The reason I said that loving a writer’s work can be lonely is that in order to read (or be read to) you give yourself up/over while the words are being read. You can connect those words to yourself and feel alive while reading, but when you put the book down, it’s like you don’t live in that world any more. You can still take pleasure from the memory of it (especially when there’s still more of that world to experience, ie you haven’t finished the book), and enjoy that sort of secret knowledge that you carry with you while the feeling lasts, but it’s ultimately not the same world that everyone around you inhabits. It's too private. Even when you share the experience of reading, like discussing a favourite writer with someone else, there’s something cold about it; it’s so different to that experience of reading, of living in that other world. Because it’s happening inside your head, and we all know the bitter truth about how accessible our heads are to other people (not very).
It’s a little weird, I suppose, to find loneliness in something pleasurable and life-affirming, simply because the experience can’t be sustained. Glass half empty etc.
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I understand (I think) (etc etc).
MacLuhan argues (very convincingly imho) that the development of writing systems - complex abstract visual symbol sets to represent the world - is what precipitated the breakup of the tribal mind.
ie reading isn't just a profoundly solitary act; it's responsible the emergence of individualistic (self)consciousness in the first place.
Reading & writing is what separates us from the animals.
Which is a shame in a way. Coz we *are* animals. Actually.
But I'd miss reading.
It's nice.
Plus, if you already feel lonely/alienated, reading makes you feel more connected. 'Sall relative, innit.
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