Download or read book Reflections on Solitude and Other Essays written by Sameer Grover and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2011-11-28 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: REFLECTIONS ON SOLITUDE and other ESSAYS explores a diverse range of topics from Eastern mysticism to mathematics, while blending in an element of fantastic realism. Sameer Grover is one of the eminent voices of our time.
Download or read book The Invention of Solitude written by Paul Auster and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In 'The Book of Memory' the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The narrator, 'A', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.
Download or read book Society and Solitude and Other Essays written by Ralph Waldo Emerson and published by . This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a reproduction of the original artefact. Generally these books are created from careful scans of the original. This allows us to preserve the book accurately and present it in the way the author intended. Since the original versions are generally quite old, there may occasionally be certain imperfections within these reproductions. We're happy to make these classics available again for future generations to enjoy!
Download or read book Reflections on Exile and Other Essays written by Edward W. Said and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With their powerful blend of political and aesthetic concerns, Edward W. Said's writings have transformed the field of literary studies. This long-awaited collection of literary and cultural essays offers evidence of how much the fully engaged critical mind can contribute to the reservoir of value, thought, and action essential to our lives and culture.
Download or read book Thoughts In Solitude written by Thomas Merton and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-04-01 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thoughtful and eloquent, as timely (or timeless) now as when it was originally published in 1956, Thoughts in Solitude addresses the pleasure of a solitary life, as well as the necessity for quiet reflection in an age when so little is private. Thomas Merton writes: "When society is made up of men who know no interior solitude it can no longer be held together by love: and consequently it is held together by a violent and abusive authority. But when men are violently deprived of the solitude and freedom which are their due, the society in which they live becomes putrid, it festers with servility, resentment and hate." Thoughts in Solitude stands alongside The Seven Storey Mountain as one of Merton's most uring and popular works. Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, is perhaps the foremost spiritual thinker of the twentiethcentury. His diaries, social commentary, and spiritual writings continue to be widely read after his untimely death in 1968.
Download or read book The Faraway Nearby written by Rebecca Solnit and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-06-13 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A personal, lyrical narrative about storytelling and empathy, from the author of Orwell's Roses Apricots. Her mother's disintegrating memory. An invitation to Iceland. Illness. These are Rebecca Solnit's raw materials, but The Faraway Nearby goes beyond her own life, as she spirals out into the stories she heard and read—from fairy tales to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein—that helped her navigate her difficult passge. Solnit takes us into the lives of others—an arctic cannibal, the young Che Guevara among the leprosy afflicted, a blues musician, an Icelandic artist and her labyrinth—to understand warmth and coldness, kindness and imagination, decay and transformation, making art and making self. This captivating, exquisitely written exploration of the forces that connect us and the way we tell our stories is a tour de force of association, a marvelous Russian doll of a book that is a fitting companion to Solnit's much-loved A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
Download or read book The Art of Solitude written by Stephen Batchelor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautiful literary collage documents his multifaceted explorations. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training himself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to Batchelor’s ability to be simultaneously alone and at ease. Mixed in with his personal narrative are inspiring stories from solitude’s devoted practitioners, from the Buddha to Montaigne, from Vermeer to Agnes Martin. In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.
Download or read book On Truth written by Simon Blackburn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic approaches -- Correspondence -- Coherence -- Pragmatism -- Deflationism -- Tarski and the semantic theory of truth -- Summary of part I -- Varieties of enquiry -- Truths of taste; truth in art -- Truth in ethics -- Reason -- Religion and truth -- Interpretations.
Download or read book Journal of a Solitude written by May Sarton and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poet and author’s “beautiful . . . wise and warm” journal of time spent in her New Hampshire home alone with her garden, her books, the seasons, and herself (Eugenia Thornton, Cleveland Plain Dealer). “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” —May Sarton May Sarton’s parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her “real” life—not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude—both an exhilarating and terrifying state. She likens writing to “cracking open the inner world again,” which sometimes plunges her into depression. She confesses her fears, her disappointments, her unresolved angers. Sarton’s garden is her great, abiding joy, sustaining her through seasons of psychic and emotional pain. Journal of a Solitude is a moving and profound meditation on creativity, oneness with nature, and the courage it takes to be alone. Both uplifting and cathartic, it sweeps us along on Sarton’s pilgrimage inward. This ebook features an extended biography of May Sarton.
Download or read book How to Be Alone written by Jonathan Franzen and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2007-05-15 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passionate, strong-minded nonfiction from the National Book Award-winning author of The Corrections Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections was the best-loved and most-written-about novel of 2001. Nearly every in-depth review of it discussed what became known as "The Harper's Essay," Franzen's controversial 1996 investigation of the fate of the American novel. This essay is reprinted for the first time in How to be Alone, along with the personal essays and the dead-on reportage that earned Franzen a wide readership before the success of The Corrections. Although his subjects range from the sex-advice industry to the way a supermax prison works, each piece wrestles with familiar themes of Franzen's writing: the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the hidden persistence of loneliness in postmodern, imperial America. Recent pieces include a moving essay on his father's stuggle with Alzheimer's disease (which has already been reprinted around the world) and a rueful account of Franzen's brief tenure as an Oprah Winfrey author. As a collection, these essays record what Franzen calls "a movement away from an angry and frightened isolation toward an acceptance--even a celebration--of being a reader and a writer." At the same time they show the wry distrust of the claims of technology and psychology, the love-hate relationship with consumerism, and the subversive belief in the tragic shape of the individual life that help make Franzen one of our sharpest, toughest, and most entertaining social critics.
Download or read book Home written by Witold Rybczynski and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1987-07-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Walk through five centuries of homes both great and small—from the smoke-filled manor halls of the Middle Ages to today's Ralph Lauren-designed environments—on a house tour like no other, one that delightfully explicates the very idea of "home." You'll see how social and cultural changes influenced styles of decoration and furnishing, learn the connection between wall-hung religious tapestries and wall-to-wall carpeting, discover how some of our most welcome luxuries were born of architectural necessity, and much more. Most of all, Home opens a rare window into our private lives—and how we really want to live.
Download or read book Am I Alone Here written by Peter Orner and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This National Book Critics Circle Award is “an entrancing attempt to catch what falls between: the irreducibly personal, messy, even embarrassing ways reading and living bleed into each other, which neither literary criticism nor autobiography ever quite acknowledges.” —The New York Times “Stories, both my own and those I’ve taken to heart, make up whoever it is that I’ve become,” Peter Orner writes in this collection of essays about reading, writing, and living. Orner reads and writes everywhere he finds himself: a hospital cafeteria, a coffee shop in Albania, or a crowded bus in Haiti. The result is a book of unlearned meditations that stumbles into memoir. Among the many writers Orner addresses are Isaac Babel and Zora Neale Hurston, both of whom told their truths and were silenced; Franz Kafka, who professed loneliness but craved connection; Robert Walser, who spent the last twenty-three years of his life in a Swiss insane asylum, working at being crazy; and Juan Rulfo, who practiced the difficult art of silence. Virginia Woolf, Eudora Welty, Yasunari Kawabata, Saul Bellow, Mavis Gallant, John Edgar Wideman, William Trevor, and Václav Havel make appearances, as well as the poet Herbert Morris--about whom almost nothing is known. An elegy for an eccentric late father, and the end of a marriage, Am I Alone Here? is also a celebration of the possibility of renewal. At once personal and panoramic, this book will inspire readers to return to the essential stories of their own lives.
Download or read book On Friendship written by Michel de Montaigne and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2005-09-06 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the 100-part Penguin Great Ideas series comes a rumination on relationships, courtesy of one of the most influential French Renaissance philosophers. Michel de Montaigne was the originator of the modern essay form; in these diverse pieces he expresses his views on friendship, contemplates the idea that man is no different from any animal, argues that all cultures should be respected, and attempts, by an exploration of himself, to understand the nature of humanity. Penguin Great Ideas: Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves—and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war, and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked, and comforted. They have enriched lives—and destroyed them. Now Penguin Great Ideas brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals, and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are. Other titles in the series include Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, and Charles Darwin's On Natural Selection.
Download or read book Seek You written by Kristen Radtke and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the acclaimed author of Imagine Wanting Only This—a timely and moving meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and as a society There is a silent epidemic in America: loneliness. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from the most major of metropolises to the smallest of towns. In Seek You, Kristen Radtke's wide-ranging exploration of our inner lives and public selves, Radtke digs into the ways in which we attempt to feel closer to one another, and the distance that remains. Through the lenses of gender and violence, technology and art, Radtke ushers us through a history of loneliness and longing, and shares what feels impossible to share. Ranging from the invention of the laugh-track to the rise of Instagram, the bootstrap-pulling cowboy to the brutal experiments of Harry Harlow, Radtke investigates why we engage with each other, and what we risk when we turn away. With her distinctive, emotionally-charged drawings and deeply empathetic prose, Kristen Radtke masterfully shines a light on some of our most vulnerable and sublime moments, and asks how we might keep the spaces between us from splitting entirely.
Download or read book Solitude written by Anthony Storr and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-10-03 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Solitude was seminal in challenging the established belief that "interpersonal relationships of an intimate kind are the chief, if not the only, source of human happiness." Indeed, most self-help literature still places relationships at the center of human existence. Lucid and lyrical, Storr's book cites numerous examples of brilliant scholars and artists -- from Beethoven and Kant to Anne Sexton and Beatrix Potter -- to demonstrate that solitude ranks alongside relationships in its impact on an individual's well-being and productivity, as well as on society's progress and health. But solitary activity is essential not only for geniuses, says Storr ; the average person, too, is enriched by spending time alone."--Back cover.
Download or read book Plant Dreaming Deep written by May Sarton and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author’s tribute to the 18th-century New England farmhouse she called home: “[A] tender and often poignant book by a woman of many insights” (The New York Times Book Review). In Plant Dreaming Deep, Sarton shares an intensely personal account of transforming a house into a home. She begins with an introduction to the enchanting village of Nelson, where she first meets her house. Sarton finds she must “dream the house alive” inside herself before taking the major step of signing the deed. She paints the walls white in order to catch the light and searches for the precise shade of yellow for the kitchen floor. She discovers peace and beauty in solitude, whether she is toiling in the garden or writing at her desk. This is a loving, beautifully crafted memoir illuminated by themes of friendship, love, nature, and the struggles of the creative life. This ebook features an extended biography of May Sarton.
Download or read book The Siren and the Seashell written by Octavio Paz and published by Univ of TX + ORM. This book was released on 2013-05-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Octavio Paz has long been known for his brilliant essays as well as for his poetry. Through the essays, he has sought to confront the tensions inherent in the conflict between art and society and to achieve a unity of their polarities. The Siren and the Seashell is a collection of Paz’s essays, focusing on individual poets and on poetry in general. The first five poets he treats are Latin American: Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Rubén Darío, José Juan Tablada, Ramón López Velarde, and Alfonso Reyes. Then there are essays on Robert Frost, e. e. cummings, Saint-John Perse, Antonio Machado, and Jorge Guillén. Finally, there are Paz’s reflections on the poetry of solitude and communion and the literature of Latin America. Each essay is more than Paz’s impressions of one person or issue; each is the occasion for a wider discussion of cultural, historical, psychological, and philosophical themes. The essays were selected from Paz’s writing between 1942 and 1965 and provide an overview of the development of his thinking and an exploration of the ideas central in his works.
