Literature of the Recluse

[Malone]

Feeling more than ever a desire to never leave my house again, I was wondering if anyone could recommend any good novels or stories about ennui-stricken recluses disgusted by the world. I'm thinking along the lines of Huysmans' A Rebours, JG Ballard's The Enormous Space, that kind of thing.

Many thanks!

[Malone]

Thank you, Hell-Ghost. I only heard of the Kerouac novel this morning myself when I went digging around. Alas, the world obliges me to engage with it, so my reclusive dreams remain precisely that.

You could always go the other way; not become another commonplace recluse in your own domicile, but instead take up residence in someone else's building and, through sheer ennui, force everyone else around you to leave.

In other words, you could do like the incomparable Bartleby in the eponymous tale by Herman Melville.

Mark S.

[Malone]

That would require far too much effort and socialisation, Mark.

I prefer instead the method of Ballard's protagonist:

Home (BBC film of J. G. Ballards The Enormous Space) - YouTube

Quote Originally Posted by Malone

That would require far too much effort and socialisation, Mark.

Not really, all you have to do is, like Bartleby, sit in a corner somewhere facing the wall and when asked to do anything reply "I would prefer not to".

Is that BBC film based on the Ballard tale about the man who goes off his head and imagines the dimensions of his home approaching absolute immensity around him?

Mark S.

[Malone]

I already do that with my girlfriend and she no longer enters the living room.

Yes, that's the one. Great story and great adaptation. Well worth your time.

[Mr. D.]

In keeping with your name I would suggest Samuel Beckett's Malone Dies, or The Unnamable. There is, of course, Waiting For Godot, where "Nothing happens - twice."

[gveranon]

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

Thomas Bernhard, several novels but I would especially recommend Concrete ("We must be alone and free from all human contact if we wish to embark upon an intellectual task!"), Yes, and The Loser. The Loser has a slightly-fictionalized depiction of Glenn Gould. ("He had barricaded himself in his house. For life.")

Kafka's "The Burrow"

A couple of novels I haven't read yet: Ivan Goncharov's Oblomov and Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

Nonfiction: some of Flaubert's Letters and Alexander Theroux's The Strange Case of Edward Gorey.

Quote Originally Posted by gveranon

George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

Damnation and Hell-Fire! This book has passed through my hands two times and on both occasions, after reading it and adoring it, I have given it away because I enjoyed it so much and wanted to share the experience. I've not seen a copy in the secondhand bookshops ever since I've indulged my twice-fold folly.

It's a close call between this one and New Grub Street for the laurels as Gissing's best.

Why am I prone to pass on to the uninitiated great literature in the expectation I'll pick up another copy sometime sooner rather than later? Disappointment all too often reigns. We have lived into an evil age.

Mark S.

[Malone]

Thanks to all for the suggestions.

I am familiar with nearly all the titles mentioned, which suggests to my mind that in a world that insists ever more on 'communication' and 'togetherness' the recluse is a threatened breed. Most disturbing.

Of course, another great work along such lines is Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet.

I love Gissing, maybe the man even more than the work. Ryecroft is essential reading of course (a book Lovecraft adored and insisted Sonia read as an insight into his character. She should have known after that).

For, dare I say, a happier Gissing his By the Ionian Sea is a gem. See how someone flourishes when taken out of the grey, dank industrial world and released into the sun-soaked Mediterranean.