Astonished Loneliness
Astonished Loneliness is a book of fifty-one short sections set in one unnamed city. Its opening line sets the premise: “The city hallucinates a handful of its souls.” None of the figures has a name. Each is a he, a she, an I, or a you, and the Author’s Note warns that neither the figures nor their stories necessarily carry over from one section to the next. The narrating I doesn’t stay in place either. It watches someone from outside, then enters them as their story unfolds, and may then withdraw once more, to observe from a new angle.
The people in these sections are mostly alone, and their perception runs past its usual limits. Shadows come loose from the people who cast them. Strangers on a park path pass through one another’s bodies. Old window glass is whorled by all the glances and gazes through it over the decades. Black-and-white movies, photographs, and surveillance cameras overlay the streets, with the image sometimes eating up reality. The loneliness is real, but the boundaries keep giving way: between one self and another, between the living and the dead, and between the city and its pictures of itself.
Originally titled City of Selves, it appeared in a private edition in 2020; substantially revised and retitled Astonished Loneliness, it was reprinted in a more compact format in 2025.