We dropped an urn filled with soot into a small square hole and walked back to our cars.” Light flecks of snow melted on my face like false tears. He is also thinking about the death of his father and shares that in the year or so after his father died, he really couldn’t write fiction: “Since it is my job to obliterate blankness with words, I felt adrift.” Recalls, Orner, “It was April and snowing. In Am I Alone Here?, Orner sets the stage for the necessary condition of solitude in his introduction - though, he says, “he’s always been suspicious of introductions.” But the point is that he is alone, in a garage that he uses as an office. And that is truly the best possible answer. So what’s the story? Are we alone or aren’t we? Well, yes and no. Lewis is largely credited with having said, “We read to know we are not alone.” Listen to any episode of “The Lonely Voice with Peter Orner” and you’ll hear me refer to one or another essay in this book.Ĭ.S. That series is inspired by the book Am I Alone Here?: Notes on Living to Read and Reading to Live, Peter Orner’s 2016 essay collection.
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