Memoirs or Fiction Novels About Solitude? (book club, literature, writing, discussion)
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Being a bit of a loner and introvert myself, I've been on a quest to find literature an solitude or social isolation. I've collected a bunch of nonfiction works, like psych-related books on people who prefer their own company over contact with others, and historical works on hermits, hermitages, monastic living and other types of recluses (like nuns who would have themselves bricked up in vaults to live alone for years to pray, with only a small hole for people to give them food and water, or hermits who would be paid a salary to basically live as lawn ornaments on great estates, when it was fashionable to have a scruffy-looking wise man wander around the ruins of your little buildings on your property, so people could gawk at him.)
Now I want to switch over to fiction and/or memoirs about people who have lived alone for long periods, be they monks in the middle-ages, hermits, castaways, or modern-day loners or people who have gone off to live in the wilderness. I would even read sci-fi if it's about a person living totally alone and having some meditative experiences.
Please no recommendations about Thoreau's Walden! My opinion is that he was a "loner wanna-be," and all through Walden he's interacting with people right & left, or writing about them when he wasn't.
I've read Robinson Crusoe of course, but he also wasn't alone as long as most people believe. Plus, isolation bothered him a great deal (when he finally met Friday he was practically ready to hump his leg like a dog, he was so happy.)
I'm more interested in stories of people who DON'T NEED people. People who could live on a deserted island and not feel the need to talk to a volley ball out of loneliness.
So far, the only memoir I've found with true isolation was Alone in the Wilderness by a guy named Dick Proennecke who went to live alone in Alaska in the 70s, building his own cabin and living off the land. He was not really a writer, but lived a true hermit's life, and I found his story compelling despite his not being a weaver of fine prose. (I first saw a PBS special on him and bought the DVD and book).
The story of Siddhartha might fit the criteria, but Herman Hesse's Siddartha still encountered many people in his spiritual journey. Not sure if the real Buddha/Siddhartha Guatama lived in more isolation or not.
Please share any books with fictional or real-life people who have chosen to live in total or near-total isolation. Or if they were in isolation NOT because of their own choice, they came to embrace it, and through living in solitude, came to profound insights.
Try Fifty Days of Solitude by Doris Grumbach
In the early 1990s Grumbach stayed in her Maine cottage for 50 days without a phone or TV, didn't speak to anyone in the local town or see any of her friends or family. This book details her memoir of those days.
Fletcher describes and refects on his journey walking from one end to the other of California through generally unpopulated areas. While Fletcher didn't despise his fellows he certainly didn't need them as reading the original Complete Walker makes clear as well. There are some informative reviews.
Fletcher wrote of other solitary travels afoot; they're well worth reading.
Solitude, like Amnesia, is one of those things that gets portrayed on fiction a great deal more than it occurs in real life.
Tim Winton's "Dirt Music" has a substantial solitude section, but not the whole book.
Yann Martel's "The Life of Pi" probably qualifies.
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