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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
In this compendium of everyone who was anyone who ever spent a moment alone, readers bump fleetingly into Kurt Cobain, French Resistance fighters, the Lone Ranger ("Tonto notwithstanding"), Michelangelo, Alexander Pope, John Lennon, cowboys, Saint Anthony and other solo acts. Rufus, the books editor of East Bay Express, views Degas's plain-faced dancers as "pretty ballerinas" whom the artist leaves every time he exits his studio, and Warhol's biography as "tellingly titled Loner at the Ball." She chases her motif, not so much a manifesto as a cri de coeur, through an assortment of perspectives: religion, advertising, clothes, crime, art, eccentricity, environment, literature, religion and popular culture. She also identifies "pseudoloners" like Theodore Kaczynski and Jesus Christ (who "was too good at guiding crowds to have been one of us"). There's an us/them tone to this book that makes one wonder who the audience might be. The "us" people "do not need writers to tell us how lovely apartness is"; the "them" people will surely weary of being identified as "Nonloners. The world at large. The mob." Taken in column-sized doses, Rufus may be entertaining and informative, but her book feels as if too much random information has been cut-and-pasted together.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Product Description
The Buddha. Rene Descartes. Emily Dickinson. Greta Garbo. Bobby Fischer. J. D. Salinger: Loners, all—along with as many as 25 percent of the world's population. Loners keep to themselves, and like it that way. Yet in the press, in films, in folklore, and nearly everywhere one looks, loners are tagged as losers and psychopaths, perverts and pity cases, ogres and mad bombers, elitists and wicked witches. Too often, loners buy into those messages and strive to change, making themselves miserable in the process by hiding their true nature—and hiding from it. Loners as a group deserve to be reassessed—to claim their rightful place, rather than be perceived as damaged goods that need to be "fixed." In Party of One Anneli Rufus -- a prize-winning, critically acclaimed writer with talent to burn -- has crafted a morally urgent, historically compelling tour de force—a long-overdue argument in defense of the loner, then and now. Marshalling a polymath's easy erudition to make her case, assembling evidence from every conceivable arena of culture as well as interviews with experts and loners worldwide and her own acutely calibrated analysis, Rufus rebuts the prevailing notion that aloneness is indistinguishable from loneliness, the fallacy that all of those who are alone don't want to be, and wouldn't be, if only they knew how.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
In Praise of Loners,
By SeaSoul (Vero Beach, FL United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Party Of One: The Loners' Manifesto (Paperback)
I can't imagine being a loner and not being thrilled with this book. What a breath of fresh air to read the positives of lonerdom instead of a "how to be an introvert in an extrovert world" instruction manual. I have been labelled everything from "anti-social" to "paralyzed by shyness" (often by my own family members) and it took at least 38 of my 41 years to accept my loner nature - in fact, to revel in it - and to realize I am not some sort of misfit. Anneli Rufus simply refutes the long held view that a successful life is one that is overflowing with people and relationships.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Good Beginning,
By "k8swordfish" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Party Of One: The Loners' Manifesto (Paperback)
I hope Party of One will begin a genre filling a tidy place in the psychology/self-help sections of popluar book stores. We who are loners have felt as I am sure gays and lesbians felt before Stonewall. They had some sporadic literature and contacts but no real confirmation that they weren't crazy. Neither are we loners. At last someone is helping those of us less able to quantify and articulate our experiences and lives in words to feel relieved, comfortable. There are times the book felt rushed in it's writing, sometimes strident, some times a little contemptious but worth the read for anyone who is a loner or knows one. I wish my parents had this information while raising me. I wish all of those insistent well meaning acquaintances inviting me as the pity guest to holiday celebrations could and would read this book. I hate being a pity guest. I wish all those who don't understand when I just want to go home that it really has nothing to do with them would read this book. Perhaps Ms Rufus could write a second book on the subject. She is a good writer. And, hopefully her publisher will catch the typos next time around. Oh, and, when I think about it, a lot of what she writes about harkens back to those old(?) ideas of respect and good manners. No wonder I miss those days despite being a liberal. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK, and then leave us alone. Thanks.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Take a peak into the life of that person in the corner ....,
By C. P. (Fair Haven, NJ United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Party Of One: The Loners' Manifesto (Paperback)
Growing up, Barbra Streisand sang that "people who need people are the luckiest people in the world." I didn't get it. It wasn't until a few years ago, after accidentally overhearing someone refer to me as a loner that I ever considered that I might be one. Whereas I looked at other people, those of whom were needy and dependant, as strange and somewhat pitiful, it wasn't until I read this book that I realized that they felt that way about me! All along I considered myself perfectly normal while now I see that the "other side" -- the nonloners -- saw me as the unusual one. This book doesn't so much try to explain why loners and nonloners act the way they do than to expose and explore the two disparate types of thinking and behaviors. It's a great source for either entity to enter the inside of the other side.
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