Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto

I think this book has some great stuff in it, which should appeal to the type of person who doesn't automatically buy into the brainwashing efforts of mass advertisers; doesn't see much if any value in mindless conformity (at the huge expense of one's individuality), and so on. To me, Anneli Rufus's book was like taking a trip to an Oxygen Bar after living for far too long as a Lemming in a polluted modern city. I particularly liked what I saw in the chapter on "sanity" (pages 171-185), which she called "New Disorder". The author talks about another author -- MIT psychology professor Steven Pinker -- who wrote a book she liked, called "The Blank Slate".She says Pinker's book claims "... the five major ways in which human personality can vary are all 'heritable' -- that is, inborn. They include 'openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion-introversion, antagonism-agreeableness, and neuroticism". (That quote was from page 176. Other quotes by Anneli Rufus, from pages 177 and 178, will continue below.)She notes that the man "has had his critics," but then says, "But if Pinker is right, his research indicates what many loners have always suspected: that we were born this way. It is intrinsic and immutable, as preprogrammed as whether we are good at math or languages. It is more us than blood or bone, both of which are replaceable, or hair color and curl, which can be changed. Of trying to reverse what is essential -- trying to talk us out of it or train it out of us, deriding it as bad or ugly or evil or pathological -- only disaster can come. I am not crazy now, but forced to act like a nonloner for an extended period, I might go crazy. Force to deny their orientation, cut off that way from reality, loners could lose their minds. As deep-sea fish die in a shallow tank. They are fine at the bottom of the sea, strange as it might look down there, inhospitable thought it might be to whales and jellyfish and skin divers. As deep-sea fish that is where they have to be. Dead in shallow tanks. In the deep sea, not dead. Loners left alone, sane. Loners manipulated, loners not allowed to be alone, perhaps insane. And we are forced to live in their world, aren't we? Their shallow tank. Made just for them.""What the mob requires for its sanity is what whittles away relentless at ours. Because nonloners far outnumber us, their prescription for soundness of mind stands as good medicine. Contact! Chat! Cell phones! Spending as few hours alone as possible! To us is it not medicine but a dangerous drug at best -- it numbs, it drains, it blinds, it depresses, it requires extensive recovery. At worst, it is poison. If loners comprised the majority, we would decree our own prescription. Work at home! Turn off the ringer on the phone! Cross the street to avoid someone you know! It's good for you!""In which case, if it were that way, we could decree our loner standard for insanity. That talking to others all day is symptomatic of failure to individuate. That it indicates an unhealthy fear of thinking. That being unable to entertain oneself is surefire proof of being sick. There would be new disorders if we were in charge."Some quotes from page 179: "Not all social phobics are loners by nature. Some wish they could get back into the game. Blaming themselves for the problem, they feel even worse. Another relevant syndrome is avoidance personality disorder, characterized by depression, extreme social anxiety and a feeling of personal inadequacy. Another is schizoid personality disorder -- a syndrome, not to be confused with schizophrenia, whose sufferers are notably withdrawn, experience few emotional extremes either positive or negative, and display a marked lack of feelings for people in general". It goes on to say, "WHEN NATURAL-BORN loners do experience difficulty, psychological professionals face unusual challenges. What would bring this client happiness? Given the dominant paradigm, how is a therapist to advise a patient who actively dislikes being around people, whose peace and happiness depends on not being with people? How difficult is it to tell the client that this is okay?"Some quotes from pages 73 and 74:"FOR LONERS, FRIENDS are all the more essential because in many cases they are our sole conduits to the outside world. They are channels, filters, valves, rivers from the outback to the sea. When we find good ones, we pour ourselves into them. Frank Kafka, the Czech author who explored his own experiences as a loner in such works as "The Metamorphosis" -- whose protagonist awakens to discover that he as been transformed into a huge cockroach -- had a best friend in whom he trusted implicitly. Kafka met Max Brod at university, and they remained close throughout Kafka's life; it was Brod who brought Kafka to his parents' home when Kafka was mortally ill. And it was Brod to whom Kafka gave his dying instruction: that all his unpublished manuscripts be burned. Instead, Brod published them. Does this make him a bad friend, or the best friend a writer ever had?"More quotes: this time from page 19."CIVILIZATION WILL GO on whether you attend the block party or not. It will, whether you say hello and talk to anyone today or not. Whether you get married today, or ever, or have kids or not. Its momentum is strong. It will go on."Additional quotes I really liked: this time, from page 23."SUPERMAN is a loner. Tarzan is a loner. Batman, Spider-Man, Davy Crockett, and Xena are loners. Elvis Presley tried to pass himself off as one. The Lone Ranger, Tonto not withstanding, was a loner. In the playground and the classroom and the office, we are mocked and feared. The loner who goes home to feed his iguana when the rest of the Crate & Barrel staff goes out after work for beer is despised, not idolized. Yet on the screen, stage, and page, it is a different story. Here we see heroic loners. Self-reliant, sexy loners. Rebels. Sages. Mages. Stars. The mob worships imaginary loners. Pays to watch them. Wears T-shirts depicted them, adopts loners' catchwords, dresses as them for Halloween. Frat boys love Spider-Man, and so do Girl Scouts. It is make-believe, but in that land of make-believe, we rule. We f**king rule. Now why is that?"

Loners hail from every corner of the globe, they've explored the harshest and most remote environments, created much of the world's finest art, the most memorable literature, the best loved music. They've revolutionized the world of science, medicine and technology. With such an impressive catalog of successes to their name, why do they get such constant abuse? Why do storm clouds roll across the face of a parent at the suggestion that their child might in fact be a loner?Anneli Rufus tackles these issues head on in her book Party of One: The Loners' Manifesto. As an unrepentant loner she recalls her own experience growing up as a child: content to entertain herself with her own imaginative games, her mother would nevertheless force her to play in a group with other girls she barely knew. As she got older, concerned interlopers would invade her privacy convinced that she was depressed - possibly even suicidal - for no other reason than that she was alone. Loners don't require social contact the way nonloners do, they're fine - no more than fine, happy to find themselves in solitude; and the nonloner masses find such autonomy baffling. Rufus explores the world of the loner in all its many shades; from the extremes of the medieval anchorite who would lock themselves into a closet and live the remainder of their lives as dead to the world, to the solo sailors who disappear into maritime solitude for months at a time, to more ordinary loners such as herself (she lives with her husband, another loner like herself).Rufus is at her best discussing the bad rap given to loners by the criminal system. A few loners become famous killers (see, Unibomber), but then a few loners also become nobel laureates. Manson was a social butterfly. John Wayne Gacy was a pillar of his community. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (Columbine High killers) not only worked in tandem but founded a 15 member "Trench Coat Mafia" whose distinguishing feature was its titular look-at-me fashion statement. Nevertheless, Harris and Klebold and others like them are perpetually described as loners. How often do news stories report atrocities by queueing to the shocked neighbor - shocked because the accused "was always so friendly!", as if sociable = good guy, loner = psychopath? Here she makes an important distinction between the loner and the pseudoloner. The real loner is happy to be alone, she can find joy in her own pursuits which include no one but herself. The pseudoloner desires contact, craves interaction and society which they cannot have. The distinction is important for the nonloners of the world to understand; not all who spend much time in solitude are to be placed in the same category.Rufus, however, does have her blind spots. She seems to accept much of modern psychology, which is distinctly biased against the loner. She also at times, especially in the first few chapters, borders on sounding bitter towards the gregarious masses - even applauding a handful of clearly misanthropic loners, those who go beyond mere preference for solitude and on to actual hatred directed at the nonloner majority. Those are the places where this loner has to part ways (more than usual) with Rufus` opus. This is a well researched book, but it's not the the definitive book that could be written on the subject. These are the personal musings of one particular loner, some of the subjects she chooses to examine e.g. the loner's choice of wardrobe are things that I would never think to include in a book on lonerism. The basic difficulty with a loners' manifesto is that by definition they're a noncohesive group. They come in every shade of eccentricity, they belong to every creed and nationality, they chart their own course through life apart from the masses and each other. As a personal work, other loners reading this book will find many happy points of convergence side by side with other points of divergence (unlike the author, you wouldn't find me dead at a nudist colony!). Putting down the book, I'm glad to read the thoughts of a kindred soul who sees that there is nothing especially wrong about us. She has no real advice to the loner, she admits that being the lone sheep in the herd carries with itself its own set of problems. One can't be alone forever, if for no reasons beyond the practical ones, and even the introvert may desire some level of human contact - limited though it be. These are issues that each loner must work out in his own independent manner - and we wouldn't have it any other way.

A brilliant polemic in defence of the Loner, the Solitary, who may not be a psycho serial killer, as the mass media (significant term) would have it. The Loner may instead, as Rufus argues, have far greater mental health and security than those who need to be surrounded by others all the time, always on the phone, always talking, because they fear . . . what? Silence? The Self?One very accurate description of the Solitary is that he/she makes rich use of solitude. They are not sitting there staring at the telly, waiting for their partner to come home and entertain hem. They are busy: painting, playing the piano, day-dreaming . . .If this describes you, and yet you still feel obscurely guilty, nagged or pressurized by others into being something different, then you should really read this book. Being a Loner doesn't signify an incapacity for friendship or intimacy, as Rufus makes clear, but a deliberate choice to have a lot of solitude. I'm a perfectly successful creative myself, well into my forties, with very close, old friendships that will always endure. But I STILL find myself trotting obediently along to noisy drinks parties which I know I won't enjoy. Well NO MORE! Thank you so much, Author. This is a terrific, liberating book in every way.

A truly marvellous book! Now everyone can begin to understand the introvert(s) they're struggling with in their life. Anneli Rufus knows this hot topic from the inside out, and her keen insight and light touch succeed in making introverts, aka loners, feel validated and even 'normal'. I read it with high delight, frequent nodding and the occasional shout of "Yes! That's so right!" - The book offers a great many interesting insights, and my only regret is that I did not come across it sooner. I highly recommend it!

A very easy read, and read it in a day as I am currently on Holiday. Most of the things she says strikes a cord with me, but I don't agree with everything she says. Maybe this is part of being a loner, the independence and individual in all of us that it is her message. I would recommend this book for people who feel that they could be a loner or sway in that direction but take parts of it with a pinch of salt and sift out the bits relevant to you.The constant reference to loners and non-loners seemed to make her point of grouping moot when she put all people into two categories. I did agree with her on the media usage of loners being pervos, pedos, or indeed of any weird disposition when infact we like to spend time on our own. People like Mark Champman are pseudoloners, those who seek approval but have faced rejection and react. Loners like time on their own. I do infact go to the cinema on my own and eat at restaurants on my own and at work I will sit on my own at break, but I don't agree with her generalisation that we hate all social contact. Whilst I myself prefer my own company, I do have time for relatives, close friends and when not on my break will freely talk to others.I found the writing style very easy and would have liked her to go more into detail about people like Kurt Cobain, Einstein, John Lennon, instead of touching on them briefly to expand on the different types of loners. I do not like surfing, which she seems to say all loners like. I guess the point is, she makes most of her points in the first few chapters and if she went away from and us and them attitude like it is in harry potter with mudbloods and muggles, it could have been a much better argument, but I gave it 4 stars because I have empathy for the most part.

As I myself am one of the most genuinely self-contained people I have ever met I was a little bit disconcerted to discover how many of 'us' there are out there. I enjoyed this book although I couldn't relate to many of the asocial eccentricities described. Nor have I felt as suspect or as discriminated against as some loners seem to feel; maybe that is more of an American phenomenon. It is, however, certainly a worthy and eloquent retort to the idea that solitariness is something that needs to be 'cured'.

She's married/with partner how can she be a true loner? Maybe she's slightly more independent than most. Average.