A review by chrislatray
At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

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.