topic, not about the author. Still a decent read.