At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life

Whether seeking more time for solitude or suffering what seems a surfeit of it, readers will find the best of companions here. Fenton Johnson's lyrical prose and searching sensibility explores what it means to choose to be solitary and celebrates the notion, common in his Roman Catholic childhood, that solitude is a legitimate and dignified calling. He delves into the lives and works of nearly a dozen iconic "solitaries" he considers his kindred spirits, from Thoreau at Walden Pond and Emily Dickinson in Amherst, to Bill Cunningham photographing the streets of New York; from Cézanne (married, but solitary nonetheless) painting Mont Sainte-Victoire over and over again, to the fiercely self-protective Zora Neale Hurston. Each character portrait is full of intense detail, the bright wakes they've left behind illuminating Fenton Johnson's own journey from his childhood in the backwoods of Kentucky to his travels alone throughout the world and the people he has lost and found along the way.

Combining memoir, social criticism, and devoted research, At the Center of All Beauty will resonate with solitaries and with anyone who might wish to carve out more space for solitude.

About the author

Fenton Johnson is an award-winning author of fiction and nonfiction. He teaches at Spalding University, contributes to Harper's magazine, and has been featured on Fresh Air with Terry Gross. He lives in San Francisco, California, and Tucson, Arizona.

Product details

• Authors: Fenton Johnson
• Publisher: Blue Guides Limited of London
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.03.2020
• EAN: 9780393608298
• ISBN: 978-0-393-60829-8
• No. of pages: 256
• Dimensions: 146 mm x 216 mm x 30 mm
• Weight: 367 g
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Theoretical psychology; Sozialpsychologie, Das Selbst, das Ich, Identität und Persönlichkeit, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs, PSYCHOLOGY / Personality, Biography / Autobiography, PSYCHOLOGY / Interpersonal Relations