Best books on loneliness?

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Mes amis - Emmanuel Bove

is that what this is? been really looking forward to reading this

Notes from,the Underground by Dostoyevsky. Cliche teen book but The Catcher in the Rye.

>This solitude undoeth us, it is the foe of the social life; 'tis a destructive solitariness...woe be to him that is so alone. These wretches do frequently degenerate from men, and of sociable creatures become beasts, monsters, inhuman, ugly to behold, misanthropes; they do even loathe themselves, and hate the company of men.
>Nature may justly complain of thee, that whereas she gave thee a good wholesome temperature, a sound body, and God hath given thee so divine and excellent a soul, so many good parts and profitable gifts, thou hast not only contemned and rejected, but hast corrupted them, polluted them...thou art a traitor to God and nature, an enemy to thyself and to the world. Thou hast lost thyself willfully, cast away thyself, thou thyself art the efficient cause of thine own misery, buy not resisting such vain cogitations, but giving way unto them.
>So intolerable, insufferable, grievous, and violent is their pain, so unspeakable and continuate. One day of grief is an hundred years...a plague of the soul...an epitome of hell; and if there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.

i just picked this up, and god damn. i love what i've read so far, but i don't think i'll ever finish it.

did Burton intend the reader to read the whole thing, or was it written more like a reference book?

Yeah I'm only 250 pages in but I like it a lot. The "democritus to the reader" intro was dense and fairly tough to get through, and the next 100 pages were mostly outdated medical (physical) advice; I'm only just now getting to the psychological stuff which is what I wanted to get out of it, and which is where Burton is supposed to excel and be most relevant to modern life.

I think it's a reference book in the sense that he's trying to cover every angle, symptom, cause, etc., of depression, so it's possible to just pick out the relevant chapters. But given that the whole book has a single aim, and its seemingly encyclopedic style is all directed at finding, diagnosing, and hopefully curing melancholy, I think there's a merit to reading the whole thing from start to finish.

I've heard a few people say "nobody reads it start to finish," I've heard some people protest "that's exactly what I did." I suspect you could attack it piecemeal, like Montaigne; but also like Montaigne, I suspect there's something that you'll glean from the uninterrupted whole that you won't find from reading it part by part.

If you skipped it in high school you should try Gatsby. The book captures the feeling of loneliness and isolation quite well.

...

Hamsun, baby

desu

Our diaries desu

Taxi Driver's screenplay was partly inspired by Notes from Underground.

I agree so hard. I feel like everyone should go back and read this book because it captures those melancholy, empty feelings really well.

>I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night, and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter into their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others — poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for a solitary restaurant dinner — young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

I'm currently reading, and in some cases, re-reading all of John le Carre. It is, in one sense, "spy genre," but it is also an overview of loneliness, loss and pointlessness. The genre is just an excuse.

This sounds great ty

Nice, convinced me

Crime And Punishment.

my high school yearbook

If you stick with it you're in for a wild ride. Theories on if spirits and ghosts are real and if so where they live, if Hell is in the middle of Earth, what it's measurements are and if it can be accessed by caves, the addictive but destructive nature of solitude, the miseries of scholars and melancholy thoughts that stem from love and religion. I've read a few pages every night for the last couple months and never get tired of it, it really is a masterpiece.

"Have a great summer!" - Donna
"Have a great summer!" - Rick
"You are so nice, funny, interesting! Have a great summer!" - Josh

Nietzsche's diary desu.

ftfy

Nietzsche's everything

also from Bresson's Diary of a Country Priest. I assume Bernanos' novel would be similar

quintessential loneliness-core

Let the right one in

the parents have a lot of fun, but that ending got me right in the feels

Hard Rain Falling

Wow, that took too long. Also,

>my diary tbhfam

This

This.