FromThe Lonely CitytoFunny Weather, the author writes to find a path forward through pain.
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Its late afternoon in Cambridge, England, and Olivia Laing has just come in from her garden.
You could say that.
Shes become a bit of an expert on the emotional states of locked-down city dwellers.
Book clubs have taken upThe Lonely Cityagain.
Chloe Sevigny raved to the Cut about its import in her life.
Thats enough pooled misery and genius to sustain melancholic biopic makers for decades.
She seesFunny Weatheras a companion in tough times.
Laing ruefully laughs when I ask about her ability to see whats coming down the pike.
People were seriously sick, young beautiful men were suddenly looking like old, emaciated figures in the street.
Witnessing that, she continues, put something inside me for the rest of my life.
Art as action and action as art.
Laings parents divorced when she was 4.
She left Buckinghamshire with her mother, who came out as a lesbian after the split.
Eventually, she left the relationship.
She lived in it, alone on a dilapidated Sussex farm, for four months.
I was frightened all the time Laing writes.
The roots ofThe Lonely Citycame from this sensation.
What will everyone think when they see how lonely I am?
My twenties, she says now, were a completely-drop-out, another-world kind of decade.
She lost her job just a couple years later in the midst of the 2008 recession.
So she pitchedTo the Riverin 2009 and has steadily published since.
But Laing is quick to point out one key difference she finds inspiring.
(Hello, Im Hillary, and Im lonely as hell right now.
)Laing sees this as revolutionary, and potentially key to the art that might emerge from 2020.
She used to be worried about the digital divide and how it refracted our identities.
Now she calls those concerns really old-fashioned.
Whizzing through the latest coronavirus headlines can dull us down to reactionary outrage bots, she explains.
At her wedding reception someone shouts Steve Bannons resigned.
Hurricane Maria whips in and Trump tweets about HISTORIC rainfall.
Justice crusaders retweet their way to self-satisfaction.
Through it all, Kathy alternates between hovering over her screens and trying to repress the headlines.
Reading it leaves bruises.
Laing cant help but bring herself back to our human casing.
The word stitch is a double-edged prayer, Laing writes.
It means the last bit of anything the stigmatized, say, or the devalued.
Watching the pandemic news has left Laing too twitchy to read much fiction, she says.
It features essays on Nina Simone, Malcolm X, Susan Sontag, and more.
Its about making a better world, she explains.
