On Being Solitary in the Desert

There came to him that peculiar loneliness which is felt only in the monstrous impersonality of a multitude, that incomparable sensation of pure aloneness never known in another circumstance. The solitary figure upon an unchanging expanse of desert is not so alone as is one list in the infinity if a crowded city. He who is alone on the desert is always aware of his own significance, however small, and his relation to the space that he can see. But one who is solitary in the midst of a teeming swarm loses awareness of himself as an individual. The hundreds of strange bodies which press against him unknowingly, the hundreds of strange eyes which look upon his face blankly without recognition, the voices which speak above, around, but never to him--in these lies true aloneness. Of these things he was dimlyt aware as he tumbled and drifted along.--John Williams (1948) Nothing but the Night

At a book-seller peddling recent remainders, I was surprised to discover, Nothing but the Night, a slim novel "by  the author of Stoner." I had been under the impression that Stoner (1965; recall), Butcher's Crossing (1960; recall),  Augustus  (1972; recall here and here), and a collection of poems exhausted his oeuvre. I admire these three books greatly (while I do not share in the euphoria about Stoner, I think I understand its popularity).

Reading Nothing but the Night comes as a great shock because while it has literary qualities it lacks the astounding control over language of the later books. In fact, the main character is unsympathetic exemplar of what we may call broken masculinity (and so anticipates John  Stoner): a self-loathing Harvard college-drop out, who is homophobic ["he had no sympathy for the sort of person Stafford was. Stafford's particular perversion constantly repelled him,"] prone to violence toward the women who are kind to him, excessively judgmental of the women his self-pitying father (a widower who travels to forget his despair) dates, but unable to defend himself against the violence other men. He has no genuine agency ["some unnameable power pushed him from one place to another, down paths he had no wish to travel, through doors he did not know and had no wish to know" & "some obscure powers controlled....their destinies'] He understands himself  -- there are deliberate echoes of Stoicism here -- as a puppet of the divine. This is a book that could be taught in a course on toxic masculinity (with a nod to a recent war whose existence is only hinted at).

That he is carrying childhood trauma and is haunted by the memory of his dead mother is revealed early and helps explain these behaviors, but does not endear. To pity somebody is not a means toward sympathetic identification or admiration (if anything, as critics of Christianity -- one thinks of La Rochefoucauld and Hume -- noted, it is a means to feel superior.)*

Loneliness is the great theme of Nothing but the Night. The quoted passage expresses an important truth, not the least  the significance of recognition. But it also allows me to explain why I found the books so hard to read; the implied narrator reveals (ahh) his superiority to the protagonist. I find that grating (as well that use of 'incomparable,' 'pure'--later Williams is more taut and more effective).  Even so, there is a more important point lurking here.

By revealing his perspective the narrator reminds the reader, without having to mark it explicitly, that there is another kind of solitariness--that of the reader. Reading is a form of thinking prompted by another's train of words. One is alone in the company of an author, who (to partially quote another line of the work) reveals his/her ideas 'to him sentence by sentence.' When a book succeeds in grabbing one's attention, one's solitariness may well be  forgotten or one is seduced into a silent dialogue with a book's character(s)'s or point of view. But when a book grates, one is like a disappointed lover alone in one's frustration, awkwardly aware of the imperfect desires of a needy self.

 

*I thank Tobias Fuchs for discussion of this point.

Comments

[Michael Mirer]

Always happy to see a literary reflection. Have you read Willa Cather’s “The Professor’s House”? She shares a similar meditative quality with Williams (though I think she can be more ambitious). The theme of loneliness and the desert above made me recall that novel’s use of mesas and exploration. Highly recommend it.