San Antonio College Library

With more people living alone today than at any time in U.S. history, Ferguson investigates loneliness in American fiction, from its mythological beginnings in Rip Van Winkle to the postmodern terrors of 9/11. At issue is the dark side of a trumpeted American individualism. Ferguson shows that we can learn, from our literature, how to live alone.

"In this study of solitude in modernist fiction, Edward Engelberg explores the ways in which solitude functions thematically to shape meaning in literary works, and how solitude as a condition has contributed to the making of a topos. Selected novels are analyzed to highlight the ambiguities that solitude brings to their meanings. The freedom that solitude bestows also becomes a burden from which the protagonists seek release. Although such ambiguities...

These critical essays include Thoreau's artistic approach, architectural approach, and religious insight.