At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson

Abstract

Reviewed by: At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life by Fenton Johnson Jayne Moore Waldrop (bio) Fenton Johnson. At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020. 238 pages. Hardcover. $26.95. Fenton Johnson. At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life. New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Co., 2020. 238 pages. Hardcover. $26.95. Fenton Johnson's new book At the Center of All Beauty: Solitude and the Creative Life launched a day before the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic due to the novel coronavirus disease outbreak. Life changed quickly. The subsequent shut down altered our busy lives and routines in ways we've never experienced before. Schools, restaurants, bars, bookstores, libraries, sporting events, malls, and other hubs of human activity closed. We learned to social distance as the primary way to stay healthy, stop the spread of the virus, and flatten the curve. We tried to adjust to a world suddenly in a much tighter orbit with more time alone than we normally choose. Undoubtedly the circumstances were not ideal for a book launch, but for readers the confluence was fortuitous—the release of a beautifully written guide to solitude just as we were told to stay home. Reading At the Center of All Beauty during [End Page 107] the pandemic provided unanticipated comfort. Johnson portrays the solitary life as a chosen path, "not as tragedy or bad luck or loneliness." He uses the word solitary, adopting the term favored by the Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton because it is free of gender, sex, or negative connotations. Descriptors such as spinster, bachelor, single and loner come with baggage, where "[s]olitude and silence are positive gestures." With impeccably researched details, Johnson analyzes the lives and work habits of well-known solitaries and how their creative work required discipline, stillness, and separation from conventional societal expectations. Separate chapters study Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Paul Cezanne, Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, Rabindranath Tagore, Nina Simone and other kindred souls in their preference toward solitude and its fundamental role in their artistic genius. In stunningly beautiful prose that shifts between narrative nonfiction and memoir, Johnson takes the reader on a journey that spans centuries, continents, artistic genres, and spiritual practices, while weaving in his own story deeply rooted in Kentucky. Johnson grew up on land near the Abbey of Our Lady of Gethesemani, a Trappist monastery set among the knobby hills near Bardstown. His Roman Catholic family with nine children had close friendships and working relationships with several of the monks, including Merton. Despite coming from a large family, from an early age Johnson spent "a great deal of time in the company of solitaries," from monks with their vowed solitude to his parents' personal variations on the theme. Johnson's parents carved out solitude within their traditional marriage. His mother spent hours alone in her greenhouse nurturing orchids and cacti. His father loved woodworking and built a simple cabin of reclaimed timber—his HERMITage—in the forest on a nearby Corps of Engineers lake. [End Page 108] Throughout the book there's a close connection between solitude, spirituality, creativity, and the natural world, but there's no exclusive path toward becoming a solitary. Like getting married or professing a vocation to religion, living alone results from complicated, interlocking factors and decisions, made or avoided. Some of us were born to be solitaries—some were from birth 'not the marrying kind,' as my grandmother so presciently said of me….Many of us have arrived at our solitude as a result of circumstance—as who does not arrive at any place in life as a result of circumstance? Some gave our hearts away, to find that once given away they were not so easily recovered. Johnson notes that we live in an era with growing numbers of solitaries. Some choose solitude for spiritual, creative, and intentionally contemplative reasons. Others grew up regarding solitude as a homeland, as outliers and outsiders, due to race, sexuality, or class. Some are shy, widowed, or divorced. As societal expectations of conventional...