"[A] flexible and forgiving approach to the subject of solitude.… [A] thoughtful exploration."
Wall Street Journal - Geoff Wisner
"A case Johnson makes through his quiet, heart-full prose is that solitude is a wellspring for creativity that we would do well to pay more attention to. It is a message I didn’t know how desperate I was to hear so magnificently articulated until I read it."
"In a tone that’s warm, philosophical but familiar (this could be a conversation over tea or bourbon), Johnson touches on topics as varied as traveling alone, world religions, his parents and the Trappist monks next door, the monastic life, time as an illusion, the practice of celibacy, the gift of silence. It is a book for our times."
Arizona Daily Star - Christine Wald-Hopkins
"In these times of enforced solitude, what better book to shelter in place with than this one, which squarely places you At the Center of All Beauty ."
Medium - Camille Cusumano
"A fluid pastiche of memoir, social critique, literary criticism, mystical insights, and philosophical reflections.… [P]oetic yet profoundly accessible."
Bay Area Reporter - Brian Bromberger
"I love Fenton Johnson’s sensibility. It’s a joy and a balm to see the world through his eyes—and to rediscover solitude as our deepest and most powerful source of creativity and spirituality, even for people who are coupled."
"Part memoir, part critical study of writers and artists, part queer manifesto, At the Center of All Beauty is about Fenton Johnson’s effort to live deliberately, which in his case means alone.… This is a beautifully written book.… Reading At the Center of All Beauty , I came to see that each of us, single or coupled, has access to an interior life, a center of beauty, if only, as Johnson forcefully argues, we are not afraid of silence, of listening, of solitude, and what it has to teach us."
Gay and Lesbian Review - Daniel Burr
In this lyrical yet finely argued book, Johnson sets out to show that being alone—so different from loneliness, its direct opposite, in fact—is absolutely essential to the creative life. Taking a dozen or so historical examples…Johnson reveals how artists have always removed themselves from the noise and clutter of enforced sociability in order to live closer to the sources of their inspiration…The revelation that artists are tricky to live with hardly seems sufficient roughage for a whole book. But Johnson is clear that when he talks about the "creative life" he means far more than the pursuit of individual excellence and glittering prizes. He is thinking instead about something closer to communal service, a caring for the world that depends on the setting aside of self.
The New York Times Book Review - Kathryn Hughes
02/24/2020
In this stirring memoir and social critique, Johnson (Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays ) explores a life of solitude of those who “sit alone writing, painting, or reading, or watching the changing light.” A self-described “solitary,” Johnson posits that he and other artists who have focused wholly on answering a calling—rather than pursuing romantic love—constitute a larger “human family.” This premise frames Johnson’s meditations on how race, celibacy, sexual orientation, or gender identity have informed many a solitary life. He investigates his “affection for being alone” through colorful anecdotes of his “bent” childhood in rural Kentucky and calls his choices to be childless and celibate “a joyous turning inward.” Johnson then examines 11 solitaries, including writers Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, as well as jazz singer Nina Simone, who, because of her commitmment to her art, refused to marry the one man she loved. Queerness and solitude, writes Johnson, make many of them “role models for the cultivation of an interior life.” Some, he observes, went from longing for a partner to calmly accepting solitude as a gift of destiny, while others, such as Simone, never “seemed to have reached that inner peace.” His musings on solitude deliver heady and abstract concepts with engaging clarity. (Mar.)
"A treasure that I didn’t know I was looking for, one that unearthed and validated buried truths. This small book is incredible, both profound and humane…And yes, it is deeply beautiful. Fenton Johnson is one of our great writers."
"A work of staggering tenderness, intelligence and beauty…a new vision of self, community and home. This achingly honest and gorgeously written book should come with a warning: It will change you."
"In this lyrical yet finely argued book, Johnson sets out to show that being alone — so different from loneliness, its direct opposite, in fact — is absolutely essential to the creative life...meticulous, loving prose."
The New York Times - Kathryn Hughes
2019-11-26
Like Thoreau and many other creatives before him, Harper's contributor Johnson (English/Univ. of Arizona and Spalding Univ.; Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays , 2017, etc.) would prefer to be alone. "To use the term favored by the Trappist monk and mystic Thomas Merton," he suggests the socially uninclined be referred to as "solitaries," and he strives to reframe their stories (and his own) under society's critical eye. "Solitude and silence are positive gestures," he writes in defense of those in the world who would prefer to live alone and aim "for the cultivation of an interior life." While reminiscing on his own past, Johnson explores notions of solitude as seen in the writings of a pantheon of exalted literary and creative figures. Poems by Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, along with reflections on the lives of Paul Cézanne, Nina Simone, and fashion photographer Bill Cunningham, help shape this unconventional lifestyle into a "personal, particular spiritual philosophy" that will be recognizable to even the most skeptical of readers. "In the silence of my solitary walks I hear the voices of the trees. I hear them singing of a solitude that admits no loneliness," writes the author, seamlessly integrating a wealth of source material from his diverse and multifaceted cast of saintly solitaries. Beneath his scholarly efforts (and the occasional curmudgeonly aside), a tender memoir appears in pieces, delicately woven into his artists' profiles. A monastic, transcendent visit to Cézanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence suggests that particular emotional experiences can only emerge during an independent sojourn. Memories of Johnson's childhood and parents as well as stories of friends and old lovers surface during bouts of quiet research, growing from well-chosen poems, letters, and interviews into rhapsodic recollections of a profoundly full life.
An erudite lesson in embracing aloneness.
