sunshowerdandelion | Day 60.1: Seek You (Reply)

I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get this book (a graphic novel), and it was very much worth it. Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke is exactly that - it's about the North American experience of loneliness, and the attempts to study loneliness, including Cacciopo's work (loneliness as a signal for a need, loneliness as pain equivalent to physical pangs like hunger) and those really nightmarish monkey experiments of Harry Harlow. It's an intensely personal work, which I love: I thought the bits the author shared felt intensely personal and true, especially the fragments about seeing her dead relative (and choosing to photograph her body and toiletries in a spur of the moment thing). The prose is very finely balanced and never felt detached or defensive. I learnt a lot. Those bits about loneliness being contagious? About prolonged loneliness leading to more loneliness? About prickliness? I can't help but think how a lot of our cyber-spaces are built around loneliness, and how this massive capitalistic machine has a massive stake in making us all that much lonelier.

Definitely a book written from inside the cell. I honestly think more novels and books in general should be written about being lonely, because I think that it among the needs is the most melancholic. Skin hunger indeed.

I'll definitely have to reread it at some point, because I doubt I caught everything this first read. Especially those bits about love. There isn't any really uplifting message in the end, just feelers constantly looking out for a solution, which felt true and just.