More solitude
Silly me: entirely by chance came across Anthony Storr's "Solitude" on my rather disorganised and constantly re-forming shelves, with their almost arbitrary classification system. And what a chance: to re-read a comforting approach to something I know endogenously (if that is quite the right word) and can work up ideas on from my own nature and experience. It when this inner expereince tallies so strongly with what is written about a subject that there is such a buzz of recognition and confirmation.
The ISBN for the paperback is 00-00-654349-9
A Flamingo edition published by Fontana Paperbacks.
The index is a bit short for my liking. The poor indexer may get the blame for this, but actually he or she will be told to squeeze one into a set number of pages and heroically do so to the detrimemt of the the index as a functioning organism of the book organism.There is an optimimum size for an index proportional to the contents of a book, regardless of number pages. It is somewhat to to with the conceptual content. I was once involved in indexing a book on London Mews and was told I had to re-jig it because the great London Landowners whose land these houses sit, wanted 'equal billing' in their vanity book. It was quite a challenge but one I rose to to manfully and I think quite successfully.
Looking for an proof copy in my cupboard to illustrate my point without success. Maybe another day to take up the cudgels on behalf of indexers and indxes, which I feel are both neglected.
Interestingly it was first published by Andre Deutsch in June 1988 under the title School of Genius
posted by Adfero Affero @ 9:14 AM
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