412. The Opposite of Loneliness: Essays and Stories
Rating: ☆☆☆
Recommended by:
Author: Marina Keegan
Genre: Nonfiction, Fiction, Short Stories, Essays, Memoir
208 pages, published April 8, 2014
Reading Format: Book
Summary
The Opposite of Loneliness is a collection of essays written by Marina Keegan , a talented young writer whose title essay captured the world’s attention in 2012. Tragically, five days after her graduation from Yale, Keegan died in a car crash. The 22 year old had a play that was to be produced at the New York International Fringe Festival and a job waiting for her at the New Yorker. The essays and stories included in The Opposite of Loneliness give voice to the struggles young people confront as they try to figure out their place in the world.
Quotes
“We don’t have a word for the opposite of loneliness, but if we did, I could say that’s what I want in life.”
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over.”
“We’re so young. We’re so young. We’re twenty-two years old. We have so much time. There’s this sentiment I sometimes sense, creeping in our collective conscious as we lie alone after a party, or pack up our books when we give in and go out – that it is somehow too late. That others are somehow ahead. More accomplished, more specialized. More on the path to somehow saving the world, somehow creating or inventing or improving. That it’s too late now to BEGIN a beginning and we must settle for continuance, for commencement.”
“We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not loose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
“I want enough time to be in love with everything . . .”
“I worry sometimes that humans are afraid of helping humans. There’s less risk associated with animals, less fear of failure, fear of getting to involved.”
“And I cry because everything is so beautiful and so short.”
“something about the stillness or my state of mind reminded me of the world’s remarkable capacity to carry on in every place at once.”
“We have these impossibly high standards and we’ll probably never live up to our perfect fantasies of our future selves.”
“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating from college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”
“I will live for love, and the rest will take care of itself.”
“I blame the Internet. Its inconsiderate inclusion of everything.Success is transparent and accessible, hanging down where it can tease but not touch us. We talk into these scratchy microphones and take extra photographs but I still feel like there are just SO MANY PEOPLE. Every day, 1,035.6 books are published; sixty-six million people update their status each morning. At night, aimlessly scrolling, I remind myself of elementary school murals. One person can make a difference! But the people asking me what I want to be when I grow up don’t want me to make a poster anymore. They want me to fill out forms and hand them rectangular cards that say HELLO THIS IS WHAT I DO.”
“The middle of the universe is tonight, is here, And everything behind is a sunk cost.”
My Take
While I enjoyed reading some of the essays in The Opposite of Loneliness, it is really written for a younger generation than me. Keegan is also a bit uneven. Some of her work is quite good, but other essays not so much.
