The Lonely City - Olivia Laing

A book that explores loneliness as an experience in NYC, one of the most densely populated places in the world.  She explores her theme through personal recollections, but also (more interesting) through an examination of the life and works of several NYC artists, from both the 60s and the 90s - Andy Warhol, David Wojnarowicz, Henry Joseph Darger, Klaus Nomi.  Laing spends most of her time on Warhol and Wojnarowicz, who represent two distinct periods in the NYC art scene. 
An interesting read, though perhaps not for the reasons intended.
Some threads:
1)  All of these artists had difficult, traumatic early lives.  There work seems to be an attempt both to express their experience and overcome, or at least cope with, the effects these traumatic experiences had on their lives.  20th century art as coming out of deep trauma, social alienation.  Why now?  Is it because in the 20th C society (at least in the U.S.) has become so narrow, so limited in what it demands to belong?  Is it because, tradition having been devalued, we are left only with our own lives to work with, and the most traumatized is simply the most interesting?

2)  Warhol as an early discoverer of how technology serves both to engage you and yet at the same time create a distancing, a separateness, as part of the medium itself.  Think of how much technology now buffers our engagement with what passes for real.  It both connects and alienates at the same time.

3)  Through Wojnarowicz, Laing explores the sexual scene in NYC in the 90s, pre-AIDS, the fetish scene but mostly the gay scene.  She spends some time discussing the whole derelict docklands cruising scene.  Interesting that so many of the artists that came out of NYC at that time were gay, or explored the whole fetish idea in their art and concerts staging.  The 60s counterculture brought a kind of revolution to american society - blew up the suburban, nuclear family, work oriented, church on Sunday, Father Knows Best mythology (where did this myth come from?).  The 90s NYC gay art scene also seems to have had some kind of revolutionary effect on american society, but I am not sure how I would characterize that.  Pushing of boundaries?  Perhaps, the marginalized and "different" demanding to be seen, heard and accepted in society?  Through this, a further broadening of the idea of social norms?  If this is so, this revolution has definitely not completed its cycle yet.  In fact, we are in a major push-back stage right now, especially in the US.   Interesting ideas to explore more...