Two kinds of time alone

Maybe ten or twelve years ago, my husband and I came home from work to find a handful of young college students sitting on our kitchen counters and slouched on the floor, discussing James Joyce’s Ulysses. It was an impromptu Christmas vacation reading group convened so that one of my son’s friends, Sam, could share what he’d learned reading the novel at school.

It was one of my proudest moments. I remember devoting my Christmas breaks to detective novels and making large quantities of fudge. And I confess that I have never read Ulysses.

All these young men are smart, articulate, funny and still fast friends. Sam has gone on to write. I loved reading this brief piece, his interview with Michael Harris, who has written Solitude: A Singular Life in a Crowded World. Loneliness differs from solitude, Harris says. “Loneliness is a nervous and negative experience of time alone whereas solitude is a productive and contented experience of time alone.”

I need to use solitude to prepare me for the next time loneliness rears its ugly head. Here’s Harris on Proust on reading: “Think of the emotional bonds we form while we’re alone and reading a wonderful novel. We are, at once, experiencing solitude and profound intimacy. Proust called reading, ‘that fruitful miracle of communication in the midst of solitude.’”