Volume 49, Number 11 · June 27, 2002
I Vant to Be Alone
By Pico Iyer
A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries and Recluses
by Isabel Colegate
Counterpoint, 284 pp., $25.00
Being alone is of all the states of grace the one most frequently discredited, or at least distrusted. It's never easy to find someone who will speak out against family or community—the network, as it were, of human relationships—but the loner (or isolato, or solitary—all the terms have a faintly pejorative air) is generally presumed guilty until proven otherwise. There is a sense, strong if often unspoken, that he has failed in some way—certainly failed in his obligations to society—and that what he calls a pursuit the rest of us might call a flight. The Unabomber is much more often seen as the archetypal solitary than is Saint Jerome—and if we do think of Saint Jerome, it is, most likely, of that irascible penitent, pictured with a lion at his feet, who took up the study of Hebrew in the desert to keep his mind off sex.
Review, 3095 words
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