COVER STORY Being Alone
Is one really the loneliest number? Kurt Andersen and his guest, the novelist Jonathan Lethem, discuss the pleasures, hazards, and necessity of being alone.
Poem by Emily Dickinson
Probably no writer spent more time in a room of her own than Emily Dickinson. In her 20s, she stopped socializing, and by middle age, Dickinson hardly ever left the family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. Even there, nobody knew that one of America's greatest poets was at work upstairs. In one poem, Dickinson wonders if loneliness is "the maker of the soul." Jennifer van Dyck reads Visit the homepage of the Emily Dickinson Museum Buy The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
All by Myself
Bob Paul is a graphic designer and painter who's been working up in the attic since he quit his very first job. He doesn't need anybody else, because he doesn't care what other people think. His son, producer Richard Paul, thinks that solitude like his dad's is almost addictive: the more you get, the less you can cope without it. He asked Bob Paul about the family habit.
Thom Pain
We know the name of the man on stage, but we don't know much else about him -he constantly revises his opinions and his portrayal of himself. In the acclaimed new play "Thom Pain (based on nothing)," playwright Will Eno explores some of the darker and lonelier corners of the soul. Eno and star James Urbaniak talked with Kurt Andersen about how it takes at least two people to put on a one-man show. Produced by Arun Rath and Sarah Lilley Playbill article on "Thom Pain (based on nothing)" Buy the script for "Thom Pain (based on nothing)"
SPECIAL GUESTS Jonathan Lethem
A native of New York City, Jonathan Lethem is famous for turning genres like science fiction and detective stories inside out. He is the author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn, which received the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 1999. His other novels include Gun, with Occasional Music and As She Crawled Across the Table. In his latest book, The Disappointment Artist, Lethem writes about the passions that have ruled his life: for John Ford's classic Western The Searchers, the Talking Heads, Philip K. Dick, and the impossibly mean writer Edward Dahlberg.
Buy The Fortress of Solitude Buy The Disappointment Artist Buy Motherless Brooklyn
Commentary
Back to the Future
Almost everywhere I glance these days, this new century, the 21st, is
looking very much like an old one - the 19th. Let me explain. Read the full Text
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One-Man Band
